WhatsApp pricing changes on 1 October

From 1 October, every free-form reply your business sends inside the 24-hour service window becomes a paid message. Those replies have been free since November 2024. Utility templates sent inside that same window become paid too.

Meta announced this on 1 July 2026, alongside the launch of its own AI platform.

Ads that click to WhatsApp still open a free 72-hour window, and that part is not changing. When a conversation starts from a click-to-WhatsApp ad, what you send in the next 72 hours stays free.

Marketing, utility and authentication templates sent outside the window were already paid and stay paid at the same rates. Nothing changes there.

No. This change is WhatsApp only, and your Instagram and Facebook automations are billed exactly as they are today.

No. Meta sets these rates and charges them to every provider on the WhatsApp Business Platform, ourselves included. What we are changing is how you pay them, so that you deal with one bill instead of setting up billing with Meta yourself.

Service messages are billed at the same per-market rate Meta already charges for utility and authentication templates, so the price depends on the country where your customer's number is registered.

Meta publishes the exact rates on 1 September. We will update this page that day and write to every customer with what the change means for their own account. We are not going to guess before then, and you should be sceptical of anyone who does.

Not on service messages. The rate is flat whether you send a hundred messages or a hundred thousand. Templates still have volume tiers; service messages do not.

Chatfuel, in one bill. We open a credit line with Meta on your behalf, so Meta invoices us for your messages and you keep paying us the way you do today. You never set up billing with Meta directly and you never watch two invoices.

Your plan carries a wallet in US dollars with credits included. AI, templates and Meta's message charges all come out of that wallet, and your billing page breaks every charge down by day and by type.

No. Credits are granted for the month and do not roll over, so there is no benefit in holding them back.

Processing stops when the balance reaches zero, and messages stop going out until you top up. To avoid that, set your own top-up amount and we charge your card automatically before you get there.

Nothing today. We open the credit line with Meta for you. Before 1 October, make sure you have a valid card on file and auto-top-up switched on, so nothing stops in the middle of a conversation.

Dashboard does not get our Meta credit line, and it will not support Meta's new AI platform. So you have two options.

Move to panel.chatfuel.com, which is free and which we will help you with: you get the credit line, one bill, and everything we ship from here on. Or stay on Dashboard and attach your own payment method to your WhatsApp Business Account in Meta Business Manager before 1 October. If Meta cannot charge you, your messages stop going out.

No. Moving does not touch your Dashboard bots. You can set the new platform up on a trial, run both side by side, and switch your number over only once you are satisfied.

It is Meta's mechanism for letting a provider pay for a customer's messages. We attach ours to your WhatsApp Business Account, Meta invoices us for what that account sends, and we bill you.

Your WhatsApp Business Account has to be in US dollars, and it must not already have another payment method or another provider's credit line attached to it.

If you detach our credit line in your own Business Manager, Meta blocks messaging on that WhatsApp Business Account until billing is set up again. If you ever want to move away from us, tell us first and we will sequence it so your number keeps working.