How pricing works
Prepaid, per message, all-inclusive. No subscription, no plans, nothing to cancel — just a monthly usage that everything you send counts toward.
What you are charged for
Three things draw down your balance.
Starting a conversation. Every template you send to someone who has not messaged you recently: broadcasts, follow-ups, re-engagement. The price depends on the category of the template (Marketing, Utility or Authentication) and the country you are messaging. This is the bulk of most bills.
Each message a customer sends you. Inbound WhatsApp messages are charged per message, at a small flat rate. A customer who sends five messages in a row is five charges, not one.
AI replies, if you run an AI Assistant — one per automatic reply.
Current rates for all of these are on the pricing page.
All-inclusive means all-inclusive
One price per message, covering everything. Nothing is added on top of a message's price, and there is no platform fee or seat fee. The only thing that can appear at month end is the monthly usage below — and only if you spent less than it.
What is free
- Every reply you send inside the 24-hour window — a thousand a month per number from October, and unlimited before that. Answering a customer costs nothing on WhatsApp.
- Contacts, groups, templates, flows, media and analytics. Features, not meters.
- Team members. No per-seat charge.
The word you is doing real work in that first line. A reply someone on your team types is free. A reply the platform sends on your behalf while nobody is at the keyboard — an AI assistant reply, or the outside-hours away reply if you switch it on — is charged at its own per-reply rate, shown on the pricing page. Neither is ever sent without you turning it on first.
From 1 October 2026: a thousand replies a month, per number
Meta starts charging for replies inside the window on that date. Each of your numbers gets the first 1000 a month at no extra charge, and it is one shared allowance — replies you type, AI assistant replies and automatic replies all draw on the same thousand. Past it each reply carries the service rate for the country you are messaging, ₹0.184 to India, and the pricing page shows it in your own currency.
Worth keeping in proportion: over eight months of production, one number has ever crossed a thousand in a month. If yours does, it is a busy support desk rather than a surprise.
So the shape of a bill is: what you spend starting conversations, plus a much smaller amount for the messages people send back. Cost scales with how much you initiate.
Inbound charges continue even at a zero balance
Meta has already delivered the message by the time we see it, so we never drop it for lack of funds — the charge is recorded and your balance can go slightly negative. Top up and it settles. You will not lose a customer's message because you ran out.
The platform fee on top-ups
A 0.99% platform fee is withheld from every top-up, in whatever currency you are billed in. It comes out of the credit rather than being added to the payment, so the amount you are asked to pay is exactly the amount you chose.
For example, on an Indian account topping up ₹500:
| You are charged | ₹500 + ₹90 GST = ₹590 |
| Platform fee (0.99% of ₹500) | ₹4.95 |
| Credited to your balance | ₹495.05 |
An account billed in USD topping up $25 is charged $25 and credited $24.75; the arithmetic is the same everywhere, only the currency changes. The full breakdown is shown on the Add funds screen before you pay, and again on your payment receipt.
GST applies to Indian accounts only. Where it does apply, your tax invoice is unaffected by the fee — it reports the full taxable value, because that is what you paid for.
This is already in effect and applies to every top-up from now on.
Monthly usage
Every funded account has a monthly usage, set in your own billing currency. Each one is sized against what messaging costs in the market that currency mostly sends to, so the bar asks a comparable amount of a business in Mumbai and one in Madrid. India sits lower than that on purpose, because Indian demand is mostly utility messaging and utility rates are a fraction of marketing ones. It is a floor, not a fee:
- Everything you spend in a calendar month counts toward it — templates, inbound messages, AI replies, Instagram DMs, even failed-send fees.
- Reach it or more and you pay nothing extra. Most active accounts never see this at all.
- Spend less and the difference is taken from your balance after the month ends.
Your month runs on your own clock. It begins at midnight on the 1st and ends at midnight on the 1st of the next month, in the timezone of your billing currency — so an Indian account's month turns at midnight IST, a Brazilian one at midnight in São Paulo, and a UK one at midnight London time. Nothing is measured in a timezone you do not live in, and a message sent late on the last evening of the month counts toward that month, not the next one.
