I hit my free limit: what changes after 30 articles
The free plan is bring-your-own-key (BYOK): you generate on your own AI provider key, and your first 30 articles per site are Cloud-assisted. That 30 is a lifetime allowance per site, not a monthly one. Nothing stops when it is used up. Here is exactly what changes.
What you will see
Once the allowance is used, the Generate page shows a blue notice:
This site has used its 30 SEOBetter Cloud-assisted articles. New articles are written by the built-in engine. SEOBetter Pro includes Cloud generation with no article allowance to manage.
Generation keeps working. The notice is informational and stays on the Generate page so you always know which engine is writing.
What actually changes
- Before 30: SEOBetter's hosted service supplied the tuned writing prompt for each section and your key wrote the article.
- After 30: the plugin's built-in engine builds the prompts on your own server and your key still writes the article. Structure, citations, schema, scoring, and images all stay the same; the prose quality is a step below the Cloud-assisted output.
- Everything else that is free stays free: scoring, Re-analyze, schema generation, meta sync, Search Console data, and llms.txt keep working on unlimited posts.
Does the allowance reset?
No. It is counted per registered domain, so subdomains of one site share it, and it does not refill next month. A failed job that you retry does not use an extra slot; a regeneration of the same keyword does.
Older plugin versions (before 1.0.115) made this switch silently. If you updated recently and the notice appeared at once, the allowance was already used; the plugin is simply telling you now.
Local and private sites
On localhost, .local, .test, or a private IP address, articles are written by the built-in engine from the first one, and the notice reads "available on public sites only". Move to a public domain to use the Cloud-assisted allowance.
What to do next
- Keep going on the built-in engine. It is free for as long as you like on your own key.
- Pro ($39/mo): Cloud generation included with no keys to manage (50 Cloud articles a month), plus 300 articles a month on your own key with no allowance to watch, all 21 content types, 29 languages, 78 countries. See plans.
If you bought a lifetime deal on AppSumo instead, your plan has its own monthly Cloud and BYOK caps (set by how many codes you stacked). See what your AppSumo lifetime deal includes and free plan limits for the full breakdown.