The short answer
If you paid and Whizi still refuses you, the status code behind the message decides the fix. HTTP 402 means the account you are signed into has no active subscription on it, so the payment is either on a different account or never completed. The two tier codes, tier_upgrade_required and powerhouse_required, arrive as HTTP 403 and mean a subscription is active and the request sits above that tier, which is a plan question rather than a billing failure. Other 403 codes exist that are neither billing nor tier, account_sharing_limit among them, so the code matters as much as the status.
| What you see | Code | What it means | Group |
|---|---|---|---|
Choose a subscription to use Whizi. | 402 subscription_required | The subscriber guard found no paid plan on this account | No subscription |
Your free messages are used up. Start a subscription to keep chatting. | 402 free_limit_reached | The free-tier lifetime message counter is already at its cap | No subscription |
Choose a subscription to generate images. | 402 subscription_required | A free account asked for image generation | No subscription |
Upgrade your subscription to talk with Whizi in voice mode. | 402 subscription_required | A free account started a voice session | No subscription |
Upgrade your plan to use this model. | 403 tier_upgrade_required | A paid account picked a text model its tier does not include | Wrong tier |
This model is only available on the Powerhouse plan. | 403 powerhouse_required | A creative model on the Powerhouse-only list was requested from a lower tier | Wrong tier |
Upgrade to Pro or Powerhouse to generate images. | 403 tier_upgrade_required | A paid account whose tier has no image allowance asked for an image | Wrong tier |
Account sharing limit reached. Please use your own Whizi account. | 403 account_sharing_limit | More than 3 distinct device or session keys were seen on this account in the last 24 hours | Neither |
Only the first group is a "I paid and nothing works" problem. The rest mean the subscription is doing its job and the request was above what it buys.
Why the upgrade popup is not evidence of anything
On the website, a send that comes back with any HTTP 402 opens the upgrade modal rather than a toast. The badge on that modal reads Monthly Limit Reached, so it says the same thing whether you actually exhausted a monthly allowance or the server simply found no subscription on the account. Do not read the badge as a diagnosis.
The line underneath is more useful, because it is chosen from the account state rather than from the error. A free account gets Choose a plan to unlock Whizi with higher limits and premium models. A paid account gets You have reached your monthly limit of {limit} credits on the {plan} plan. Upgrade now to continue using Whizi without interruption., or the shorter You've reached your monthly limit on the {plan} plan. Upgrade now to continue using Whizi without interruption., with your real plan name filled in.
A modal with no plan name in it means this browser is signed into an account with no subscription on it.
A subscription belongs to one account, and only that one
Billing in Whizi is per individual account, and the tier is derived in exactly one place from that user's own subscription. There is no team, organization, workspace or seat concept, so a plan cannot be spread across two logins and one person paying does not lift anyone else.
One cause is that the checkout ran under one email address and the session you are using is signed in as another. Compare the address on the payment receipt with the address shown in account settings before assuming anything is broken.
The check that settles it: open account settings and start a cancellation. If there is no Stripe customer on file, or the customer has no active subscription, the cancel route answers Subscription is already canceled. Your account is on the free plan. That string is the server telling you plainly that this account has nothing attached to it. If instead you get Subscription cancellation scheduled for end of billing period. then the subscription is here and you have just cancelled it, so re-subscribe or contact support.
Two adjacent strings from the same screen are not the answer to this question, so do not over-read them: Authentication failed. Please sign in again. means the session token could not be fetched, and Unable to retrieve user or subscription details. Please try again. means the user id or Stripe customer id was missing on that request.
Checkout that looked finished but was not
A subscription is created on Whizi's side from the completed Stripe checkout session. If that session never completed, or completed without the metadata the worker needs, no subscription record exists no matter what the card statement looks like.
One string on that path is a refusal rather than a retry case: Checkout session is missing customer, plan, or billing cycle for subscription creation. It is raised inside webhook handling when a completed session lacks the metadata needed to create the subscription. You cannot see or retry it. Nothing in the interface reports it, and no subscription record is created. If your card was charged and settings still says you are on the free plan, this is the case to hand to support.
The other refusal on the checkout path, the intro trial having already been used with this payment method, ends before any charge, so it belongs to a different symptom. It is covered in payment declined.
