Description
Old posts lose rankings. Unstale refreshes them with real AI, through the provider you already connected to WordPress:
- Real AI in the free plugin. Analysis, live web research, fact-checking of numbers and prices, rewrite, SEO metas, JSON-LD when no SEO plugin already emits it, key-takeaway callouts.
- No credits, no quota. Unstale sells you nothing per refresh. You pay your AI provider directly, at its own rates. Unlimited refreshes.
- Your content never touches our servers. Your WordPress talks to the AI provider you connected, directly. We never see your content or your credentials.
- Nothing to configure twice. Since WordPress 7.0, providers and credentials are managed by WordPress itself in Settings > Connectors. Unstale uses whatever you set up there, so no API key is ever stored by this plugin.
- Review queue with a side-by-side diff. Nothing is published without your approval (an optional full-auto mode exists). Native WordPress revisions give you one-click rollback when revisions are enabled on your site.
- Internal linking. Each refresh adds up to 10 relevant internal links with natural, varied anchors, one link per target page.
- SEO-safe republication. Optional publish-date bump with position control, randomized timing, allowed days and time windows. Stable dated permalinks via the %unstale_year%, %unstale_monthnum% and %unstale_day% permalink tags.
- Full journal. Every step, token count and cost is logged per article.
- Automation-ready. REST API (unstale/v1) and WP-CLI (wp unstale refresh) included.
Two refresh levels are free: Minimal (typo fixes, fact-check, internal links, date bump) and Balanced (everything in Minimal plus SEO essentials: optimized metas, JSON-LD, callouts, readability). The Strong and Maximal levels, scheduled automation and bulk rules are part of Unstale Pro.
Unstale is developed by Web & SEO Ltd, the company that owns and operates unstale.ai.
External services
This plugin relies on one external service.
The Unstale model catalog (unstale.ai)
What it is: a public, static JSON file at https://unstale.ai/api/v1/models.json listing the supported model ids, their prices per million tokens and their notes. It exists so that a new provider model becomes available in your settings without waiting for a plugin update, and so the plugin can show you a cost estimate before each refresh.
What is sent, and when: nothing but the HTTP request itself. It is an unauthenticated GET, fired by a single scheduled task once every 24 hours. No content, no credentials, no personal data, no site identifier is transmitted, and there is no manual refresh button that could trigger it more often. If the request fails the plugin keeps using the catalog bundled in the plugin files.
This service is provided by Unstale: Terms, Privacy
A note on AI providers
Unstale does not contact Anthropic, OpenAI or Google itself and declares none of them as its own external service. Prompts are handed to the WordPress AI Client, which routes them to the provider you connected in Settings > Connectors. That provider, its terms and its billing are the relationship between you and them, set up in WordPress and not in this plugin.
Screenshots
Installation
- Install and activate the plugin. WordPress 7.0 or newer is required.
- Go to Settings > Connectors and connect an AI provider if you have not already. Unstale will tell you if none is connected.
- Go to Unstale > Settings, pick a default model and refresh level.
- In the Posts list, click “Refresh with Unstale” on any published post. Review the estimated cost, confirm, then approve the proposed rewrite in Unstale > Review queue.
FAQ
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How much does a refresh cost?
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You pay your AI provider directly, per token. Unstale shows an estimate BEFORE each launch and logs the real cost after. For a 1000-word article at the Balanced level the estimate runs from roughly $0.50 to $1.50 depending on the model you pick. That estimate bounds the worst case (it assumes every web search the level allows is spent), so the cost logged after the run is usually lower.
Web search fees are part of the estimate but only appear in the logged cost when your provider reports how many searches it ran. WordPress does not standardise that number, so the logged cost can understate searches on some providers.
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Does my content go through your servers?
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No. WordPress calls the provider you connected, directly. The only request to unstale.ai is the public model catalog (no content, no personal data).
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Which API key does it use?
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None of its own. Since WordPress 7.0, credentials live in Settings > Connectors and are managed by WordPress. Unstale never sees, stores or transmits them. If you used an older version of this plugin, the API keys it had stored are deleted automatically when you update.
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Can it publish without my approval?
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Not by default. Every refresh waits in the review queue with a side-by-side diff. You can enable full-auto publishing in the settings if you want it.
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My permalinks contain the post date. Will the date bump break my URLs?
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No: the bump is skipped automatically when your permalink structure uses the core date tags. To keep dated URLs AND bump dates, switch your structure to the %unstale_year%, %unstale_monthnum% and %unstale_day% tags: they freeze the original date in the URL forever. If you deactivate Unstale later, the plugin automatically restores the core date tags so your site keeps routing (posts whose date was bumped will then use the bumped date in their URL). Deleting the plugin files manually without deactivating skips that safety net: re-save your permalink structure in that case.
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Which models are supported?
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Whichever models the provider you connected exposes. Unstale ships model cards for Claude Sonnet 5 (default), GPT-5.6 Terra and Gemini 3.5 Flash, with pricing and ratings to help you choose. GPT-5.6 Terra is still in limited preview: if you pick it, Unstale runs GPT-5.5 instead and states the substitution on the model card and in the job log. The catalog is updated remotely: when a provider ships a new model, it appears in your settings without a plugin update.
Reviews
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Contributors & Developers
“Unstale – AI Content Refresh, Rewrite & Republish for SEO” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin.
Contributors
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Interested in development?
Browse the code, check out the SVN repository, or subscribe to the development log by RSS.
Changelog
1.0.0
- Initial release: pipeline on the WordPress AI Client (analyze, web research, fact-check, rewrite, enrich, internal links, cleanup, review, publish), review queue with diff, journal, SEO-safe republication, targeted cache purge, REST API and WP-CLI.