Hello! I’m on the $20/month plan. I use Composer 2.5 for basic tasks until I run out of Auto usage because I never find it to work well on anything except tiny projects. Then I switch to API usage and use the models I feel are actually good. I noticed today that it silently switched to using API usage without telling me and used 25% on Composer 2.5 before I noticed. Is there a way to prevent that or do I just have to use all the API usage first? If I currently have to use API usage first, I would request a way to disable falling back to API usage.
Hey, thanks for the question. This is expected behavior, not a bug, and you were not charged extra. Here’s why.
On an individual Pro plan there are two included pools: Auto + Composer and API. Auto, Agent, and Composer will use the Auto + Composer pool first. When that hits 0%, one-way requests spill over into your included API quota. On the dashboard this shows as “Consumed by Auto. Additional usage consumes API quota.” So that 25% on Composer 2.5 came from your included API quota, not the paid API. The order is:
Auto + Composer → included API quota → On-Demand paid
On-Demand only kicks in if you have usage-based or on-demand spending enabled. So if you want to fully avoid any paid overage, keep on-demand spending turned off, or set the spend limit to $0. Then usage will hard stop at 100% instead of charging you.
Right now there’s no separate toggle to disable the spillover from Auto to included API, or to reserve the API pool only for explicitly selected models. The request makes sense, I’ll pass it along as a feature request.
Related threads with more details if you want to dig deeper: Does Composer 2.5 fall back to API usage after Auto + Composer reaches 0% on individual Pro? and Can someone clarify Pro plan usage order? (Auto + Composer → API → On-Demand?). Let me know if anything is still unclear.