---
term: "Unbounded consumption"
category: "AI risks and safety"
url: https://agenticopenfinance.com/glossary/unbounded-consumption
source: AgenticOpenFinance glossary
---

# Unbounded consumption

> Excessive, uncontrolled use of an AI service that degrades it or runs up costs, including denial of wallet.

Unbounded consumption is the OWASP GenAI Security Project's name for applications that allow excessive and uncontrolled inference, which can degrade service, exhaust resources or impose large costs. One variant it names is denial of wallet, where an attacker exploits the cost-per-use model of cloud AI services. Agents are exposed because they loop through model and tool calls, so limits on turns, budgets, retries and request rates act as security controls as well as budgets.

Related terms: [Excessive agency](https://agenticopenfinance.com/glossary/excessive-agency.md), [Prompt injection](https://agenticopenfinance.com/glossary/prompt-injection.md), [Red-teaming](https://agenticopenfinance.com/glossary/red-teaming.md), [Spend limit](https://agenticopenfinance.com/glossary/spend-limit.md)