The budget says how much room you have. Burn rate says how quickly that room is disappearing.
1x
The service is consuming budget at the expected long-window rate.
3x
Budget is burning faster than planned and may need intervention.
10x+
The service is in fast-burn territory and release posture should change immediately.
Why operators care
Burn-rate alerting lets teams react to dangerous short-window degradation before the long-window SLO report simply says "you missed the target."