Notice: Changes to WhatsApp’s Pricing (July 2025) – Twilio Support

Overview

Starting July 1st, 2025, WhatsApp moved to a per template message based pricing model. This guide explains the changes and what to expect from the WhatsApp Business API with Twilio.

What You Need To Know

What changed?

Previous to July 1st, 2025, Meta charged a single fee per distinct use case conversation on the first business message in a conversation. The use case was determined by the template category of the message used to initiate the conversation. Each template category started a distinct 24-hour conversation window and incurred a separate charge. For example, if a business sent a customer a utility message, they were charged the utility category fee, but, if 4 hours later, they sent the customer a marketing message, they were also charged the marketing category fee, and started a separate 24-hour window for marketing messages. Service conversations lasted 24 hours and were started when a business responded to an inbound message from a user with a non-templated (i.e. free-form) response.

Meta have now switched to a per template message pricing structure. With this pricing model, charges are incurred:

Per message for each marketing template
Per message for each authentication template (including messages sent via Twilio Verify)
Per message for each utility template sent outside of a customer service window

Meta also announced the following pricing changes on May 15th which also took effect from July 1st, 2025:

Rates for Utility and Authentication template messages have been updated across multiple countries in Meta’s rate cards
Volume tiers for Utility and Authentication templates will allow businesses to unlock more attractive pricing with higher volumes of template messages

Template Categories

Notice: The following information is not applicable to messages sent on Twilio Verify. See the section “How does this impact Twilio Verify pricing?” for details on how this price change affects Verify

You choose a template category when you submit a template to WhatsApp for review through the Content Template Builder or Content Template API. Meta may recategorise your template based on their own algorithms after submission if they deem the content of the template does not match the selected use case.

WhatsApp divides template categories into three types:

Authentication: One-time passcodes.
Marketing: Any business-initiated template that does not qualify as utility or authentication. Can include promotions, offers, informational updates, or invitations for customers to respond / take a certain action.
Utility: Confirm or suspend an existing transaction, change or update a transaction, account, billing, or payment notification

See here for guidance on ensuring your template content is compliant with Meta's use case restrictions and how to avoid template recategorisation or rejection.

How do Volume Tiers work and where can I find the tier limits?

Tiers will be based on the category of templates being sent plus the country they are being sent to, for example, you could find yourself on multiple tiers at once:

Tier B for Indonesia - Authentication
Tier B for Indonesia - Authentication International*
Tier C for Brazil - Utility
Tier A for Indonesia - Utility

Tier discounts are applied on a monthly basis and will reset each month. Note that utility templates sent during an open customer service window are not charged a Meta fee, and thus do not count toward volume tiers. Twilio will pass through all discounted fees from Meta through to you.

You can find the tier limits and fees for each country in Meta’s rate card section here.

*WhatsApp charges International Fees in certain countries for eligible businesses sending authentication templates to users. These international authentication messages are aggregated separately from non-international authentication messages for volume tiers. See here for more information on when and where authentication international fees are applicable.

Free Entry Points and Free Conversations

With the launch of the new pricing structure, free entry point conversations (conversations started by an end user through Click to WhatsApp Ad or Facebook Page Call-to-Action buttons) will behave the same but reflect messages instead of conversations. If a WhatsApp user messages you via a free entry point surface, you can respond with any type of message for free within 24 hours; this opens a free entry point customer service window that lasts 72 hours. You can continue to message the user using any type of message while this window is open without any Meta template charges. Twilio per-message costs still apply.

Free Service Conversations

Starting November 1, 2024, service conversations are free for all businesses (free tier conversations are now unlimited instead of capped at 1,000). As a reminder, a customer service window must be open between you and a WhatsApp user before you can send the user a non-template message. Twilio per-message costs still apply.

How does this impact Twilio's per message charges?

Twilio’s pricing model for WhatsApp is not changing. A separate fee is applicable depending on how a customer is using the WhatsApp Business API with Twilio:

Programmable Messaging API - per message fee
Conversations API - additional per MAU fee
Flex - per seat or AUH fee, unlimited messages subject to fair use policy
Verify - per successful verification fee

How does this impact my business use case?

This pricing change can impact your business use case depending on your messaging patterns. Below are some examples of how this can impact your business (see the next section for Verify specific use cases):

Frequent marketing or authentication notifications using template messages: If you are sending multiple template messages for marketing or authentication use cases, you will now incur a separate charge from WhatsApp for each template message sent.
Initiating conversations with utility messages: If you send messages using utility templates without the user first reaching out to you, you will be charged per template message.
Customer support: If you are responding to incoming user-initiated (i.e., service conversations) messages with a non-templated or utility template message, these messages will no longer incur any Meta charges.

How does this impact Twilio Verify pricing?

Twilio Verify uses WhatsApp authentication templates to send OTP messages on your behalf. This means that while the standard Twilio Verify fee for successful verification remains unchanged. The per template message structure and volume tiering for authentication and authentication-international templates (mentioned above) will go into effect on July 1. Specifically, the changes are as follows:

Today, OTP messages sent using WhatsApp via Twilio Verify are billed as:

A standard fee by Twilio upon successful verification only.
A Meta fee per WhatsApp Conversation.

After July 1, 2025, OTP messages sent using WhatsApp via Twilio Verify will be billed:

A standard fee by Twilio upon successful verification only (unchanged).
A Meta fee per WhatsApp template message sent based on monthly tier discounts (mentioned above).

So after that date, you will see an increase in your bill for any instances where you send multiple OTP messages to one recipient (via WhatsApp) during a verification attempt. Instead of one passthrough fee for that WhatsApp “conversation”, this will be billed per WhatsApp template message sent.

You can find more details on Verify WhatsApp message pricing through Twilio here.

For full details on this pricing change, see Meta’s Developer Documentation here.