[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":830},["ShallowReactive",2],{"/en-us/blog/ai-native-gitlab-premium-transform-higher-education-software-development":3,"navigation-en-us":42,"banner-en-us":451,"footer-en-us":461,"blog-post-authors-en-us-Jessica Hurwitz|Elisabeth Burrows":701,"blog-related-posts-en-us-ai-native-gitlab-premium-transform-higher-education-software-development":727,"blog-promotions-en-us":767,"next-steps-en-us":820},{"id":4,"title":5,"authorSlugs":6,"body":9,"categorySlug":10,"config":11,"content":15,"description":9,"extension":29,"isFeatured":13,"meta":30,"navigation":13,"path":31,"publishedDate":22,"seo":32,"stem":37,"tagSlugs":38,"__hash__":41},"blogPosts/en-us/blog/ai-native-gitlab-premium-transform-higher-education-software-development.yml","Ai Native Gitlab Premium Transform Higher Education Software Development",[7,8],"jessica-hurwitz","elisabeth-burrows",null,"product",{"slug":12,"featured":13,"template":14},"ai-native-gitlab-premium-transform-higher-education-software-development",true,"BlogPost",{"title":16,"description":17,"authors":18,"heroImage":21,"date":22,"body":23,"category":10,"tags":24},"AI-native GitLab Premium: Transform higher education software development","The DevSecOps platform's enterprise-grade features for academic workflows, data protection, and support ensure better collaboration, security, and efficiency.",[19,20],"Jessica Hurwitz","Elisabeth Burrows","https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1749659537/Blog/Hero%20Images/display-article-image-0679-1800x945-fy26.png","2025-06-10","Educational institutions increasingly rely on modern software development practices to support teaching, research, and administrative functions. As development needs grow more complex in university and college environments, GitLab Premium with Duo provides essential capabilities that address the unique challenges faced by higher education – particularly around open source development, remote collaboration, and enterprise-grade security.\n\nGitLab's comprehensive, intelligent DevSecOps platform delivers value that extends far beyond fundamental version control. Built on an open source foundation with enterprise-grade features, GitLab Premium helps prevent costly security incidents involving student data, provides cloud-based development environments for distributed teams, and offers the professional support that educational institutions need for mission-critical systems. And now [Premium includes GitLab Duo AI essentials](https://about.gitlab.com/blog/gitlab-premium-with-duo/) Code Suggestions and Chat at no additional cost.\n\n\u003Cdiv>\u003Ciframe src=\"https://player.vimeo.com/video/1083723619?badge=0&autopause=0&player_id=0&app_id=58479\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"autoplay; fullscreen; picture-in-picture; clipboard-write; encrypted-media\" style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;\" title=\"GitLab Premium with Duo Core\">\u003C/iframe>\u003C/div>\u003Cscript src=\"https://player.vimeo.com/api/player.js\">\u003C/script>\n\n## The unique development environment in higher education\n\nUniversities and colleges operate in a distinctly challenging technical environment. Development teams must support multidisciplinary collaboration across technical and non-technical departments while managing vast amounts of sensitive data – from student records and financial information to research findings and faculty evaluations.\n\nMost institutions face these challenges with limited IT resources, yet must support thousands of concurrent users across numerous projects and research initiatives. Research integrity requirements add another layer of complexity, as development work often needs to maintain traceability and reproducibility standards.\n\n## Premium solutions for educational institutions\n\nGitLab Premium with Duo has the functionality that higher education needs.\n\n### Enhanced collaboration and workflow capabilities\n\nCross-departmental projects are common in educational settings – from multi-department research initiatives to custom module development for systems like Ellucian Banner, an enterprise resource planning application used by higher education. These complex projects require sophisticated workflow management that goes beyond basic version control. \n\nGitLab Premium addresses these challenges with powerful collaboration and project visualization features, including epics, roadmaps, and advanced Kanban boards for Agile development workflows. When you assign multiple approvers to certain merge requests and protected branches, you ensure higher code quality and accountability across teams. These tools allow institutions to coordinate work across departments while aligning with institution-wide objectives – essential for managing multiphase campus technology initiatives.