How Meta charges for WhatsApp messages
On the WhatsApp Business Platform, Meta charges per delivered message, and the price depends on the message category and the recipient's country. For India, the Meta rate card effective 1 Oct 2026, excl. GST, lists:
| Category | What it is for | Rate per delivered message |
|---|---|---|
| Marketing | Offers, launches, reminders to buy again | ₹0.8631 |
| Utility | Order, delivery, payment and booking updates | ₹0.115 |
| Authentication | One-time passwords | ₹0.115 |
| Service | Free-form replies after the first 1,000 per number per month | ₹0.115 |
Rates per India rate card effective 1 Oct 2026 (excl. GST), from Meta's pricing page, checked 12 Oct 2026. India also has an authentication-international rate of ₹2.4971 per message (same rate card), which applies only in the cases Meta defines on that page.
What changed on 1 Oct 2026
- Service messages are no longer free without limit. Each business phone number gets 1,000 free service messages per month; after that, each one is charged at ₹0.115 (India rate card effective 1 Oct 2026, excl. GST). The calculator multiplies the allowance by the number of phone numbers you enter.
- Utility templates inside an open window are charged. They were free from 1 Jul 2025 to 30 Sep 2026. Older articles that say otherwise are out of date.
- Click-to-WhatsApp ads: when a customer messages you from one of these ads and you reply within 24 hours, messages in that conversation are free for up to 7 days. That free entry point is not modelled here, so leave those messages out of your counts.
Worked example: a home decor store
Rangoli Home sends 5,000 marketing messages for its festive sale, 3,000 order and delivery updates, 1,000 login OTPs and 2,500 support replies in a month, from one number. At the Meta rate card effective 1 Oct 2026, excl. GST: marketing comes to ₹4,315.50, utility ₹345.00, authentication ₹115.00 and service ₹172.50, because only 1,500 of the 2,500 replies are beyond the free 1,000. That is ₹4,948.00 a month before GST, or ₹5,838.64 with 18% GST. Marketing is about 87% of the bill, so trimming untargeted broadcasts saves far more than cutting order updates.
Tips to keep your bill predictable
- Send marketing only to people who opted in and are likely to respond; it is the most expensive category by a wide margin.
- Keep transactional templates purely transactional. Promotional wording can get a template recategorised as marketing, which raises its price.
- Very large senders get lower utility and authentication rates through volume tiers, counted per month across the business portfolio: from 25 million utility or 750,000 authentication messages in India. This estimate uses the base rate.
- Recheck your numbers each quarter: Meta changes rates only on 1 Jan, 1 Apr, 1 Jul and 1 Oct.
Meta's charges are only part of the cost. Your WhatsApp platform or partner adds a subscription and sometimes a markup on messages. The WhatsApp API pricing guide explains the full picture, and agencies can model their own margins with the reseller profit calculator.