How much does WhatsApp Business cost?

The short answer

When people ask how much WhatsApp Business costs, they are really asking about three different things that share a name:

1. The WhatsApp Business app. Free to download, no subscription.
2. The WhatsApp Business Platform, the API. Meta charges for certain messages delivered through it, not for access.
3. The provider that connects your number to the Platform and puts something useful on top: an assistant, a diary, reminders.

The app: free, with paid extras you don’t need

Everything the app comes with is free: business profile, catalogue, labels, quick replies, automatic messages, broadcast lists and linked devices.

What does cost money inside the app is optional:

• Business broadcasts. A promotional send to your contacts, with an image and a button, that Meta reviews first. You pay per delivered message: the help centre links to the same rate card as the Platform, where a marketing message to a UK number costs £0.0458. It is only available in some countries.
• Meta Verified, a monthly subscription with the option of a verified badge, and support. Nothing you need to answer a customer depends on it.
• Meta Business Agent, Meta’s AI agent in the app: free to start with, with paid subscriptions announced.

If you answer customers yourself from your phone, WhatsApp Business costs you nothing.

The Platform: what Meta charges for

The Platform is the version of WhatsApp for connecting a number to software. Its pricing keeps changing, and old rate tables still do the rounds:

• Until 30 June 2025, Meta charged per conversation: a 24-hour window, however many messages went in it.
• Since 1 July 2025, it charges per message: each delivered template pays its rate, set by its category and the country of the number receiving it, as its pricing documentation explains.
• From 1 October 2026, the same page says, replies are charged too, at the utility rate, after a free allowance of 1,000 replies per business number per month. So are utility templates sent while that 24-hour window is open, which are free until then.

A template is a message Meta approves in advance, which the business can send without the customer writing first. There are three categories: marketing (offers, news, ‘we haven’t seen you for a while’), utility (updates on something the customer already has under way: an appointment reminder, ‘your car is ready’) and authentication (log-in codes).

The 24-hour window shapes the bill: each customer message opens 24 hours in which you can reply with text, photos or voice notes, free until 30 September 2026 and, from October, free for the first 1,000 a month per number.

Meta’s rates for UK numbers

This is what the official WhatsApp pricing calculator returns for United Kingdom numbers, in pounds, checked on 23 September 2026, next to Meta’s published rate card for 1 October 2026:

Category	Per delivered message, now	From 1 October 2026
Marketing	£0.0458	£0.0458
Utility	£0.0159	£0.0159, also inside the window
Authentication	£0.0159	£0.0159
Replies inside the window	£0	£0.0159 after 1,000 free a month

The UK marketing rate went up on 1 July 2026, according to Meta’s change log. Check the calculator before doing your own sums.

The rate is set by the recipient’s country. If your business is in Spain and your customers have Spanish numbers, you pay Spain’s rate: the same calculator gives £0.0509 for marketing and £0.0144 for utility and authentication, and Meta’s October rate card puts replies at £0.0144.

What it comes to in a small business

Four examples, worked out by us from the table above. They are multiplications, not quotes:

• A clinic sending 300 appointment reminders a month. Utility templates, nearly always outside the window because the patient booked days earlier: 300 × £0.0159 = £4.77 a month.
• A garage replying to 600 customer messages a month. Replies inside the window: £0 today, and still £0 from October, because they fit in the free 1,000.
• A busy restaurant replying 1,600 times in October. The 600 replies above the free allowance: 600 × £0.0159 = £9.54.
• A salon sending an offer to 200 customers who have opted in. Marketing templates: 200 × £0.0458 = £9.16 per send.

For a business that mostly replies, Meta’s charges stay small. What makes the Platform expensive is marketing in volume and, above all, setting it up and running it.

What a provider adds

Meta sells the channel, not the software. For the Platform to do anything, someone has to connect the number, host the software, write the templates, get them approved and keep it all working when Meta changes something. You can do it yourself, with a developer, or hand it to a provider.

Providers charge in very different ways: a monthly fee, a mark-up per message on top of Meta’s rate, a set-up fee, or a mix. Before comparing, ask four questions:

1. Do I pay Meta directly, or is Meta’s rate inside your invoice with a mark-up?
2. Who owns the WhatsApp account and the number? They should belong to your business, in its name.
3. What does it actually do? Sending templates isn’t answering, booking into your diary or taking a deposit.
4. What happens if I leave? To my number and to my conversations.

What no rate table tells you

• The Platform doesn’t answer by itself. Without an assistant or a person behind it, paying for it doesn’t improve anything.
• Templates go through Meta. Each one is approved before use, and if customers block or report it, Meta can pause it.
• There is a cap at the start. According to its messaging limits documentation, a new business can message 250 different people outside the window every 24 hours, and the cap rises once you verify the business or send templates people rate well.

What makes sense for you

• Few messages and someone who replies in time: the app, free. Don’t pay for anything else.
• Lots of messages, bookings lost out of hours, deposits chased by hand: then the real cost isn’t Meta’s rate, but the hours spent on the phone and the customers who leave in the meantime.

Conserjía is for the second case: an assistant on the WhatsApp Business Platform that answers, books into your diary and takes the deposit in the chat. Whatever Meta charges, your business pays Meta directly, with its own payment method in WhatsApp Manager. Our own price isn’t published: you see it in the demo, with your volume in front of you. And if you are still torn between the ordinary app and the business one, carry on with the difference between WhatsApp and WhatsApp Business.