On 1 July 2025, WhatsApp stopped billing 24-hour conversations and started billing individual messages. What changed, why, and how to tell whether it helped you or cost you.
The free 24-hour service window has ended. Service replies and in-window utility templates are now billable at ₹0.115 in India, after 1,000 free per phone number a month. What it costs and what to check →
On 1 July 2025, WhatsApp stopped charging businesses for 24-hour conversations and started charging for individual messages. It is the single biggest change to how the platform bills since 2022, and it quietly rewards some businesses while it penalises others. Here is what actually changed, why, and which side of the line you are likely on.
The short version: you now pay per template message delivered, priced by category and by the country of the person receiving it. Replies you send while a customer is actively talking to you are still free. If your messaging is mostly support and well-timed updates, your costs probably fell. If you push many marketing templates at the same people, they probably rose.
Under the old conversation model, opening a 24-hour window with a customer carried one charge, and you could send any number of messages inside it. Under per-message pricing, each delivered template is its own charge. If you send a marketing template followed by two utility templates, that is three charges, not one.
| Old model (2022 to mid-2025) | New model (since July 2025) | |
|---|---|---|
| Unit of billing | 24-hour conversation window | Each delivered template message |
| Messages inside a window | Bundled into one charge | Each template billed separately |
| Free-form replies in service window | Free | 1,000 free a month per number, then billed per message |
| Utility inside service window | Covered by the window | Billed since 1 Oct 2026 (free from July 2025 to Sept 2026) |
| Predictability | Overlapping windows, hard to forecast | One message, one price |
Source: Meta WhatsApp Business Platform pricing documentation, 2025–2026.
Per-message pricing did not remove the free windows. Knowing them precisely is where most of the savings live.
When a customer messages you, a 24-hour window opens. Inside it you can reply with any non-template message, text, image, audio, at no charge. Each new message from the customer resets the clock. This is unlimited and uncapped since November 2024.
From July 2025 to September 2026, utility templates sent while the service window was open were free. Since 1 October 2026 they are charged at the utility rate whether the window is open or not.
When a customer reaches you from a click-to-WhatsApp ad, a free entry point window opens (Meta says up to 7 days) during which messages, including templates, are not charged. This is why acquisition campaigns built around click-to-WhatsApp ads can create genuinely zero-cost messaging windows.
Marketing templates are charged every time, even inside an open service window. Utility and authentication get the free-window and volume-tier breaks; marketing does not. That asymmetry is deliberate, and it is the core of how you keep your bill down: lean on utility and service, spend on marketing only where it earns its place.
Alongside per-message pricing, Meta introduced volume tiers for utility and authentication messages. The more you send in a given country and category in a month, the lower the per-message rate on the messages above each threshold. The discount applies only to the messages within the higher tier, not retroactively to everything, and the count resets at the start of each month. Marketing messages do not get volume discounts.
Tiers are aggregated across all the WhatsApp Business Accounts in your business portfolio, which is why fragmenting your sending across multiple providers can stop you reaching the thresholds that would otherwise lower your rate.
If your WhatsApp use is support-led, customers messaging you, you answering inside the window, the switch was good news. Those replies are free, utility-in-window is free, and you are no longer paying conversation charges for routine back-and-forth.
If your use is broadcast-led, pushing several marketing nudges a month to the same list, the switch raised your costs, because each of those templates is now a separate charge where a single conversation window might once have absorbed them. The fix is not to send less; it is to send better. Tighter segments, fewer but more relevant marketing templates, and a habit of catching customers inside free windows all pull the bill back down.
Per-message pricing made Meta's own rate the clear, published number. Some providers still add a percentage on top of it. WA.Expert passes Meta's rate through with zero markup, so the transparency the new model created is a transparency you actually keep.
How the platform reached per-message pricing, dated and in order.
Read article →The first quarterly change after the switch, and what it cost India senders.
Read article →Meta's cut versus your provider's markup, line by line.
Read article →The current evergreen rate guide for Indian businesses.
Read guide →Worked numbers for campaigns at different volumes.
Read guide →Categories, windows, and tiers defined in plain English.
Open glossary →Setup takes minutes. And if you ever get stuck, we are the only platform in India that answers you live on WhatsApp.
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