Running WhatsApp through the API means two bills, not one. Meta charges your business for messages, per message, at a rate set by the country and the message category. Your platform charges for the software. Anyone quoting a single number is describing half the invoice.
Rates from the card Meta has charged since 1 October 2026. We checked each one against Meta's own files on 1 October 2026.
Where the money goes
Meta bills you
Per delivered template message. Rate depends on the recipient country and the category. Billed to your own WhatsApp account.
HiQBot bills you
The plan, prepaid, from $49 a month. One credit is one Core reply. No per-message markup and no overage.
Since 1 October 2026
Service messages are charged after 1,000 free a month per phone number, at each market's utility rate. Utility templates inside the service window are charged too.
The billing model
This changed on 1 July 2025. Before that, one 24-hour conversation carried a single charge no matter how many messages moved inside it. Now every delivered template message is billed on its own. A page still explaining conversation pricing is describing a model that has been retired for over a year, and a quote built on it will be wrong in both directions.
Promotions, offers, re-engagement. Charged on every send with no window exemption and no volume discount. This is the category a broadcast uses.
Order updates, receipts, reminders. Free inside an open 24-hour service window until 30 September 2026, charged wherever it lands since 1 October 2026.
One-time codes. A separate and higher international rate applies in some markets when your business sits outside the recipient country.
Free-form replies inside the 24-hour window, written by a person or by your own AI. Since 1 October 2026 every business phone number gets 1,000 free service messages a month and pays from the 1,001st, at that market’s utility rate, with no volume discounts.
Still free
The free tier
Meta introduced the allowance on the same day it started charging. Each month every business phone number receives 1,000 free service messages, and Meta only charges as of the 1,001st service message delivered. Unused messages do not roll over, and the count resets monthly.
It is counted per business phone number, not per WhatsApp Business account, so a business running several numbers gets 1,000 on each. For a small support team that can cover the whole month. For anyone answering at volume it is roughly a day of replies, and everything past it bills at the utility rate.
By country
US dollars per delivered message, read from the same rate card our calculator uses. Meta groups every country into 47 priced markets, so treat these as the shape of it rather than your quote. Since 1 October 2026 the utility column is also what a service message costs.
| Country | Market group | Marketing | Utility & service |
|---|---|---|---|
| United States | North America | $0.0250 | $0.0034 |
| United Kingdom | United Kingdom | $0.0635 | $0.0220 |
| Germany | Germany | $0.1365 | $0.0550 |
| Brazil | Brazil | $0.0625 | $0.0068 |
| Mexico | Mexico | $0.0397 | $0.0085 |
| India | India | $0.0118 | $0.0014 |
| Indonesia | Indonesia | $0.0411 | $0.0250 |
| Pakistan | Pakistan | $0.0473 | $0.0150 |
Utility and authentication carry volume tiers; marketing and service do not. Tiers aggregate across every WhatsApp account in your business portfolio, count only charged messages, and reset monthly. Because no estimate can know your month-to-date portfolio volume, the calculator quotes the top rate as a ceiling and says so.
Run your volumes through the calculatorMany providers add their own charge on top of Meta's rate, commonly a fraction of a cent per message. At scale that markup is the larger half of the difference between two quotes, and it rarely appears on a pricing page.
HiQBot does not sit in that flow. Meta bills your account, we bill the plan, and the two never touch.
Solo $49, Starter $139, Growth $229 a month. Each carries a prepaid credit allowance for AI replies. When it runs out, replies pause until renewal or a credit pack. Nothing bills on top, so the plan side of the invoice cannot surprise you.
See what each plan includesWhat a broadcast costs before you send itOn 1 October 2026, at 12am in your WhatsApp Business account timezone. Since then, Meta charges for service messages, and utility templates delivered inside the 24-hour customer service window are no longer free. Meta Business Agent messages started billing earlier, on 1 August 2026.
A service message is a free-form reply, not an approved template, that you send inside an open 24-hour customer service window. It counts as a service message whether a human agent writes it or your own chatbot or third-party AI does. The one exception is a reply generated by Meta Business Agent, which bills on its own meter.