\n\nIn Australia, [Deakin University’s](https://about.gitlab.com/customers/deakin-university/) enablement team uses GitLab to build standardized processes and reusable templates — such as custom merge request templates, templated build pipelines, and a security and compliance framework — that can be shared with the broader university community and citizen developers, driving innovation and collaboration both inside the university and with key partners. “We were trying to bring in a community of practice and help it thrive for quite some time, but we were never successful until we had this tool,” said Aaron Whitehand, director of Digital Enablement at Deakin University.\n\n> #### Read more about [how Deakin University uses GitLab to drive improvements](https://about.gitlab.com/customers/deakin-university/) in collaboration and productivity, including a 60% reduction in manual tasks.\n\n### Advanced data protection and governance\n\nEducational institutions generate and manage vast amounts of data, ranging from student records and financial information to research findings and faculty evaluations. The security stakes are particularly high. The [2023 MOVEit breach](https://universitybusiness.com/in-just-3-months-this-data-breach-has-compromised-nearly-900-institutions/), which spanned three months and compromised approximately 900 educational institutions, exposed the sensitive information of more than 62 million people. This demonstrates the critical need for proactive security measures integrated directly into higher education development workflows. \n\nVulnerability scanning stops code releases that contain security risks, enabling institutions to establish and enforce governance protocols that protect sensitive information. These capabilities help universities implement proper access controls and permission structures for research databases, creating a secure framework where authorized researchers maintain appropriate access – effectively balancing robust protection with necessary collaboration.\n\nGitLab is built from the ground up to secure your source code. Scalable Git-based repositories, granular access controls, and built-in compliance features eliminate bottlenecks in your workflow while meeting security requirements. GitLab Premium provides audit tracking and compliance capabilities essential for educational environments. Complete audit trails capture detailed logs of all code changes, access attempts, and system modifications with timestamps and user attribution. Full change management documentation ensures traceability of who made what changes, when, and why – critical for research integrity – while access control auditing monitors repository access and permissions changes. \n\n### Cloud-based development environments and remote collaboration\n\nModern educational institutions require flexible development environments that support distributed teams, remote learning scenarios, and diverse technical requirements. GitLab Premium provides:\n\n* **[GitLab Workspaces](https://docs.gitlab.com/user/workspace/):** Cloud-based development environments accessible from any device  \n* **[Web IDE integration](https://docs.gitlab.com/user/project/web_ide/):** Browser-based coding with full GitLab feature integration  \n* **[Container-based development](https://about.gitlab.com/blog/build-and-run-containers-in-remote-development-workspaces/):** Consistent, reproducible development environments across different projects and user groups\n\nThese capabilities are particularly valuable for supporting remote and hybrid learning models, enabling students and researchers to access standardized development environments regardless of their physical location or local hardware constraints.\n\n### Professional support for critical systems\n\nSmall IT teams in educational settings often support large, complex infrastructure with minimal resources. Reaching out to user forums for answers doesn't always mean you'll get an accurate reply and isn't efficient for large teams. GitLab Premium includes dedicated professional support, providing faster issue resolution and upgrade assistance during critical periods like class enrollment or research deadlines.\n\nThis minimizes downtime for critical services and ensures continuity of operations during peak usage periods, giving stretched IT departments the enterprise-grade reliability they need for essential academic systems.\n\n### Built on open source with enterprise capabilities\n\nOpen source software is developed collaboratively in a public manner, with source code freely available for anyone to view, modify, and distribute. This development model fosters innovation through community contributions and ensures transparency in how software functions. GitLab's open source foundation resonates strongly with educational institutions' values around collaboration, transparency, and community contribution. GitLab Premium features extend this foundation with enterprise-grade capabilities while maintaining the ability to contribute back to the open source ecosystem.