Since 1 July 2025 Meta charges per message on the WhatsApp Business Platform, not per conversation, and only when a template message is delivered. Messages your customers send you are never charged; a customer message opens a 24-hour window in which your ordinary replies are free, and utility templates sent in reply inside that window are free too. Marketing and authentication templates are always charged, and utility templates sent after the window closes are charged. The practical consequence is that a business whose WhatsApp is mostly inbound pays for only a small share of the messages it sends.
Put in roughly how your month looks. The calculator sorts your messages into what Meta bills for and what it does not — no sign-up, and no pricing of ours anywhere on this page.
Never charged. Meta bills the business only for messages it delivers to a user.
Free. A customer's message opens a 24-hour customer service window, and non-template messages inside it are not charged.
Free since 1 July 2025: utility templates sent in reply inside an open customer service window are not charged.
Charged as a utility template — the window has closed, so this is business-initiated.
Charged as a marketing template. Always billable, whatever the window.
Charged as an authentication template.
We deliberately do not ship a rate table. Per-country rates are not public, they vary by volume, and Meta may revise them on the first day of any quarter — a number baked in here would quietly go wrong. Take the two rates from your own WhatsApp Manager rate card and the arithmetic below is yours, current on the day you read it.
Rules current as of 29 August 2026, from Meta’s published pricing documentation. Meta may change pricing on the first day of a quarter — January, April, July or October.
Almost every explanation of WhatsApp pricing describes what you pay for. Far fewer spell out what is free, and that is where the real number lives.
When a customer messages you, a 24-hour customer service window opens. Inside it, your ordinary replies cost nothing — not a discount, simply not billable. Since 1 July 2025, utility templates sent in reply inside that window are free as well. And messages your customers send you are never charged at all.
So the shape of your bill follows the shape of your business. If you mostly broadcast, nearly everything you send is a billable marketing template. If your customers start the conversation — the way they do for a distributor, a wholesaler or a kirana supplier — then most of your traffic falls inside a window that costs nothing, and you pay only for the updates that land after it closes.
Meta’s charge is one line. Whatever software you use to work the messages is another. They are charged by different parties, and the only way to compare two providers is to see both lines apart — a low platform fee can sit on top of expensive messages, and a cheap per-message rate can hide a heavy monthly minimum.
It is also worth asking who bills you for the messages, because the two models differ. That question, and the others worth putting to any provider, are on our guide to choosing a WhatsApp Business API provider. If you want the platform itself explained first, start with the plain guide to the WhatsApp Business API.
Meta publishes per-message rates by template category and by the country of the recipient, but the rate that applies to you sits in your own account's rate card in WhatsApp Manager, and it can vary with volume. We deliberately do not print a rupee figure here: Meta may revise pricing on the first day of any quarter, so a number baked into a web page goes stale and becomes misleading. Take the rates from your rate card and put them into the calculator above.
Per message, since 1 July 2025. The older conversation-based model, where a 24-hour conversation was the billable unit, has been retired — Meta's own documentation now lists it as deprecated. Many articles and provider pages still describe the old model, which is one reason quotes are hard to compare.
Four kinds. Every message a customer sends you. Your ordinary non-template replies inside the 24-hour customer service window a customer's message opens. Utility templates sent in reply inside that open window, free since 1 July 2025. And everything inside a free entry point window, for 72 hours. What you pay for is business-initiated template messages: marketing always, authentication always, and utility once the window has closed.
Because there are two separate costs. Meta charges for the messages, and your software provider charges for the platform. Under the Tech Provider model Meta bills your business directly at its published rates and the provider bills separately. Under a reseller model the provider buys messages from Meta and sells them on to you, so the per-message price you are quoted includes a margin you cannot see. Ask which model applies and ask for the two lines separately.
No. Everything on this page is Meta's charge, billed to you by Meta. We built the tool to answer the question honestly, not to route you into a quote.