A 403 means the plan is working and the tier is the limit
If the message is Upgrade your plan to use this model. then your subscription is active and the server accepted it. The model you picked simply sits above your tier. Access is resolved per request on the server from the subscription on your own account, so reloading the page, clearing the cache or signing out and back in will not change the answer.
Which models your tier includes is a mapping question rather than a billing one, and it is listed per model in the model reference.
The workaround while you decide: switch to Auto. Auto is available on every paid plan, and it only ever picks from models your plan can already open, walking back down the ladder rather than stopping at a paywall. The hub version of this symptom is in troubleshooting.
Agent personas are a separate gate of the same kind: they resolve to a minimum tier of Pro by identifier, so a persona locked on Starter is behaving as designed.
The notification that says your subscription is no longer active
Your subscription is no longer active. is a push notification body, sent under the title Whizi subscription updated. It fires when a RevenueCat webhook syncs the account down to the free tier.
That is a report of a sync, not a bug: the notification goes out at the moment the account is moved onto the free tier. If you did not cancel and you believe it is still paid, billing and cancellation is where to pick it up.
One related refusal, if you subscribed as a guest and the account had not finished linking: The guest store identity is not linked yet. Reopen Whizi and try again., HTTP 409 guest_store_identity_missing. Here the instruction in the string is the actual fix. Reopen Whizi so the identity binding commits, then let the subscription sync run again.
What support has to fix
There is no self-serve way to attach a payment to an account it did not land on. If the cancel route reports Subscription is already canceled. Your account is on the free plan. on the account you are actually using, and your statement shows a charge, the record has to be fixed on Whizi's side. Entitlements can be granted by hand, but that is an operator action, not a setting you can reach.
The pair of email addresses, the one you are signed in with and the one on the payment receipt, is what support checks first, because those are often two different accounts. The full list of what to send is in the FAQ below.
What will not help: refreshing, reinstalling, clearing cookies, or sending the message again, for the reason given in the 403 section above. Nothing on the client decides this.
- HTTP 402 means no active subscription on this account
tier_upgrade_requiredandpowerhouse_requiredare HTTP 403 and mean the subscription is active and the tier is the limit- The
Monthly Limit Reachedbadge opens on any 402, so it is not a diagnosis - A modal with no plan name in it means this account is on the free plan
- A subscription belongs to one account only, with no team or seat sharing
Subscription is already canceled. Your account is on the free plan.confirms nothing is attached here- A charged card plus a free-plan account is a support case, not a retry case
Frequently asked questions
I paid for Whizi but it still says to choose a subscription. What is wrong?
Choose a subscription to use Whizi. is HTTP 402 subscription_required, which the subscriber guard throws when the account making the request has no paid plan on it. One cause is that the payment landed on a different account, because billing is per individual account and the tier is read from that user's own subscription. Check which email you are signed in with against the email on the receipt. If they match, checkout may not have completed, in which case support has to look at the record.
What is the difference between "Choose a subscription to use Whizi." and "Upgrade your plan to use this model."?
The first is HTTP 402 and means no subscription is attached to this account at all. The second is HTTP 403 tier_upgrade_required and means a subscription is attached, it was accepted, and the model you picked sits above the tier you bought. The first is a billing problem, the second is a plan choice. Switching to Auto works around the second one immediately, because Auto only picks models your plan can already open.
Does signing out and back in refresh my plan?
No, for the reason set out in the 403 section above. What has to change is the subscription record on the account. If you just completed checkout and the account still reads as free, that is a support case rather than something a reload can clear.
Why does the upgrade popup say "Monthly Limit Reached" when I never hit a limit?
Because the website opens that same modal for any HTTP 402 response, and the badge text is fixed. The line beneath it is the informative part: a free-plan account is offered Choose a plan to unlock Whizi with higher limits and premium models., while a paid account sees its own plan name interpolated into the monthly-limit wording. No plan name means no plan on this account.
I was charged but my account is on the free plan. What do I send support?
Four things: the email address you are signed in with, the email address on the payment receipt, the verbatim error string in front of you, and the status code if you can see it. Send that rather than retrying, since the webhook metadata failure described above leaves nothing for a retry to find.
Can two people share one Whizi subscription?
Sharing one login trips an anti-abuse gate. More than 3 distinct device or session keys seen on one account within 24 hours returns Account sharing limit reached. Please use your own Whizi account., HTTP 403 account_sharing_limit, and that is neither a billing refusal nor a tier refusal. So no, and there is no seat concept to buy instead.