\n\nKey open source advantages include:\n\n* **Transparency:** Complete visibility into platform capabilities and security measures – you can examine exactly how the software works  \n* **Community contribution:** Ability to contribute improvements back to the broader community and benefit from global developer expertise  \n* **Vendor independence:** Reduced lock-in risk with open source alternatives and the freedom to modify code as needed  \n* **Co-creation opportunities:** Collaborative development with the broader community, including other educational institutions, to build shared solutions\n\n### AI assistant for software development tasks\n\nGitLab Premium with [Duo](https://about.gitlab.com/gitlab-duo-agent-platform/) brings powerful AI-native capabilities directly into the development workflow, including:  \n* [**Code Suggestions**](https://docs.gitlab.com/user/project/repository/code_suggestions/), which provides real-time code completion and suggestions, helping developers write code faster and more efficiently  \n* [**Chat**](https://docs.gitlab.com/user/gitlab_duo_chat/), which allows team members to get instant answers to questions, troubleshoot issues, and access documentation directly within the GitLab environment\n\nThese AI tools significantly enhance productivity, reduce errors, and streamline collaboration, making GitLab Premium an even more valuable asset for software development teams in higher education.\n\n### Transparency at the core\n\nHigher education institutions handle incredibly sensitive data — from student records and research findings to proprietary academic work and federal grant information. \n\nThe [GitLab AI Transparency Center ](https://about.gitlab.com/ai-transparency-center/)demonstrates our commitment to transparency, accountability, and protection of customer data and intellectual property, providing the privacy guarantees that educational institutions require.\n\nGitLab launched the AI Transparency Center to help customers, community, and team members better understand how GitLab upholds ethics and transparency in our AI-powered features. \n\nOur publicly available documentation highlights the comprehensive measures we take to protect your institution's data and intellectual property. [GitLab's AI Ethics Principles for Product Development](https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/legal/ethics-compliance-program/ai-ethics-principles/) guide us as we continue to build and evolve our AI functionality, helping higher education organizations harness the promise of AI while maintaining complete control and oversight of their most valuable information assets.\n\n## Get started with GitLab Premium today\n\nFor educational institutions, GitLab Premium with Duo represents a strategic technical investment that combines the benefits of open source development with enterprise-grade, AI-native capabilities. 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Patch Release: 18.11.1, 18.10.4, 18.9.6","Discover what's in this latests patch release.","https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1749661926/Blog/Hero%20Images/security-patch-blog-image-r2-0506-700x400-fy25_2x.jpg","2026-04-22",[735,736],"patch releases","security releases",{"featured":33,"template":14,"externalUrl":738},"https://docs.gitlab.com/releases/patches/patch-release-gitlab-18-11-1-released/",{"content":740,"config":752},{"title":741,"description":742,"body":743,"category":10,"tags":744,"date":747,"authors":748,"heroImage":751},"GitLab + Amazon: Platform orchestration on a trusted AI foundation","Pair GitLab Duo Agent Platform with Amazon Bedrock for agentic software development and orchestration.","If your team runs GitLab and has a strong AWS practice, a new combination of Duo Agent Platform and Amazon Bedrock is just for you. The model is simple: GitLab acts as your orchestration layer to help accelerate your entire software lifecycle with agentic AI, and Bedrock is designed to provide a secure, compliant foundation model layer with AI inference behind the scenes.\n\nGitLab Duo Agent Platform enables you to handle planning, merge pipelines, security scanning, vulnerability remediation, and more as part of your GitLab workflows, while the GitLab AI Gateway routes model calls to Bedrock (or GitLab-managed Bedrock-backed endpoints, depending on your setup). That means you can build on the identity and access management (IAM) policies, virtual private cloud (VPC) boundaries, regional controls, and cloud spend commitments you already have in AWS.\n\nIf you already use Amazon Bedrock and want AI to help inside the work you already do in GitLab, not in yet another standalone chat tool, this is the pairing for you.\n\n\nIn this article, we look at the real problem many teams face today: AI is fragmented, data paths are fuzzy, and Bedrock investment gets underused when AI sits outside the software development lifecycle. Then we break down your deployment options for GitLab Duo Agent Platform:\n\n* Integrated with self-hosted models on Amazon Bedrock for GitLab Self-Managed deployments and self-hosted AI gateway   \n* Integrated with GitLab-operated models on Amazon Bedrock (with GitLab-owned keys) for GitLab Self-Managed deployments and GitLab-hosted AI gateway  \n* Integrated with GitLab-operated models on Amazon Bedrock (with GitLab-owned keys) for GitLab.com instances and GitLab-hosted AI gateway\n\nWe wrap with a summary on how this approach helps avoid shadow AI and point-tool sprawl without creating a parallel tech stack for AI tooling.