What WhatsApp Business actually costs

What Meta charges for

The unit is a delivered template message. Templates are the messages you create and get approved in advance, and they fall into categories: marketing, utility and authentication. The category matters because it sets the rate.

The other two inputs are the recipient’s country calling code and your volume tier. Rates are organized by region, and higher monthly volume unlocks lower utility and authentication rates. Tiers reset monthly.

This is why we will not print a price here. A marketing template to one country and an authentication template to another are different numbers, and the tier you are in changes them again. Look up your own rates, then put them into the calculator on this page.

What is free today

Messages a customer sends to you are not charged, ever.

Non-template messages are free when they are sent inside an open customer service window, which a customer’s message opens for 24 hours. Utility templates delivered inside that window are also free.

If a customer reaches you from a click-to-WhatsApp ad or a Page call-to-action button and you reply within 24 hours, a free entry point window opens for 72 hours, and everything you send inside it is free regardless of type.

Read this section with the next one open. Two of these three are on a clock.

The dated changes, and why they matter more than the rates

Meta has published two changes to the free half. One has already happened. Any cost model built on the current rules has a known expiry date.

• ▲1 August 2026, already in effect: Meta Business Agent messages are charged per token, at $2.00 per 1M tokens. They were free before this date.
• ▲1 October 2026: service messages become chargeable, and so do utility messages sent in response to users. Meta’s wording is that any non-template message is charged as of that date.
• ▲The practical effect: the agent replies that make up the bulk of a support team’s volume are free today and billed from October. If a vendor shows you a WhatsApp cost model that does not mention this, the model is out of date, not conservative.
• ▲Final rate cards for the newly chargeable categories were due by 1 September 2026. Until you can see them, treat any October-onward estimate as a range and not a number.

Three worked scenarios

Each one shows the shape of the bill and the assumptions behind it. The rate is deliberately left as a variable, because it depends on your countries and categories. Put your own numbers into the calculator above.

1. 01

   Scenario one: inbound support only

   Assumptions: customers always message first, your team replies inside the 24 hour window, you send no templates. Meta cost today: nothing, because inbound messages are free and in-window replies are free.

   Today you pay only the subscription. From 1 October 2026 those in-window replies become chargeable, and this scenario goes from free to a per-message bill that scales with conversation volume. This is the scenario the October change hits hardest.

2. 02

   Scenario two: support plus order updates

   Assumptions: the same inbound support, plus one utility template per order to confirm or update it. Meta cost today: utility templates sent in response to a customer inside the window are free; utility templates sent outside a window are charged at your utility rate for that country.

   Your bill is roughly (orders outside a window) times (utility rate). Count how many of your updates genuinely fall outside the 24 hour window before assuming they all do.

3. 03

   Scenario three: a marketing campaign

   Assumptions: a marketing template to a list of customers who have opted in, none of whom have an open window. Every one is chargeable at the marketing rate for its destination country.

   Your bill is (recipients) times (marketing rate for that country). Also check your messaging limit before you plan the send: a new business portfolio caps at 250 unique users, and verification raises that to 2,000.

The marv.Inbox half of the bill

Priced per workspace in flat tiers by team size, not per message and not per contact.

Cost tracks team size in flat tiers, not contact or message volume. Tiers have agent caps, so growing past one means moving up a tier. Meta message charges are separate and are billed on Meta’s side.

If you are on Coexistence, the bill splits

On a Coexistence number the app and the Cloud API share one number, and the billing follows the path rather than the number. Messages your team sends from the WhatsApp Business app stay free. Messages sent through the Cloud API are billed at Cloud API pricing.

That means the same reply can cost nothing or cost something depending on which surface it was typed into, which is worth knowing before you route all outbound work through the platform.

Pricing questions

Sources, checked June 2026

Sources

Meta pricing changes without notice and two dated changes are already scheduled, so the checked date on this page matters.

• Meta for Developers: Pricing on the WhatsApp Business Platform
• Meta for Developers: Upcoming pricing updates for non-template messages
• Meta for Developers: Messaging limits
• Meta for Developers: Onboard WhatsApp Business app users (Coexistence)

Checked on 2026-08-03