Until yesterday, the most reassuring line in WhatsApp’s pricing was that a reply to a customer cost nothing. A customer messaged you, a 24-hour window opened, and you could answer as many times as you liked without paying Meta a paisa.
That stopped on 1 October 2026. Here is exactly what changed, what it costs, and what you can do about it — which, for most businesses, is less than the headlines suggest.
What changed
Meta’s pricing page is direct about it. Service messages — the free-form replies you send inside the customer service window — are charged “as of 12am by Messaging account timezone on October 1, 2026”, with an allowance:
Each business phone number has one free tier of 1,000 delivered service messages per month.
So, per WhatsApp number, per calendar month:
- Replies 1 to 1,000: free, as before.
- Reply 1,001 onwards: billed per delivered message, at ₹0.115 in India — the same as the utility rate.
- Unused free replies don’t carry over. The count resets each month.
The same date also ended the free ride for utility and authentication templates sent inside the window, which are now billed at ₹0.115 each. They don’t use up your 1,000 free replies. That change has its own post.
The 24-hour customer service window
DiagramInside the window
- Free-form replies First 1,000 a month free, then ₹0.115 All free before 1 October 2026
- Utility & authentication templates ₹0.115 each Free before 1 October 2026
- Marketing templates ₹0.8631 each
After 24 hours
- Free-form replies Not allowed
- Utility & authentication templates ₹0.115 each
- Marketing templates ₹0.8631 each
What it costs you
Meta’s charge is ₹0.115 per reply beyond the allowance, plus 18% GST — about ₹0.136 all-in, as Business Today worked out on the day. That is roughly ₹136 per thousand replies once you’re past the free 1,000.
Put in your own numbers:
What your replies cost now
CalculatorBefore 1 October 2026 every reply inside the 24-hour window was free. Templates are billed separately. Assumes replies are spread evenly across your numbers.
Who this actually affects
Not your customers. Messaging a business is still free for them, and the ordinary WhatsApp and WhatsApp Business apps are unaffected. This is a charge on businesses using the WhatsApp Business Platform (the API).
Barely a small business. A thousand replies a month is about 33 a day. A shop that answers a few dozen chats a day, one or two messages each, stays inside the allowance or just over it.
Noticeably, a busy support desk. A team answering 300 chats a day at four messages each sends around 36,000 replies a month. On one number, 35,000 of those are billed — about ₹4,750 a month with GST. Not ruinous, but a new line on the bill.
Chatbots that talk a lot. Every message a bot sends inside the window is a reply. A flow that sends three short messages where one would do triples its share of the bill.
What stays free
- Customers’ messages to you. Inbound is never charged.
- Your first 1,000 replies a month on each number.
- Conversations started from a click-to-WhatsApp ad. While Meta’s free-entry-point window is open, it does not charge for service, utility, authentication or marketing messages. (Meta Business Agent AI messages are the exception — they’re charged even there.)
- Messages sent from the WhatsApp Business app itself, if your number uses the app and the API together. Meta’s documentation is explicit that those remain free — more on that here.
How to keep the bill sensible
Don’t reply less. A reply that saves a customer from calling you, or from buying elsewhere, is still the cheapest thing on the bill. The point is to stop paying for messages that do nothing.
Say it in one message. “Hi!”, “Let me check”, and “Here you go” as three bubbles is three billed messages. Write the answer, then send it.
Look at what your chatbot sends. Flows built when replies were free often split one answer across several bubbles, or send a “thanks for waiting” before every reply. Merge them.
Know your number. In Meta Business Manager, your WhatsApp account’s billing activity shows service messages separately. Check one full month before deciding anything.
Verify all of this
- The free tier, the date and the INR deadline: Meta’s WhatsApp Business Platform pricing page.
- The service rate matching the utility rate in each market: YCloud’s summary of Meta’s notice, 4 September 2026.
- The India figure with GST, and that customers aren’t charged: Business Today, 1 October 2026.
Zanoo is a Meta Tech Provider, so Meta bills you for these messages directly and we never touch that money. This change doesn’t make Zanoo cheaper or dearer — it changes Meta’s line on your bill, wherever you send from.