Each business phone number gets 1,000 free service messages a month, and Meta charges from the 1,001st delivered service message. The quota covers service messages only, not utility, marketing or authentication templates. It is counted per business phone number rather than per WhatsApp Business account, so a business running several numbers gets 1,000 on each.
No. The allowance resets monthly and unused messages do not roll over. A quiet month does not build credit toward a busy one.
The same as a utility message in that market. On Meta’s October rate card the service column matches the utility column in every market and every currency. A US business pays $0.0034 a reply, an Indian one ₹0.115, a UK one £0.0159. Service messages get no volume discounts, so unlike utility and authentication the rate never falls as you send more.
Yes, since 1 October 2026, once the phone number is past its 1,000 free service messages. A reply from your own bot or AI is a service message like any other and bills at the market utility rate. Automations that fire several messages where one would do are the fastest way to burn the quota.
No. Inbound messages from WhatsApp users are free. You are only ever charged for messages you deliver.
Only from 1 July 2025 to 30 September 2026. Since 1 October 2026 a utility template is charged wherever it lands, inside the window or outside it. There is no free quota for utility, so this one has no allowance to soften it.
Yes, unchanged. If a customer messages you from a Click to WhatsApp ad or a Facebook Page call-to-action button and you reply within 24 hours, a 72-hour free entry point window opens and every message inside it is free to deliver. Meta has confirmed this survives the October change.
Two separate meters. A service message is billed per delivered message at the market utility rate, after the free 1,000. A Meta Business Agent message is billed per token, at one global rate of $2.00 per million tokens since 1 August 2026. Meta sizes a typical agent message at 20,000 to 25,000 tokens, roughly 4 to 5 cents. Only replies generated by Meta’s own agent platform draw the token charge.
No. These charges apply to the WhatsApp Business Platform, the API. The free WhatsApp Business app and consumer WhatsApp are unaffected.
Nine markets moved to standalone rate cards, five of them upward: Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Morocco, Oman and Ukraine. The October card also carries eleven further increases: Mexico marketing up 30 per cent, Pakistan and Peru utility and authentication up 50 per cent, South Africa up 25 per cent, and marketing up 15 per cent in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Rest of Asia Pacific and Rest of Middle East.
Send fewer, fuller replies rather than several short ones, since each delivery is a charge. Trim chatbot flows that acknowledge before answering. Cap how many messages an automation can send per conversation. Route more first contacts through Click to WhatsApp ads, where the 72-hour free entry point window keeps replies free. And watch the per-number quota, because it is per phone number, not pooled.
Work out your monthly service message volume per phone number, since the 1,000 free are counted that way. Run those volumes through the calculator to see what Meta will charge. Check whether any of your markets were repriced. Confirm a valid payment method is on the WhatsApp Business account: without one, Meta stops delivering service messages once the free 1,000 are used.
No. Meta charges your own WhatsApp account directly for messages, and we do not resell or mark that up. Your HiQBot plan and your Meta usage bill are two separate invoices from two separate companies.
One credit is one reply at the Core AI level. Stronger levels think harder on the same question and draw more, and the level is set per inbox by your admin. Any reply count we print names the level it assumes. When credits run out, replies pause until renewal or a credit pack. Nothing bills automatically.
On monthly plans, yes. Unspent base allowance carries for two billing periods, provided the renewal is paid on time. The new month is always spent first. Annual plans are billed once for the year and do not carry.
In India and Brazil, eventually yes. Indian businesses must have every WhatsApp account in their portfolio on INR by 31 December 2026, and Brazilian ones on BRL by 30 June 2027. After those dates Meta stops delivering messages from accounts still on the old currency. Meta’s currency migration APIs have been available since June 2026.
Yes. The 24-hour service window starts or refreshes when a WhatsApp user calls your business, whether or not you accept, and when a user accepts a call from you. Marketing and authentication templates stay charged either way.
Rates on this page are from Meta's card in force since 1 October 2026, the same card our calculator reads, checked against Meta's own files on 1 October 2026. Meta revises them, so check Meta's own pricing documentation before you commit a budget. Where a country and category has no published rate, the calculator shows it as unpriced rather than as zero.
Pick a country, set how many marketing, utility and service messages you send in a month, and read the number off. It uses the same rate card as this page.