WhatsApp’s Conversation-Based Pricing

To calculate the costs for sending and receiving messages via the WhatsApp Business API, WhatsApp introduced their ‘Conversation-based pricing’. Do note this pricing model will be updated by Meta, from the 1st of June, 2023. In this article, we’ll take you past everything you need to know about this pricing model.

The 1000 conversations limit

WhatsApp will not charge for the first 1000 conversations that are user-initiated, which are conversations that are started by your customer reaching out to you. This counter resets itself every month. This means that at the start of every month, the first 1000 conversations you receive from your customers are free! The 1001st user-initiated conversation will be charged according to the pricing of WhatsApp. These 1000 conversations are linked to your agency, not to your Facebook Business Account or an individual phone number. 

Charging by Meta

The way you are charged by Meta depends on the type of message that is sent.

🔘 Business-initiated: WhatsApp will classify (and charge) conversations started by your company (business-initiated) according to the category of the template you send. You can find all info on WhatsApp template categories in this Trengo Help Center article. The pricing per template category can be found in Meta’s rate cards.

🔘 User-initiated: Whenever the 1001st conversation of the month is initiated by your customers, Meta will charge these messages as ‘Service conversations’. You can find the price for these messages in Meta’s rate cards.

The 24-hour session limit still applies to all WhatsApp conversations, user- or business initiated. So you will have a timeframe of 24 hours to respond to the last message of your customer. If these 24 hours have passed, you can reopen the conversation by sending a WhatsApp template to your customer.

ℹ️ Meta released an explainer regarding the latest updates, which you can find here.

WhatsApp costs

From the 1st of July, 2023, Meta does not show the approximate costs for your WhatsApp conversations in their dashboard anymore. However, you can still find these costs by navigating to Trengo > Settings > Company profile > Balance settings > Transaction history.