WhatsApp Messages are charged on a use case based pricing model for all business globally. This pricing model went into effect on June 1st, 2023, and moved from a conversation based fee structure.
Use case based WhatsApp pricing overview
WhatsApp charges a single fee per distinct use case conversation on the first business message in a conversation.
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, but Twilio per-message costs still apply.