Buyer Caps

What a Cap Is

Cap on a buyer allows you to prevent calls from considering the respective buyer if their total revenue, connection, conversion matches with the cap limit set on the buyer, Caps are the primary mechanism by which a call network prevents overspending and matches call volume to buyer's demand.

Cap Types

The cap type controls which counter is compared against the threshold. The set of enabled types is configured per-company in account settings:

• Buyer Conversion - counts successful buyer conversions. The most common cap type in paid call networks.
• Revenue - sums the payout dollars generated by the buyer.
• Attempt - counts every dial attempt, regardless of outcome.
• Connection - counts calls that reached the established status, regardless of whether they converts or not.

Cap Intervals

The interval controls when the counter resets. The buyer cap form exposes Total, Monthly, and Daily limits.
cap type:

• Daily - resets at midnight in the buyer's configured time zone.
• Monthly - resets on the first day of the month in the buyer's time zone.
• Total - never resets. Counts from the beginning of the buyer's history.

Hourly caps and concurrency caps exist but are configured separately via per-business-range rows (see the "How to Set Buyer Caps" article). There is no weekly cap.

How Caps Are Enforced

Caps are evaluated when the system checks buyer availability. When a cap's counter reaches its threshold, the buyer is not considered for all incoming calls until the counter resets. The buyer is not paused; it is simply marked as maxed out. This distinction matters because the cap releases automatically at the interval boundary without any manual action.

Several caps of different types and intervals can coexist on a single buyer. The buyer is maxed out as soon as any one of them hits.

Spacing Caps

A spacing cap is a specialized cap that enforces minimum seconds between calls. It is tracked separately from standard caps and does not have an interval; it resets continuously based on the timestamp of the most recent call.