WhatsApp Business API pricing calculator

Meta began charging for two things that had been free, in a changelog entry titled “Charging for messages that were previously free”. Most pricing pages and vendor quotes still describe the older model, so this is currently the easiest way to tell whether a quote is current.

• Service messages are no longer free. They had been since 1 November 2024. Each business phone number now gets 1,000 delivered service messages free per month; from the 1,001st they are charged. The allowance resets monthly and does not roll over.
• Utility templates inside the customer service window are no longer free. That exemption ran from 1 July 2025 and has ended. An order update now costs the same whether it lands seconds after a purchase or two days later.
• Volume tiers apply to utility and authentication, not to authentication alone. Marketing is never tiered.
• There are five billable categories, not three. Marketing, utility and authentication are templates; service and Meta Business Agent are not.

The customer service window still matters, but it now governs permission rather than price: it is what lets you send a free-form reply at all instead of a template. It no longer makes that reply free.

Our WhatsApp Business API pricing and setup guide explains the billing model and the setup decisions in full, with every claim cited to Meta’s documentation.

Four rules decide a WhatsApp bill, and three of them are routinely missed by quotes built from a per-message rate alone.

1. Meta charges on delivery, not on send. Ten thousand messages at a 94% delivery rate are billed as 9,400.
2. The service allowance is per phone number. The same 3,000 replies cost nothing across three numbers and ₹230.00 on one. The calculator assumes replies are spread evenly.
3. Free Entry Point messages are free in every category except Meta Business Agent, for up to seven days.
4. Volume tiers cannot be computed. They exist, at 5%, 10% or 15% below list rate on utility and authentication, but Meta does not publish the thresholds. The calculator shows the range and leaves it out of the total.

Rates carry four decimal places and every intermediate figure stays at full precision; only the displayed total is rounded. At a rate of ₹0.115, rounding each message would overstate a 100,000-message month by around a thousand rupees.

A calculator that claims to produce your final invoice is overselling. Four things sit outside it.

• Volume tier discounts. Real, but uncomputable without published thresholds.
• Meta Business Agent messages. Priced per token rather than per message, at one global rate, so they cannot be converted to a per-message figure.
• Your provider’s margin. Most Indian businesses buy through a solution provider who adds a per-message markup or a platform fee. We do not publish other companies’ pricing, so the calculator takes your own figure if you know it.
• Taxes. Shown before tax throughout.