Certain aspects of the present disclosure provide techniques for allocating a number of physical downlink control channel (PDCCH) blind decoding candidates to a user equipment (UE) in dual connectivity mode. An example method generally includes allocating a resource budget among a first cell group and a second cell group, wherein the resource budget includes a number of physical downlink control channel (PDCCH) blind decoding candidates and a number of control channel elements (CCEs) supported by the UE, and monitoring for PDCCH candidates in the first cell group and second cell group in accordance with the allocated resource budget.