Here is the monthly usage for every billing currency, alongside the top-up figures — which are a different thing: what you can add in one payment, not what you use in a month.
Up to ₹5,000 per payment.
Up to $100 per payment.
Up to €100 per payment.
Up to £100 per payment.
Up to AED 500 per payment.
Up to SAR 500 per payment.
Up to Mex$2,000 per payment.
Up to S$150 per payment.
Up to A$160 per payment.
Up to R$560 per payment.
Up to Rp1,600,000 per payment.
Up to RM440 per payment.
Up to COL$400,000 per payment.
Up to S/360 per payment.
These are different things, so one top-up may cover several months. The minimum is the least you spend on messages in a calendar month; the top-up figures are the least and most you can add to your balance in a single payment. Divide your balance by the monthly usage to see how long it lasts if you send nothing at all.
Your billing currency is fixed at signup, so only one of these ever applies to you — and it is the one shown on your Add funds screen.
Three things keep it fair.
It can never put you in debt. The deduction is capped at whatever balance you have. If your balance is smaller than the shortfall, we take what is there and stop. You will never owe us money for monthly usage, and you will never be invoiced for it.
Partial months are pro-rated. If a month opens with an empty balance, your usage counts from the day you first top up in it. Fund on the 20th of a 31-day month and your usage is 12/31 of the full amount, not all of it. Fund on the very last day and it is a single day's worth — on an Indian account, ₹3.33 rather than ₹100.
Two details worth knowing. If the month opens with money already in your balance, the full month applies, even if it runs down partway — the pro-rating is about when you started, not about gaps afterwards. And if a month opens empty and you never top up in it at all, nothing is charged for that month and no adjustment is written.
Blocked months are not charged. If we suspended your account, or Meta disconnected your WhatsApp number, no usage applies for that month. You are never charged for a month in which you could not use the service.
The simplest way to never pay it
Use it. Spending toward it costs you nothing beyond what you were going to pay anyway — it only becomes a charge if you don't send. One modest broadcast usually clears it outright: on an Indian account it is around 100 marketing messages or 620 utility messages — roughly 20 order updates a day — and every other currency is set against the cost of messaging in the market it sends to.
This applies from 15 August 2026. Your Wallet lists every charge against your balance, including any monthly-usage adjustment.
The other charges
Failed sends. If a message fails, the full message charge is refunded and a small failed-attempt fee is taken instead — ₹0.10 on Indian accounts. It shows in your ledger as a failed-send fee. See A message failed.
Instagram messages. Instagram works the other way round from WhatsApp: DMs you send are charged per message, and DMs you receive are not. See Reply to Instagram DMs.
Keeping the bill down
- Get customers to message you first. Their message costs you a fraction of what a template does, and it opens a window you can then answer in for nothing. This is what links, QR codes and the website button are for.
- Answer inside the window. Reply today for nothing, or send a paid template tomorrow.
- Use Utility where it is honestly Utility. Order updates are cheaper than marketing, and you can send them to people who would block a promotion.
- Broadcast to smaller, better lists. You pay per recipient. Five hundred people who care beat five thousand who do not, and cost a tenth as much.
- Add quick-reply buttons to templates. A customer tapping one sends a reply, which opens a window you can answer in for nothing.
Where to see what you spent
- Dashboard — a spend breakdown by category over the last 30 days.
- Wallet — every individual charge. See Your wallet and transaction history.
- Analytics — a Spend tab with date and number filters.
- Message logs — the cost of any single message.
If something goes wrong
- A charge you do not recognise. Find it in Wallet; each entry names the action and links to what caused it.
- The balance dropped faster than expected. Usually a broadcast to a bigger audience than intended, or marketing where utility would have done. Check the Spend tab in Analytics. If Incoming is a large slice, a campaign produced a lot of replies — which is a good problem, but it is a real cost.
- The balance went negative. Inbound messages are charged even with nothing left, because Meta has already delivered them. Top up and it settles.
- You were charged for a message that failed. You should see a refund of the message charge and a small fee instead. If you only see the charge, please open a ticket.