Question
How much does it cost to send and receive WhatsApp messages with Twilio?
Product
Programmable Messaging
Answer
Until July 1st 2025, WhatsApp Messages are charged on a conversation category based pricing model. After that date, WhatsApp will update their pricing model in phases to a per template message fee.
Read below to learn about the current conversation category based pricing model or click here to read about the future per template message pricing model.
Conversation Category Based WhatsApp Pricing Overview
Until July 1st 2025, WhatsApp charges a single fee per distinct use case conversation on the first business message in a conversation. Twilio supports the latest WhatsApp prices, as published on Meta's website.
Note that in addition to all WhatsApp charges, there is a Twilio flat fee of $0.005 per message.
For full details on WhatsApp pricing, see Twilio's WhatsApp Pricing Calculator.
Business-Initiated Conversations and Template Categories
Business-initiated conversations are based on the use case of the conversation. The use case is determined by the template category of the message used to initiate the conversation. 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
Each template category starts a distinct 24-hour conversation window and incurs a separate charge. For example, if a business sends a customer a utility message, they will be charged the utility category fee, but, if 4 hours later, they send the customer a marketing message, they will also be charged the marketing category fee, and start a separate 24-hour window for marketing messages. However, if they send additional utility messages, they will not be charged again until 24 hours have passed and a new 24-hour window begins.
Service Conversations
Service conversations last 24 hours and are started when a business responds to an inbound message from a user with a non-templated (i.e. freeform) response.
Free Entry Points and Free Conversations
Service conversations that start from ads that use Click to WhatsApp and Facebook Page CTAs are free (Twilio per-message costs still apply) for 3 days after the conversation is started, as long as you respond to the message in the first 24 hours.
The first 1000 Service conversations per month are not subject to charges from Meta and starting November 1st, 2024, service conversations will not be charged any Meta fee at all. Twilio per-message costs still apply to all messages. You may continue to see the ““WhatsApp Conversation Service - {Destination}” billing item in your usage report or invoice with a $0.00 price for some weeks after this change.