How much does a WordPress auto blog cost? With a plugin, the cash cost usually runs from a few dollars to a little over a hundred dollars a month. That covers hosting, a domain, AI text and images. It does not include the plugin licence or your review time, and review time is often the biggest cost. A done-for-you service replaces all of those lines with one fixed fee. AI SEO Crew, for example, is $49 a month for 50 researched posts published to WordPress, which works out to $0.98 per post.
So the useful answer to how much a WordPress auto blog costs is the cost of each post that ends up published, accurate and indexed. The cost of each post generated tells you very little.
Below you will find every cost line with its source, four scenarios from 10 to 100 posts a month, a side-by-side of plugin and done-for-you setups, and a worksheet you can fill in with your own numbers.
What counts as a WordPress auto blog
"Auto blog" covers three different setups, and each one is priced differently:
- RSS import plugins. They pull posts from other sites' feeds into yours. The software is cheap, but copied content causes duplicate content problems. Our guide to WordPress auto blogging explains why this is the riskiest option.
- AI generation plugins. The plugin sends prompts to an AI model (OpenAI, Gemini and others) with your own API key, then publishes the result on a schedule. You pay for the plugin, the API, the images and the time spent checking the output.
- Done-for-you services. An outside service researches, writes, checks and publishes posts to your WordPress site. You pay one monthly fee.
In all three setups, the software price is the number you see first. It is rarely the biggest one.
What a WordPress auto blog costs, line by line
These are the costs you will run into with a self-hosted WordPress site. Each price is a public figure from the source linked next to it, checked on 30 October 2026.
| Cost line | Typical public price | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Shared hosting | $3 to $11 a month (introductory rate) | Superblog |
| Managed WordPress hosting | Kinsta from $35 a month | Superblog |
| Domain name | $10 to $20 a year | Superblog |
| SEO plugin (optional) | Yoast SEO Premium $118.80 a year | Superblog |
| Caching plugin (optional) | WP Rocket about $50 to $60 a year | Superblog |
| Security plugin (optional) | Wordfence Premium $149 a year | Superblog |
| AI images | $0.10 to $0.50 per image | Toptut |
| AI text | About $4 (Gemini Flash) to about $145 (GPT-4o) for 300 posts a month, author's estimate | Toptut |
| Auto blog plugin licence | Varies by vendor and plan | Check the vendor's own pricing page |
| Human review | Your time, or an editor's | Your own rate |
Two things stand out.
The AI text is cheap. Even at the top of that estimate, it costs less than 50 cents a post, so the model is not where your money goes.
Plugin licence prices change often. Directory sites list conflicting plans for the same tool. Read the plan on the vendor's own site and check how many posts and how many sites it covers.
For the whole site, Superblog estimates a business blog on WordPress at roughly $75 to $200 a year at the bare minimum and $1,700 to $4,100 a year for a typical business blog. Those figures do not include content.
How much WordPress auto blogs cost at 10, 30, 50 and 100 posts a month
This table adds up the cash costs of an AI plugin setup on shared hosting. We took Toptut's 300-post estimate and scaled it to each post count to get the AI text rows, so treat them as rough figures. Each post gets one image. The 50-post column lines up with the $49 plan, so you can compare the two directly.
| Monthly cash cost | 10 posts | 30 posts | 50 posts | 100 posts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Shared hosting | $3 to $11 | $3 to $11 | $3 to $11 | $3 to $11 |
| Domain (yearly price spread over 12 months) | about $1 to $2 | about $1 to $2 | about $1 to $2 | about $1 to $2 |
| AI text (scaled from the Toptut estimate) | about $0.13 to $5 | about $0.40 to $15 | about $0.67 to $24 | about $1.30 to $48 |
| One AI image per post | $1 to $5 | $3 to $15 | $5 to $25 | $10 to $50 |
| Subtotal before plugin licence and review | about $5 to $23 | about $7 to $43 | about $10 to $62 | about $15 to $111 |
| Plugin licence | add your plan | add your plan | add your plan | add your plan |
| Review time | posts × minutes per post | posts × minutes per post | posts × minutes per post | posts × minutes per post |
On paper, the cash cost looks tiny. The last row is the one that sets your real total. At 15 minutes of checking per post, that comes to 2.5 hours a month at 10 posts, 7.5 hours at 30, 12.5 hours at 50 and 25 hours at 100. Multiply those hours by what an hour of your time is worth.
Example at 50 posts: the plugin route costs about $10 to $62 in cash, plus the licence, plus around 12.5 hours of review. The done-for-you route at $49 includes the research, writing, checks and publishing. Your hosting and domain still sit on top, the same as with the plugin.
The gap between token cost and real cost grows fast with volume. For 300 posts a month, Toptut's author puts the AI text alone at $4 to $145, but the real running cost at $750 to $1,200 a month once infrastructure and review are counted.
