WhatsApp Business API cost in India: what Meta charges per message

Meta’s per-message rates for India (October 2026)

Since 1 July 2025 Meta has charged per delivered template message rather than per 24-hour conversation. The rate depends on the template category and the country code of the person receiving it. Rates below are Meta’s INR rate card for India, before GST.

• • Marketing: ₹0.8631 per message (raised from ₹0.7846 on 1 January 2026)
• • Utility (bills, receipts, order and payment updates): ₹0.1150 per message
• • Authentication (one-time passwords): ₹0.1150 per message
• • Authentication-international (OTPs sent to Indian numbers by businesses outside India): ₹2.4971 per message
• • Service replies inside the 24-hour window: first 1,000 a month per business number free, then ₹0.1150
• • Messages customers send to you: always free
• • All of the above: plus 18% GST on Meta’s invoice

What costs nothing on WhatsApp

A good share of business WhatsApp traffic never reaches the bill. Anything a customer sends you is free. When a customer writes first, a 24-hour customer service window opens, and your free-form replies inside it fall into the monthly free allowance of service messages.

When a customer reaches you through a Click to WhatsApp ad or a Facebook Page button, Meta opens a 72-hour free entry point window in which every message, templates included, is free. Meta’s July 2025 rules also made utility templates sent inside an open customer service window free; several providers report that this changed on 1 October 2026, so check Meta’s current rate card before you plan around it.

• • Incoming messages from customers — free
• • Your replies within 24 hours of a customer’s message — first 1,000 a month per number free
• • Everything inside a 72-hour window opened by a Click to WhatsApp ad — free
• • The green WhatsApp Business app on your phone, and wa.me links that open it — free, no API involved

A worked monthly bill for a small shop

Take a single-counter shop that sends every customer their bill on WhatsApp — 300 bills in a month — and sends one festival offer to 1,000 past customers. The bills are utility messages: 300 × ₹0.1150 = ₹34.50. The offer is a marketing message: 1,000 × ₹0.8631 = ₹863.10. Together that is ₹897.60, and with 18% GST it comes to ₹1,059.17 for the month, paid to Meta.

The split is the useful part. The bills, which are the everyday work, cost about ₹41 a month with GST. Almost all of the bill is the marketing send. If the shop skips the offer, its WhatsApp cost for the month is about ₹41. If it sends the offer to 500 people instead of 1,000, the marketing line halves. Marketing reach is the thing to budget, not billing.

• • 300 bills (utility): ₹34.50
• • 1,000-person festival offer (marketing): ₹863.10
• • Subtotal: ₹897.60
• • With 18% GST: ₹1,059.17 a month, billed by Meta
• • Added by 399Apps on top: ₹0

What a BSP adds on top of Meta’s rate

Most Indian businesses reach the WhatsApp Business API through a Business Solution Provider (BSP) such as Wati, Interakt, AiSensy or Gupshup. The usual model is a monthly platform fee — commonly ₹1,000 to ₹2,500 a month — and, with many providers, a per-message markup on top of Meta’s rate. Some quote rounded “from” prices such as ₹0.88 or ₹0.13 a message, which can already include that markup.

For the shop above, a platform fee alone can match or exceed what it pays Meta for the messages themselves. When you compare quotes, ask each provider two things: its monthly fee, and whether the per-message price it quotes is Meta’s rate card or Meta’s rate plus its own margin.

Going direct: Meta’s rate, plus nothing

399Apps is not a BSP and does not resell WhatsApp. The Meta Cloud API connection is a free add-on on any paid 399Apps subscription. The WhatsApp Business Account, the number and the templates sit in your own Meta Business account, Meta bills your business directly at its own rates on the payment method you attach there, and 399Apps adds no markup at any volume. If you revoke the access token, our access ends and there is nothing to cancel.

The setup is about an hour of form-filling plus 1 to 14 days of Meta’s verification queue, and 399Apps does it for you free, inside your own Meta account. If you would rather do it yourself, the credentials guide walks through every screen. One date to know: Meta now bills Indian businesses in rupees, and eligible accounts must move their WhatsApp Business Accounts to INR billing by 31 December 2026 — from 1 January 2027 Meta stops delivering messages from non-INR accounts of eligible businesses.

Who it’s for and who it’s not for

If you run a shop, a trading business or a service business and want bills, receipts and the occasional offer to go out on WhatsApp from your own number, paying Meta directly is the cheapest way to do it — a few hundred utility messages a month cost less than a cup of tea a day.

If you only send bills one at a time from the counter, you may not need the API at all: wa.me quick send opens your own WhatsApp with the message ready, costs nothing and needs no Meta setup. And if you need a full shared team inbox, chatbot flows or a dedicated account manager for very high volumes, a BSP that sells those services may be worth its fee — just know which part of the price is Meta and which part is the BSP.

• • Bills and receipts from your own number, a few offers a month: go direct, pay Meta only
• • One bill at a time from the counter: wa.me quick send, no API, no cost
• • Shared inbox, chatbots, managed campaigns at very high volume: a BSP may earn its fee