\n\n## AI everywhere, control nowhere\n\nSomewhere in your company right now, software teams might be using an AI tool that your security team hasn't approved. Prompt data might be leaving your environment through a path no one has fully mapped. And your organization’s Amazon Bedrock investment might be underused while individual teams expense separate AI tools, pulling workloads and cloud spend away from the platforms you’ve already committed to.\n\nInstead of being a people problem, this might be an architecture problem. And it surfaces the same three constraints in nearly every enterprise:\n\n**Operational fragmentation.** Each team, or sometimes even an individual developer, picks their own development toolset, including AI tooling and model selection. That fragmentation makes end-to-end governance within the software development lifecycle nearly impossible.\n\n**Security and sovereignty.** Where does prompt and code data actually flow? Who owns the logs?\n\n**Cloud spend optimization.** Commitments to key cloud providers like AWS are diluted as workloads and AI usage drift to point tools outside of customers’ existing agreements.\n\nGitLab Duo Agent Platform and Amazon Bedrock help solve this together. The division of labor is straightforward: Duo Agent Platform owns the workflow orchestration with agentic AI for software development, Bedrock owns the inference layer and hosts approved foundational models, and your organization has full control over the data and policy boundaries you already defined in AWS. Three jobs, three owners, no fragmentation.\n\n## GitLab Duo Agent Platform: The agentic control plane\n\nGitLab Duo Agent Platform is GitLab's agentic AI layer: a framework of specialized agents and flows that operate simultaneously and in-parallel, going beyond the traditional stage-based handoffs  and helping automate work across the entire software lifecycle. Rather than a single assistant responding to prompts, Duo Agent Platform enables teams to orchestrate many AI agents asynchronously using unified data and project context, including issues, merge requests, pipelines, and security findings. Linear workflows are turned into coordinated, continuous collaboration between software teams and their AI agents, at scale.\n\nWith that control plane in place, the natural next question is which AI foundation should power these agents. For customers who run GitLab Self-Managed on AWS and need inference traffic, prompt data, and logs to also stay within their AWS environment along with their software lifecycle data, Amazon Bedrock acting as the AI inference layer is the natural fit. \n\n## Amazon Bedrock: The trusted AI foundation\n\nAmazon Bedrock is a fully managed, serverless foundation model layer that runs entirely within your AWS environment. Customer data stays in the customer's AWS account: inputs and outputs are encrypted in transit and at rest, never shared with model providers, and never used to train base models. Bedrock carries compliance certifications across GDPR, HIPAA, and FedRAMP High, covering many regulated industry requirements out of the box. Teams can also bring fine-tuned models from elsewhere via Custom Model Import and deploy them alongside native Bedrock models through the same infrastructure, without managing separate deployment pipelines. Bedrock Guardrails adds configurable safeguards across all models for content filtering, hallucination detection, and sensitive data protection.\n\nTogether, GitLab Duo Agent Platform and Bedrock consolidate DevSecOps orchestration and AI model governance, helping eliminate the fragmentation that happens when teams roll out AI tools independently.\n\n## Choosing your deployment path\n\nThe integration delivers the same core GitLab Duo Agent Platform capabilities regardless of how it is deployed. What varies is who runs GitLab, who operates the AI Gateway, and whose Bedrock account the inference runs through. The right pattern depends on where your organization already operates.\n\nAt a high level, the integration has three main components:\n\n* **GitLab Duo Agent Platform:** agentic workflows embedded across the software development lifecycle  \n* **AI Gateway (GitLab-managed or self-hosted):** the abstraction layer between Duo Agent Platform and the foundational model backend   \n* **Amazon Bedrock:** the AI model and inference substrate\n\n![Deployment of GitLab and AWS Bedrock](https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1776362365/udmvmv2efpmwtkxgydch.png)\n\nChoosing a deployment pattern is informed by where an organization wants to place the levers of control. The patterns below are designed to meet teams where they already are, whether that's SaaS-first, self-managed for compliance, or all-in on AWS with existing Bedrock investments.