Account spending limits and billing
Nothing ends a good campaign faster than a billing surprise or an account that pauses itself overnight. Meta charges on a hybrid postpaid model, auto-charging your payment method when you hit a moving Billing Threshold or your monthly bill date, whichever comes first. Your safety brake is the Account Spending Limit, a lifetime cap that pauses every campaign the moment cumulative spend touches it. Understand both before you scale.
The two controls
Account Spending Limit (ASL): a lifetime cumulative cap on total spend across every campaign in the ad account. When spend hits it, all campaigns pause until the limit is raised or reset. ASL does not reset on any calendar cycle, so to start a new period you must go to Payment Settings and reset the counter to zero.
Billing Threshold: a running balance Meta lets you accrue before auto-charging. New accounts start at $25 to $50. Meta ratchets it up after successful payments, with common mature thresholds of $250, $500, $750, $1,500+.
When you get charged
Two triggers. Cumulative spend reaches the billing threshold (instant auto-charge), or your monthly bill date arrives with a non-zero balance.
Whichever happens first triggers the charge. You can manually lower your billing threshold immediately. Raising it requires Meta review and is not available to all accounts.
Payment methods
Credit and debit card: universal. PayPal: available on automatic-payment ad accounts; Meta absorbs the PayPal transaction fee. Direct debit / bank account: select countries with a small verification deposit. Manual payment / prepaid balance: some regions.
Monthly Invoicing: application-gated line of credit, typically offered to advertisers spending in the high five figures or more per month. Meta runs credit checks and issues invoices net-30 instead of auto-charging.
Gotchas
ASL applies going forward against cumulative lifetime spend. If you have already spent $4,800 and set an ASL of $5,000, you have $200 of headroom, not $5,000.
Card declines under the auto-charge flow can disable the ad account immediately with no grace period. Keep a backup payment method on file.
Meta sends warning notifications at roughly 85 percent of ASL and hard-pauses at 100 percent.
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