WhatsApp per-message billing: how Meta charges

The principle

Until 30 June 2025, Meta charged per 24-hour conversation. Since 1 July 2025, each delivered message is charged once, by its category.

• Only messages sent by the business are charged. Messages your customers send you never are.
• A message is only charged if it is delivered. A message that was sent but not delivered costs nothing.
• A message belongs to a single category, so it can only be charged once.

What sets the price of a message

The category

Marketing (offers, news), utility (order confirmation, appointment reminder), authentication (one-time code) or service (a free-form reply within the 24-hour window). Replies from Meta’s own AI agent, Meta Business Agent, are billed separately, by the tokens used.

The recipient’s country

Meta applies the rate of the market that matches the country code of the customer’s number, not your business’s. A country without its own line on the rate card takes its region’s rate.

Volume, for utility and authentication

The more utility and authentication messages a business sends in a month to the same country, the lower the rate for the messages beyond each threshold. Marketing messages have no thresholds.

• Prices by country →
• Template categories explained →

What is free

• Messages your customers send you.
• Your first 1,000 service messages each month, per business phone number, with no carry-over from one month to the next. Meta charges from message 1,001.
• All your messages within the free entry point window: it opens when a customer writes to you from an ad that leads to WhatsApp and you reply, and lasts up to 7 days. Meta Business Agent messages are still charged.

Note: since 1 October 2026, a utility template sent within the 24-hour window is charged too. Meta had waived it since 1 July 2025.

What it means for a small business

The cost depends on what you send more than on the number of conversations. A marketing campaign costs more than appointment reminders, and your free-form replies stay free as long as you stay within each number’s monthly allowance.

Meta bills the business’s messaging account, using the payment method it has added in the billing centre. Without a payment method, Meta only sends your service messages within the free allowance. The price of the software you use is billed separately.

When rates change

Meta only changes its rates on the first day of a quarter: in January, April, July or October. It announces a rate card change at least one month ahead, and a change to the billing model, such as the move to per-message billing, six months ahead.

Example

Illustrative case, in the United Kingdom, at the list rate of Meta’s 1 October 2026 rate card. A tradesperson sends 40 appointment reminders (utility templates) and replies freely to 300 messages in the month: those replies stay under the 1,000 free ones, so they pay Meta €0.73 excl. VAT. A shop sends 500 marketing messages for its sale: it pays €26.30 excl. VAT. Software price not included.

Frequently asked questions