AltText.ai is the most installed AI alt text plugin on wordpress.org (20,000+ active installs) and it is a good product. It is also a subscription: every image costs a credit, and credits are the product. Alt Text BYOK takes the opposite approach: you bring the AI key, you pay your provider directly, and the plugin itself is free or a one-time purchase.
| AltText.ai | Alt Text BYOK | |
|---|---|---|
| Free | 25-credit trial | Unlimited images (free wordpress.org build, your key) |
| Paid | Bronze $5/month or $49/year for 100 images/month; Silver $19/month for 500; Gold $59/month for 2,000; up to Platinum $229/month for 10,000 | $24.99 once for the full version (ALT on upload, WP-CLI, WooCommerce context) |
| Cost of 1,000 images | $59 on Gold if you need them in one month (Gold covers 2,000), $50 spread over ten months on Bronze; about $23 per 1,000 at Platinum volume (calculator) | Your provider bills you directly. With OpenAI list prices (September 2026) that is roughly $0.30–$4 per 1,000 images depending on the model and image size, and $0 on a provider's free tier (the plugin waits and retries on free-tier rate limits). |
| Where your images go | To the AltText.ai API (their plugin page says image and site URL are sent) | Straight to the provider you configured; no server of ours in between |
| Model choice | Theirs | Any vision model on an OpenAI-compatible endpoint |
| Stops working if you stop paying | Yes, credits run out | No |
If you don't want to create an API key anywhere, or you want their extras (keyword-aware SEO alt text, integrations beyond WordPress), a credit plan is simpler. For a few dozen images a month the Bronze plan is cheap.
Large libraries, WooCommerce catalogs, agencies with many sites, or anyone who already has an OpenAI, OpenRouter or other key: after the one-time price, 10,000 images cost what your provider charges for them, not $229 a month.
A WordPress plugin that finds every Media Library image without ALT text and writes it with a
vision model you choose: OpenAI or any OpenAI-compatible endpoint, with your own API key. Images go
from your site straight to your provider; nothing passes through a server of ours. The free build on
wordpress.org has no image limit (one image at a time or bulk). The full version, a one-time
$24.99, adds ALT text written automatically on upload, a wp alt-text generate WP-CLI
command, base64 sending for local or password-protected sites, and WooCommerce product context.
Competitor details were checked on their public pricing and wordpress.org pages on 29 September 2026 (alttext.ai/pricing, wordpress.org/plugins/alttext-ai). Prices change: check their page before deciding. Spotted something out of date? deus@lumnika.com.
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