\n\n| Deployment Model | GitLab.com instance with GitLab-hosted AI Gateway with GitLab-operated Bedrock models   | GitLab Self-Managed with GitLab-hosted AI Gateway with GitLab-operated Bedrock models | GitLab Self-Managed  with self-hosted AI Gateway and customer-operated Bedrock models |\n| :---- | :---- | :---- | :---- |\n| **Ideal if you:** | Are primarily on GitLab.com and don’t want to self-host AI gateway and Bedrock models  | Need GitLab Self-Managed for compliance and operational reasons but don’t want to manage AI layer | Are AWS-centric with existing Bedrock usage and strict data/control needs  |\n| **Key Benefits** | Fastest, turnkey way to get Duo Agent Platform workflows: GitLab runs GitLab.com, the AI Gateway, integrated with Bedrock AI models. | Keep GitLab deployed in your own environment while consuming Bedrock models via a GitLab-managed AI Gateway, combining deployment control with simplified AI operations. | Run GitLab and AI Gateway in your AWS account, reuse existing IAM/VPC/regions, keep logs and data in your environment, and draw Bedrock usage from your existing AWS spend commitments. |\n\n## How customers use GitLab Duo Agent Platform with Amazon Bedrock\n\nPlatform teams can use GitLab Duo Agent Platform with Amazon Bedrock to standardize which models handle code suggestions, security analysis, and pipeline remediation. This helps enforce guardrails and logging centrally rather than letting individual teams adopt separate tools independently.\n\nSecurity workflows see particular benefit. GitLab Duo Agent Platform agents can propose and validate fixes for security findings within GitLab, helping reduce the manual triage work developers would otherwise handle outside the platform.\n\nFor enterprises already committed to AWS, routing AI workloads through Bedrock from within GitLab enables you to keep developer AI usage aligned with existing cloud agreements rather than generating separate, unplanned spend.\n\n## Closing the loop\n\nThe constraints that slow enterprise AI adoption are often not technical. They are organizational: fragmented tooling, ungoverned data flows, and cloud spend that never consolidates. Those are the problems that can stall AI programs even after the pilots succeed.\n\nGitLab Duo Agent Platform and Amazon Bedrock help address each one directly. Platform teams get consistent governance, auditability, and standardized paths for AI usage across the software development lifecycle. Development teams get streamlined, agentic workflows that feel native to GitLab. And AWS-centric organizations get to extend their existing Bedrock investment rather than build parallel AI infrastructure alongside it.\n\nThe result is an AI program that scales without fragmenting. Governance and velocity on the same stack, serving the same teams, under policies the organization already owns.\n\n\n> To explore which deployment pattern is right for your organization and how to align GitLab Duo Agent Platform and Amazon Bedrock with your existing AWS strategy, [contact the GitLab sales team](https://about.gitlab.com/sales/) and we’ll help you design and implement the best architecture for your environment. You can also [visit our AWS partner page](https://about.gitlab.com/partners/technology-partners/aws/) to learn more.",[278,745,746],"AWS","AI/ML","2026-04-21",[749,750],"Joe Mann","Mark Kriaf","https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1776362275/ozbwn9tk0dditpnfddlz.png",{"featured":13,"template":14,"slug":753},"gitlab-amazon-platform-orchestration-on-a-trusted-ai-foundation",{"content":755,"config":765},{"title":756,"description":757,"authors":758,"heroImage":760,"date":761,"body":762,"category":10,"tags":763},"GitLab 18.11: Budget guardrails for GitLab Credits","Learn how new spending caps and per-user credit limits give organizations the budget guardrails to scale GitLab Duo Agent Platform.",[759],"Bryan Rothwell","https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1776259080/cakqnwo5ecp255lo8lzo.png","2026-04-16","Teams using GitLab Duo Agent Platform with on-demand GitLab Credits are shipping faster, catching bugs earlier, and automating tasks that used to take entire sprints. But as adoption grows, so does oversight from finance, procurement, and platform teams to prove that AI spending is bounded, predictable, and controllable.\n\nOne of the greatest barriers to broader AI adoption isn't skepticism about the technology. It's uncertainty about managing spend. Without budget caps, a busy month could produce unexpected expenses. Without per-user limits, a handful of power users could burn through the team's credits before the month is over. And without either, engineering leaders who want to expand their use of agentic AI for software development have to jump through more hoops for budget approval.\n\nSince its [general availability](https://about.gitlab.com/blog/gitlab-duo-agent-platform-is-generally-available/), GitLab Duo Agent Platform has provided usage governance and visibility. With GitLab 18.11, we're introducing usage controls for [GitLab Credits](https://about.gitlab.com/blog/introducing-gitlab-credits/): spending caps and budget guardrails that give your organization even more control and transparency over how credits are consumed.\n\n## Managing GitLab Credits\n\nGitLab 18.11 adds three layers of control over GitLab Credits consumption: a subscription-level spending cap, per-user credit limits, and visibility into cap status and enforcement.