The hidden cost: posts that never get indexed
A post that Google does not index brings no traffic. It still cost you as much as a post that does.
Google judges the purpose and quality of content, not the tool that produced it. Its guidance on AI-generated content says it rewards helpful content however it is made. Its spam policy on scaled content abuse targets large numbers of pages made mainly to manipulate rankings rather than help people, whether a person or automation made them. An auto blog that publishes thin, unchecked posts at volume runs straight into that policy. Then you lose more than one wasted post, because the whole site can lose visibility.
You can check this on your own site. Open the Page indexing report in Google Search Console and compare the number of indexed blog URLs with the number of posts you published. If many posts sit under "Crawled, currently not indexed", your real cost per post is much higher than the table above shows. To check a single post for noindex tags, canonical errors or blocked crawlers, run it through the free SEO checker.
Worksheet: your real cost per useful post
Fill this in once a month. With Search Console open, it takes about ten minutes.
- Add up your cash costs. Hosting, domain, plugin licence, AI API bill, images and any paid plugins, all for one month.
- Add up your time. Count the hours spent prompting, fixing facts, adding links, formatting and publishing, then multiply by your hourly value. If an editor does the work, use their invoice.
- Count the posts that went live this month.
- Count the posts that are indexed after 4 to 6 weeks. Use the Page indexing report or the URL Inspection tool.
- Divide. (Cash costs + time costs) ÷ indexed posts = your cost per useful post.
- Compare that number with a fixed-fee option, using the same formula.
Most people stop after step 1. Steps 2 and 4 are where cheap setups turn expensive.
Plugin or done-for-you: which one costs less?
| AI auto blog plugin | Done-for-you (AI SEO Crew) | |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly price | Plugin licence + API + images, rising with volume (about $10 to $62 in cash at 50 posts, before licence) | $49 per site for 50 articles, hosting and domain extra |
| Keyword research | You do it, or buy a tool | Included |
| Fact checking and sources | You do it | Included: web research with sources, every fact and link checked |
| Internal links | You add them | Included |
| Publishing to WordPress | The plugin schedules it | The crew publishes it |
| Indexing | You resubmit the sitemap yourself | Sitemap resubmitted in Search Console, IndexNow pinged |
| Your time each month | High, and it grows with each post | Low after setup |
| Cost predictability | API and image bills grow with volume | Fixed |
A plugin costs less when you publish only a handful of posts a month, you enjoy editing, and you have time to check every claim yourself. Your cash cost stays small and your time is the main cost.
A done-for-you service costs less when your time is worth more than the review hours, or when you publish 20 or more posts a month. At 50 posts, the plugin's cash cost alone can come close to $49 before you count a single hour of review.
If you run WordPress, our page for WordPress sites shows how the crew publishes to your WordPress site.
Verdict by profile
- Small business owner (clinic, firm, trade, consultant). Your time is the most expensive line. A plugin looks cheap but ends up costing you evenings of editing. Once you go past a few posts a month, a fixed fee usually wins.
- Freelancer running your own site. If writing and editing are your skills, a plugin with careful review can be the cheapest path. Track your hours honestly for one month before you decide.
- Agency managing client sites. Licences are often priced per site or by post count, and review time grows with every client. Run the worksheet for each site. A fixed fee per site makes it easier to set a margin on each client.
- SaaS or startup. Your posts need to be accurate about the product. Pick the setup that lets you check facts against your own docs without slowing the team down.
How AI SEO Crew handles this
AI SEO Crew costs $49 per site per month for 50 researched articles, or $0.98 per article. That price covers keyword research, web research with cited sources, fact and link checks, internal links, publishing to WordPress, and sitemap resubmission in Search Console with IndexNow pings. Your hosting and domain remain your own costs. You can cancel anytime, and every published article stays on your site.
Start free and see your SEO plan in a few minutes, no card needed.
Frequently asked questions
How much does a WordPress auto blog cost per month?
With an AI plugin on shared hosting, the cash cost is roughly $5 to $111 a month for 10 to 100 posts, before the plugin licence and your review time. These figures come from public hosting, domain, AI text and image prices. Add your licence and your hours to get the real total.
Is a plugin cheaper if I already have WordPress hosting?
Your extra costs drop to the plugin licence, the AI API bill, images and review time. The AI text is usually the smallest of these and review time is usually the largest. So a plugin is cheaper only if those review hours cost you little.
Is a done-for-you service cheaper than running my own AI setup?
That depends on your volume and your time. Compare the service's price per post with your own cost per indexed post from the worksheet above, not with the token cost alone. At $49 for 50 articles, the price per post is $0.98.
Can an auto blog get penalized by Google?
Google does not penalize content just because AI wrote it. It acts against scaled content made mainly to manipulate rankings. Auto blogs that publish thin, unchecked posts at volume run that risk. Researched, reviewed posts that answer real searches do not.