BYOK vs Cloud — which to pick

Structura supports two ways of paying for the AI that generates your posts: BYOK (you bring your own provider keys) and Cloud (we handle the provider on your behalf). This page explains the difference and helps you pick.

Short answer

If you already have an OpenAI / Gemini / Anthropic account and don’t mind managing a key, BYOK is almost always cheaper.
If you don’t want to think about AI providers at all, Cloud is the one-bill option — you pay a monthly fee per site and we handle the generation.

Concretely:

Free → BYOK only.
BYOK → BYOK only — that’s the whole point of the tier.
Cloud → Structura runs the AI for you. There’s nothing to connect. You choose 30 or 100 posts per site per month when you subscribe.

What BYOK is

BYOK — Bring Your Own Key — means you sign up with an AI provider directly, paste their API key into Structura → Settings → AI Engine, and the provider bills you for every generation. Structura only charges you the plan fee.

You get:

Direct control over which model is used.
Direct visibility into spend on the provider’s dashboard.
The provider’s cheapest rate (no markup).
Whatever free credits the provider gives new accounts.

You handle:

Creating the provider account.
Adding a payment method to the provider.
Watching your usage (provider dashboard, not Structura).
Re-upping or rotating keys if one gets invalidated.

See AI settings for which providers are supported and how to enter a key.

For writing posts we recommend Anthropic, with OpenAI as the next choice. Gemini isn’t recommended for writing: in our tests, its posts contained more invented details. See Connect your AI provider.

What Cloud is

Cloud generation — available on the Cloud plan — means Structura provisions the AI capacity for you. No provider account, no API key, no per-generation charges on your credit card from an AI provider. You pay the Cloud plan’s fee and that’s it.

You get:

One bill, from Structura, predictable each month.
AI that Structura chooses and keeps testing. Every Cloud option uses the same AI to write your posts. We test it on real sites and change it when something better is available, so you don’t have to follow AI releases yourself.
No AI provider accounts to manage.

Constraints:

Each site has a monthly allowance of posts: 30 or 100, depending on the option you chose. The next section explains how posts are counted.
You don’t choose or see the AI provider or model. Your posts are always written by Structura’s AI, and your own API key isn’t used on these plans. If you want to pick the provider and model yourself, BYOK is the plan for that.

How the posts allowance works

Per site, per calendar month. The allowance resets on the first day of each month (UTC). All of a site’s campaigns share it.
A post includes everything behind it: its research, the writing and its images.
A post counts when it’s delivered to you, meaning it appears in your posts list as a draft, held for review, or published. Posts Structura prepares in advance don’t count until they’re delivered. A delivered post still counts if you later trash or reject it.
Regenerating a whole post counts as a new post.
Images have their own allowance: 90 per site per month (Cloud, 30 posts) or 150 (Cloud, 100 posts).
There’s no token limit. You don’t need to track AI usage.

When a site has used its posts for the month, its scheduled posts are skipped until the next month starts, and you see a Quota notice (see Notices). Nothing is lost: posts that were prepared in advance wait for the next month. If a site regularly needs more than 30 posts a month, see Choosing your volume.

Choosing your volume

When you subscribe to Cloud, you pick the Posts per site per month: 30 or 100. Your choice applies to every site on the subscription. Everything else is the same on both options: the AI that writes your posts, channels, team seats, unlimited campaigns and Google Search Console. Only the monthly allowances and the price differ.

	Cloud, 30 posts	Cloud, 100 posts
Posts per site per month	30	100
Images per site per month	90	150
AI videos per site per month (Video: Shorts & TikTok)	10	40

30 posts is about one post a day per site, and it’s the recommended starting point. To change the posts per site on an existing Cloud subscription, contact support from the customer portal or the support page .

Pricing, concretely

BYOK:

Structura plan: flat monthly/annual fee (per site).
AI costs: whatever the provider charges, billed directly to you. For a site publishing ~10 posts / month with a reasonable provider, this is typically a few dollars per month — often less than Cloud. As a rough guide, a post on the recommended Standard models costs about $0.20 to $0.30 on your key, and about $0.40 to $0.70 on the Top models.

Cloud:

A monthly fee per site, set by the option you choose: $49 (Cloud, 30 posts) or $149 (Cloud, 100 posts), or $39 and $119 per month billed yearly. The per-site rate drops from your fifth site. See the pricing page for current numbers and the volume brackets.
No separate AI provider bill.

The crossover point depends on volume and model choice. Most single-site, moderate-cadence users are cheaper on BYOK. High-volume sites or users who want zero provider management favor Cloud.

How to switch

Switch BYOK → Cloud

Upgrade to Cloud and choose the posts per site per month (see Upgrading, downgrading, cancelling).
That’s it. From the next post on, Structura’s AI writes your posts. There’s no provider to select.
Your BYOK key stays stored (safe, encrypted) unless you clear it. Cloud doesn’t use it.

Switch Cloud → BYOK

Sign up with an AI provider directly (OpenAI, Gemini, Anthropic). Add a payment method on the provider side.
Generate an API key in the provider’s dashboard.
Change your plan to BYOK (see Upgrading, downgrading, cancelling). A downgrade takes effect at the end of your billing period; until then, Structura’s AI keeps writing your posts.
Once your plan is BYOK, connect your key on Structura → Settings → AI Engine (see Connect your AI provider).

Data & privacy

Both modes send the same information to an AI provider to generate each post: the campaign’s strategy, the current topic, and any persona guidance. Neither mode sends your WordPress admin credentials or other site secrets.

In Cloud mode, Structura is the intermediary — the provider sees requests from our infrastructure, not from your site. In BYOK, requests go directly from our cloud to the provider using your key.

When to stay on BYOK vs move to Cloud

Stay on BYOK if:

You publish modestly and your provider bill is low.
You want to choose the AI provider and model yourself.
You already have AI provider credits to burn.

Move to Cloud if:

You don’t want to manage another SaaS account.
You want predictable monthly cost.
You’d rather leave the choice of AI to us.
You want a short video made from each published post.

Last updated October 12, 2026