\n\n### Subscription-level spending cap\n\nBilling account managers can now set a hard monthly ceiling for on-demand GitLab Credits consumption for their entire subscription.\n\nHere's how it works:\n\n* **Set a cap** in the `Customers Portal` under your subscription's GitLab Credits settings.  \n* **Enforce spend limits automatically.**  When on-demand usage reaches the cap, DAP access is paused for all users on that subscription until the next monthly period begins.  \n* **Make adjustments as you go.** Raise or disable the cap mid-month to restore access.\n\nThe cap resets each monthly period and your configured limit carries forward unless you change it. Because usage data is synchronized periodically rather than in real time, a small amount of additional usage may occur after the cap is reached before enforcement takes effect. See the [GitLab Credits documentation](https://docs.gitlab.com/subscriptions/gitlab_credits/) for details.\n\n### User-level spending caps\n\nNot every user consumes credits at the same rate, and that's expected. But when one or two power users account for a disproportionate share of the pool, the rest of the team can lose access before the month is over.\n\nPer-user credit caps prevent any single user from consuming more than their fair share:\n\n* **Flat per-user cap.** Set a uniform credit limit that applies equally to every user on the subscription through the GitLab GraphQL API. Unlike the subscription-level cap, the per-user cap applies to a user's total consumption across all credit sources.  \n* **Custom per-user overrides.** For organizations that need differentiated limits, you can set individual credit caps for specific users through the GraphQL API. For example, you could give your staff engineers a higher allocation while applying a standard limit to the broader team.  \n* **Individual enforcement.** When a user reaches their cap, they retain full access to GitLab. Only their Duo Agent Platform credit usage is paused until the next billing cycle. Everyone else keeps working uninterrupted until they hit their own limit or the subscription-level cap is reached, whichever comes first.\n\n### Visibility and notifications\n\nWhen a subscription-level cap is reached, GitLab sends an email notification to billing account managers so they can take action: raise the cap, wait for the next period, or redistribute credits.\n\nWithin GitLab, group owners (GitLab.com) and instance administrators (Self-Managed) can view which users have been blocked due to reaching their per-user cap and restore access by adjusting the cap through the GraphQL API. \n\n## How budget guardrails help organizations scale AI usage\n\nGuardrails are essential as organizations ramp up their AI adoption. Here's why:\n\n### Predictable AI budgets\n\nUsage controls for GitLab Duo Agent Platform turn AI into a bounded, predictable budget item using on-demand GitLab Credits. That makes it easier to deploy agents across the software development lifecycle and get sign-off from finance, justify renewals, and plan quarterly spend.\n\n### Governance and chargeback\n\nLarge organizations often need to align AI consumption with internal budgets, cost centers, or departmental policies. Per-user caps give platform teams a straightforward mechanism to allocate credits fairly and track consumption at the individual level. The API import options make it practical to manage caps at enterprise scale. Combined with per-user usage data from the GitLab Credits dashboard, organizations can track consumption patterns to inform their own internal chargeback or budget allocation processes.\n\n### Confidence to scale\n\nMany customers start GitLab Duo Agent Platform with a small pilot group. Usage controls remove risks associated with expanding that pilot across the organization. You can roll out Duo Agent Platform to hundreds or thousands of developers knowing there's a hard ceiling protecting your budget. If usage grows faster than expected, you'll hit the cap, not an unexpected invoice.\n\n## Addressing the seat-based and visibility conundrum\n\nMany AI coding tools take a seat-based approach to cost management. You buy a fixed number of seats at a flat per-user price, and that's your budget. It's simple, but rigid. You pay the same whether a developer uses the tool ten times a day or never touches it. And as vendors introduce premium models and usage-based overages on top of seat pricing, the cost predictability that seat-based licensing promised starts to erode.\n\n\nGitLab takes a different approach. Usage-based pricing with hard caps and a single governance dashboard. You get the flexibility of paying for what your teams actually use, with the budget predictability of enforced spending limits.\n\n## Real-world usage controls\n\n**One example is a mid-size SaaS customer that wants to protect their monthly budget.