# Agent Limits, Costs and Stop Conditions — LangGraph Agents & Multi-Agent Systems

Source: https://www.geekswithgeeks.com/en/langgraph-agents/a-limits

> Bound steps, tokens, time and money.

## Every loop needs a budget

An agent makes many model calls, each re-reading a growing message history, so cost and latency grow faster than linearly with the number of steps. Set several limits: the **recursion limit**, a **maximum number of tool calls** in state, a **token budget** (stop or summarise when history gets long), a **wall-clock timeout**, and a **cost cap** per run. Decide the stop behaviour in advance: return the best partial answer, ask the user, or escalate. Track tokens and cost per run in your traces, and review the longest runs regularly: they reveal prompt problems and missing tools.

**Quiz:** Why does agent cost grow faster than the number of steps?

- [ ] Tokens get cheaper with time
- [x] Each step re-reads a longer message history
- [ ] Tools are free
- [ ] Graphs forbid caching

*Answer:* Each step re-reads a longer message history. Growing context makes later calls more expensive than earlier ones.