In this article, optimal design under the restriction of pre-determined budget of experiment is developed for the Pareto distribution when the life test is progressively group censored. We use the maximum-likelihood method to obtain the point estimator of the Pareto parameter. We propose two approaches to decide the number of test units, the number of inspections, and the length of inspection interval under limited budget such that the asymptotic variance of estimator of Pareto parameter is minimum. A numerical example is given to illustrate the proposed method. Some sensitivity analysis is also studied. © 2013 Copyright Taylor and Francis Group, LLC.