ACT Chief Police Officer Neil Gaughan also revealed police costs for managing "annoying" anti-vaccine and sovereign citizen protests has blown out to almost $2.5 million, as protesters converge on Canberra ahead of delivery of the federal budget on Tuesday.

"I think Canberra is mature enough to know that the worst thing they can do is agitate this group," he said.

"I ask Canberrans to, as they have been basically since December, shy away from them, give them a bit of a distance, let them rant and rave and do what they're doing. And then hopefully by Tuesday night they'll have left.

"These people are annoying, I think we all agree with that, and people are getting frustrated. It's a fine line between frustration and annoyance and actual criminality.

"If people do see this group behaving illegally, can they please call us on 131 444 and not tag our Facebook page."

Police are closely monitoring several individuals involved in the protests to ensure the group remains peaceful and doesn't escalate to violence.

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"I think we're over the stage where criminality leads to a caution or anything else that these people have been here for number of months than other rules. Any criminality and my officers will arrest," Deputy Commissioner Gaughan said.

"There are a couple of people we are keeping a very, very close eye on. But at this stage, things are peaceful and I'm very confident they will remain that way.

"One of the other challenges we have with this particular protest group is extremely unorganised. There's really no structure, there's no leadership, so it's difficult for us to negotiate with anyone."

On Friday morning, Deputy Commissioner Gaughan told ABC Radio Canberra the bill for managing the protesters had "grown quite substantially" and had now cost the AFP $2.475 million.

The group first arrived in the capital in late December as part of Convoy to Canberra protests inspired by similar action overseas. The movement is incredibly broad and includes anti-vaxxers, sovereign citizens, Indigenous rights activists and evangelical Christians.

Previously, The Canberra Times reported that 22,000 additional policing hours - a significant proportion of it paid overtime - had been racked up to manage the protests. Officers had flown in from as far away as Perth, Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney to bolster ACT Policing forces, some with less than a days notice.

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