** A 200-person engineering organization sets a subscription-level cap equal to their expected on-demand usage. Their VP of Engineering can confidently tell finance that GitLab Duo Agent Platform spend will never exceed the approved amount, even as they onboard new teams. If they approach the cap mid-month, the billing account manager gets a notification and can decide whether to raise the limit or wait for the next period.\n\n**At GitLab, we also work with large enterprises that want to keep usage fair across teams.** A global financial services company with 2,000 developers uses per-user caps to ensure equitable access. Staff engineers working on complex refactoring projects get a higher individual allocation via API, while most developers receive a standard flat cap. No single user can exhaust the pool, and the platform team uses the per-user usage data in the GitLab Credits dashboard to track consumption patterns and inform quarterly budget planning.\n\n## Getting started\n\nUsage controls are available for both GitLab.com and Self-Managed customers running GitLab 18.11. Different controls are configured in different places depending on the scope and your role.\n\n**Subscription-level cap**\n\nBilling account managers set the subscription-level on-demand cap in the Customers Portal:\n\n1. Sign in to the `Customers Portal`.  \n2. On your subscription card, navigate to **GitLab Credits** settings.  \n3. Enable the monthly on-demand credits cap and enter your desired limit.\n\n**Flat per-user cap**\n\nThe flat per-user cap can be set through the GitLab GraphQL API by namespace owners (GitLab.com) or instance administrators (Self-Managed). Check the [GitLab Credits documentation](https://docs.gitlab.com/subscriptions/gitlab_credits/) for the latest on available configuration surfaces.\n\n**Custom per-user overrides**\n\nFor differentiated limits, namespace owners (GitLab.com) and instance administrators (Self-Managed) can set individual caps programmatically. This is useful for automation and infrastructure-as-code workflows.\n\n**Monitor usage and cap status**\n\n* **Customers Portal:** View detailed usage and cap status.  \n* **GitLab.com:** Group owners can view blocked users under **Settings > GitLab Credits**.  \n* **Self-Managed:** Instance administrators can view cap status and blocked users under **Admin > GitLab Credits**.\n\n## GitLab Duo Agent Platform is ready to scale\n\nUsage controls are available now in GitLab 18.11. If you've been waiting for the right guardrails before expanding GitLab Duo Agent Platform across your organization, this is your moment. Set your caps, roll out Duo Agent Platform to more teams, and start shipping faster!\n\n> [Learn more about GitLab Credits and usage controls](https://docs.gitlab.com/subscriptions/gitlab_credits/).",[10,746,764],"news",{"featured":33,"template":14,"slug":766},"gitlab-18-11-budget-guardrails-for-gitlab-credits",{"promotions":768},[769,783,794,806],{"id":770,"categories":771,"header":773,"text":774,"button":775,"image":780},"ai-modernization",[772],"ai-ml","Is AI achieving its promise at scale?","Quiz will take 5 minutes or less",{"text":776,"config":777},"Get your AI maturity score",{"href":778,"dataGaName":779,"dataGaLocation":245},"/assessments/ai-modernization-assessment/","modernization assessment",{"config":781},{"src":782},"https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1772138786/qix0m7kwnd8x2fh1zq49.png",{"id":784,"categories":785,"header":786,"text":774,"button":787,"image":791},"devops-modernization",[10,570],"Are you just managing tools or shipping innovation?",{"text":788,"config":789},"Get your DevOps maturity score",{"href":790,"dataGaName":779,"dataGaLocation":245},"/assessments/devops-modernization-assessment/",{"config":792},{"src":793},"https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1772138785/eg818fmakweyuznttgid.png",{"id":795,"categories":796,"header":798,"text":774,"button":799,"image":803},"security-modernization",[797],"security","Are you trading speed for security?",{"text":800,"config":801},"Get your security maturity score",{"href":802,"dataGaName":779,"dataGaLocation":245},"/assessments/security-modernization-assessment/",{"config":804},{"src":805},"https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1772138786/p4pbqd9nnjejg5ds6mdk.png",{"id":807,"paths":808,"header":811,"text":812,"button":813,"image":818},"github-azure-migration",[809,810],"migration-from-azure-devops-to-gitlab","integrating-azure-devops-scm-and-gitlab","Is your team ready for GitHub's Azure move?","GitHub is already rebuilding around Azure. Find out what it means for you.",{"text":814,"config":815},"See how GitLab compares to GitHub",{"href":816,"dataGaName":817,"dataGaLocation":245},"/compare/gitlab-vs-github/github-azure-migration/","github azure migration",{"config":819},{"src":793},{"header":821,"blurb":822,"button":823,"secondaryButton":828},"Start building faster today","See what your team can do with the intelligent orchestration platform for DevSecOps.\n",{"text":824,"config":825},"Get your free trial",{"href":826,"dataGaName":53,"dataGaLocation":827},"https://gitlab.com/-/trial_registrations/new?glm_content=default-saas-trial&glm_source=about.gitlab.com/","feature",{"text":507,"config":829},{"href":57,"dataGaName":58,"dataGaLocation":827},1777302584609]