SheetMagic Now Works Right After Install, No API Key Needed

SheetMagic now works the moment you install it: click Activate once and =AITEXT() runs on your own data, with 20,000 free AI tokens and no API key. You find out whether AI in your sheet is worth paying for in about a minute, before you hand over a card.

We changed what happens between installing SheetMagic and running your first formula. It used to take an API key or a dashboard account. For someone who just wanted to summarize a column of notes, that meant signing up with an AI provider, adding a payment card, creating a key and pasting it in, all before seeing a single result. Now it takes one click.

What changed

Install SheetMagic from the Google Workspace Marketplace, open Extensions > SheetMagic > Activate, and click Activate. Google shows one permission screen: SheetMagic needs it to write AI results back into your sheet. Approve it, and =AITEXT() and every other formula work immediately.

That's the whole setup. No developer console, no environment variable, no copying a key from a provider's dashboard.

What you get

Activating starts your free trial: 20,000 AI tokens and 100 scraping credits, one time, no expiry. If you already had a free SheetMagic account, you were topped up to 20,000 tokens automatically. You do not need to do anything to get the increase.

When your free trial runs out, the cell tells you directly: "Your free trial is used up. Upgrade at sheetmagic.ai/pricing to keep going." The sidebar shows a running trial meter, something like "16K of 20K free tokens left," with an Upgrade button that opens your billing page.

What can you do with the free trial?

The point of the trial is to answer "is this worth it for my work?" with your own rows, not a demo. A few ways to spend it well:

• Run your real chore on a handful of rows. Put the summary, tagging or rewrite you do by hand into one =AITEXT() formula and check the output on 5 to 10 rows. If a row takes you 2 minutes by hand, you can see right away what 500 rows would save (1,000 minutes, nearly 17 hours).
• Tune the prompt before you scale it. Fix the wording while the rows are few, so you are not paying later to redo a whole column with a weak prompt.
• Try a scraper on a short list. The 100 scraping credits are enough to see what a scrape returns for your own inputs before you rely on it.
• Pick a plan from evidence. Once you know what a row costs and what it saves, you can choose a plan sized to your volume instead of guessing high and paying for room you never use.

How it's billed

Activating does not spend any tokens by itself. The 20,000 tokens come from the same subscription_tiers free allowance every free account has always had, just raised from the old amount. Every AI formula (AITEXT, AILIST, AIIMAGE, and the rest) draws from that pool the same way it always has. Scraping credits are unchanged at 100.

Who gets it

This applies to free accounts. If you are on a paid plan, a lifetime deal, or a seat under someone else's license, nothing changes for you: your allowance, billing, and sign-in stay exactly as they were.

Limits

• If you pick a different Google account in the sign-in popup than the one you use in the spreadsheet, you will see a message asking you to choose the matching account and click Activate again.
• One free trial per Google account. Activating a second time on an account that already used its trial does not grant a second one.
• If the request to start your trial fails, the screen asks you to check your connection and click Activate again. It never fails silently.
• The 20,000 tokens are one time. Once they are spent, formulas stop returning results until you upgrade.

See the full history of what shipped this year on the changelog.