Message Limits

Understanding Messages, Tokens, and Plans

On September 1, 2025, we updated how usage is calculated to align with industry standards and ensure our service remains sustainable.

Instead of one prompt equaling one message, usage is now based on the total amount of data processed, measured in tokens.

Part 1: What a "Message" Means

What is a "Message" from Your Plan?

Think of your plan's daily limit not as a number of individual prompts, but as a measure of processing power. Under this new system:

  • One "message" from your daily allocation is a block of 16,000 tokens.

  • What's a token? A token is a small piece of text, roughly equivalent to 4 characters or ¾ of a word. A 16,000-token block is approximately 12,000 words.

How Your Usage is Calculated

Usage is based on the total context of an interaction. This context includes:

  1. Your new prompt.

  2. All previous messages in that specific chat (both yours and the AI's).

  3. The full text of any documents you have uploaded in that chat.

  4. The new response generated by the AI.

The Minimum Usage Rule: 1 Interaction = At Least 1 Message

This is a critical point: Every interaction you have with a Pro or Ultimate model, no matter how small, will consume a minimum of one message from your daily allocation.

  • If your total interaction size (context + response) is less than 16,000 tokens, it will consume 1 message.

  • If your total interaction size is more than 16,000 tokens, it will consume more messages (e.g., an interaction of 25,000 tokens would consume 2 messages).

Key Takeaway: Each prompt you send uses at least one message. Long conversations and large files can cause a single prompt to use multiple messages.


Part 2: How Your Daily Message Allocation is Used

Your daily limits for Pro and Ultimate models now refer to these new 16k-token messages. Below is a breakdown of how many messages you get per day depending on your plan.

Plan
Pro Model Messages
Ultimate Model Messages

Premium

30 messages/day

N/A

Professional

100 messages/day

5 messages/day

Ultimate

100 messages/day

50 messages/day

Example in Practice:

Let's say you have the Professional Plan (100 Pro messages/day).

  • Scenario 1: A Short Chat You start a new chat and ask a Pro model, "What's the capital of France?" The total context is very small (maybe 100 tokens). While this is far less than the 16,000-token block, due to the minimum usage rule, this interaction will consume exactly 1 message from your 100-message daily allocation.

  • Scenario 2: A Long Chat with a File You've been discussing a project for 20 exchanges and have uploaded a 10-page report (approx. 20,000 tokens). The conversation history itself is another 5,000 tokens. When you ask your next question, the AI must process at least 25,000 tokens.

    • Calculation: 25,000 tokens / 16,000 tokens per message = 1.56.

    • This single prompt would be rounded up and consume 2 messages from your 100-message daily allocation.


Part 3: Strategies for Effective Message Usage

By adopting a few simple habits, you can prevent your interactions from costing more than the one-message minimum.

  • Start New Chats Frequently: This is the most effective strategy. When you switch topics, start a new chat. This resets the conversation history, ensuring your interaction size stays small and only consumes the minimum of one message.

  • Break Up Large Documents: Instead of uploading a 100-page document, copy and paste only the specific chapter or section you need. This prevents the document's text from bloating the context and pushing your usage over the 16,000-token threshold for a single message.

  • Be Mindful of Conversation Length: If a chat has a long history, it's more likely that your next prompt will cost more than one message. Consider starting a new chat to keep usage predictable.

Coming Soon: To help you manage this, Writingmate will soon add notifications for long conversations and warnings for large file uploads.


Part 4: Solutions for Unlimited Usage

Bring Your Own Key (BYOK)

For power users who want to bypass WritingMate's message limits entirely, the BYOK option offers complete flexibility. This feature is available to subscribers on any paid plan (Premium, Professional, or Ultimate).

  • How it works:

    1. Obtain an API key from OpenRouter.

    2. Navigate to the Settings section within your Writingmate account.

    3. Enter your OpenRouter API key.

  • The Result: Once your key is active, all your interactions will be processed through your OpenRouter account. You will be billed directly by OpenRouter based on your usage, and your WritingMate daily message allocation will not be touched.

Enterprise Plan for Companies

For larger teams, Writingmate offers a customizable and affordable Enterprise Plan that

  • includes access to all top AI models (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Llama).

  • up to 50% cheaper than ChatGPT Team plan.

Contact us for a custom quote: [email protected]

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