WhatsApp announces pricing update, to charge per message on business platform

Meta-owned WhatsApp will be rolling out changes in pricing to its business platform soon.

Starting July 1, the company will charge all businesses on a per-message basis instead of per-conversation.

This is “to simplify our pricing and align to industry standard-pricing for messaging”, the company said.

WhatsApp will also make utility template messages sent in response to users’ messages free, providing more flexibility to businesses in how they engage with users.

What else is new?

Among other changes, WhatsApp will update its utility and authentication rates across several markets as part of continued efforts to ensure it’s priced on par with alternative channels.

It will also introduce volume tiers for utility and authentication to incentivize and reward growth on the platform. Businesses will be able to automatically unlock more attractive pricing as they reach higher volume tiers.

How does the new pricing work?

Per-message pricing will apply to all businesses starting July 1, 2025, at 12am, by WhatsApp Business Account timezone. With per-message pricing, businesses on the platform will be charged per delivered marketing template message, per delivered authentication template message, and per delivered utility template message, if delivered outside of a customer service window.

For example, if the business sends a marketing template and then two utility templates to a WhatsApp user, that will incur three charges (one marketing, two utility). If the two utility templates are sent while a customer service window is open between the business and the user, however, it would only incur a single charge (one marketing).

How does WhatsApp charge businesses?

WhatsApp charges on a per-message basis for each message a business sends to a user.

It levies a charge only when a message is delivered. The charges are based on who the message is sent to, determined by the country calling code of the recipient’s phone number. It’s also based on the category of the message (marketing, utility, authentication).