We want to give you advance notice of a pricing change Meta has announced for the WhatsApp Business Platform.
What's changing on October 1, 2026
Every message sent within the service window (by an agent, in reply to a customer, or via a third-party AI) becomes billable. An exchange made up of 4 outbound messages will now generate 4 separate Meta charges, billed at the utility and authentication message rate by country (for example, €0.0248 per message in France).
Utility messages sent within an already-open service window, currently free, will also be charged per message.
What isn't changing
How the service window works: it still opens and resets with each message a customer sends, and service messages can still only be sent within that 24-hour window.
Messages sent by your customers, which remain 100% free.
Template pricing (Marketing, Utility, Authentication). Learn more.
Our recommendations
The spirit of WhatsApp remains the same: when a contact replies, it's a sign of genuine interest. That level of engagement remains valuable, even with this new rate.
That said, if you'd like to, you can:
Optimize your campaigns and automations by identifying the flows most exposed to this change and favoring more complete messages to limit back-and-forth exchanges.
Complement your WhatsApp strategy with RCS and SMS.
These channels can be more cost-effective depending on the use case, while also letting you reach a complementary audience.
RCS also offers rich, interactive formats similar to WhatsApp's.
To make it easy for you to try RCS, we're offering free agent creation along with your first month's license.
Our team will help you identify a first use case and launch your campaign.We'll continue to monitor Meta's pricing closely and keep you informed of any further changes.