WhatsApp Business API pricing in India (2026): cost per message

WhatsApp doesn't charge a monthly fee for the Business API, and there is no "API registration" charge from Meta either. Meta has charged per delivered message since 1 July 2025 (before that it charged per 24-hour conversation), and the price depends on two things: what kind of message it is, and which country the person receiving it is in.¹ Everything below is Meta's own cost; what a WhatsApp API provider in India adds on top is covered at the end.

This page uses Meta's own INR rate card, effective 1 July 2026.¹ Meta's pricing page notes that India's marketing rate rose on 1 January 2026 and its authentication-international rate on 1 April 2026; India was not on the list of markets repriced on 1 October 2026.¹ If Meta publishes a new card, the numbers on this page update with it.

The four kinds of message

Meta puts every message you send into one of four categories:

• Marketing — offers, announcements, win-back messages, anything that promotes. The most expensive kind.
• Utility — something the customer already asked for or bought: an order update, a booking confirmation, a payment reminder.
• Authentication — one-time login codes.
• Service — your free-form replies while a customer is talking to you, inside the 24 hours after their last message. These were free until 30 September 2026; see what changed.

Marketing, utility and authentication messages must use a template that Meta has approved. Service replies are ordinary messages typed (or written by an assistant) in the conversation.

What each message costs in India

For a customer with an Indian (+91) number, Meta's rates are:

So a marketing message to an Indian customer costs ₹0.8631, and an order update or a login code costs ₹0.1150. One marketing message costs as much as about 7.5 utility messages.

Worked examples

These are Meta's charges only, before any provider's fee and before tax.

The pattern to take from this: a broadcast is where the money goes. Replies and confirmations cost a fraction of a rupee each — but since October they are no longer free, so they add up across thousands of conversations.

What changed on 1 October 2026

Until 30 September 2026, every reply you sent inside the 24-hour window was free. Meta's pricing page now says, for the rate cards effective 1 October 2026:¹

• Each business phone number gets 1,000 free service messages a month, and they do not roll over. After that, every delivered reply is charged — for an Indian number, at the same rate as a utility message, ₹0.1150. A number with no payment method on file stops having its service messages delivered once the free 1,000 are used.
• Utility templates sent inside the window are charged too. They had been free since 1 July 2025 when the customer had written to you in the last 24 hours.
• Messages your customers send you stay free. You pay only for what you send, and only when it is delivered.
• Leads from Click-to-WhatsApp ads still get a free window. When someone messages you from your ad in the WhatsApp app on Android or iOS and you reply inside the 24-hour window, a free entry-point window opens that can stay open for up to 7 days; while it is open, Meta does not charge for marketing, utility, authentication or service messages to that person.

What this means in practice: every message your team or your AI sends now has a price. One answer split across three short messages is three charges. A clinic that sends 3,000 replies in a month pays for 2,000 of them — ₹230 at Meta's rate. That is small, but it rewards one complete answer over several fragments.

The recipient's country changes the price

Meta prices a message by the recipient's country code, not yours.² An Indian business messaging a customer in Germany pays Germany's rate, which for marketing is 11.6 times India's.

The markets Indian businesses message most:

Two things in that table catch people out:

• North America is one market. The US and Canada share a rate. Some +1 numbers (several Caribbean countries) fall under "Rest of Latin America" instead.
• Many countries have no row of their own. They are priced as "Rest of Africa", "Rest of Asia Pacific" and so on. Meta's country-code list says which region each number falls into.

Login codes sent abroad cost more

Authentication has a second rate in some markets, authentication-international. It applies when you send a login code to someone in one of those countries and your business is not registered there.³ For an Indian number that rate is ₹2.4971 instead of ₹0.1150 — about 21.7 times as much. Check Meta's list before you price a login flow for customers in another country.

How to keep the bill down

1. Get the category right. In India a marketing message (₹0.8631) costs about 7.5 times a utility one (₹0.1150). Write order and booking updates as pure updates, with no offer attached — Meta can reclassify a utility template that promotes.
2. Answer in one message, not three. Since October every reply past your first 1,000 a month is billed, so a complete answer in one message costs a third of the same answer split into three. For leads from Click-to-WhatsApp ads, reply inside 24 hours: the free entry-point window that opens (up to 7 days) is the cheapest conversation you will have.¹
3. Send broadcasts to people who want them. Every delivered marketing message is billed whether or not it's read. A smaller list of recent, engaged contacts is cheaper and gets more replies.
4. Check where your list lives. A few hundred international numbers in a broadcast can cost more than thousands of Indian ones.

What a WhatsApp API provider in India adds on top

Meta sells the API through Business Solution Providers and through its own Cloud API; either way, what you pay has up to three parts:

1. Meta's per-message charge — the rates above, by category and by the recipient's country.
2. The provider's share — a markup per message, a monthly platform plan, or both. The cheapest providers charge a flat fraction of a rupee per message and nothing monthly; inbox-and-chatbot platforms charge a monthly plan and bill Meta's messages separately. Ask any provider for the three parts written down.
3. GST on the total. We do not quote a rate here; confirm it on the provider's invoice.

Two things a price list will not tell you. First, how many people you may message a day is set by Meta, not the provider: a new business portfolio may message 250 unique numbers outside the 24-hour window in a rolling 24 hours, rising to 2,000, 10,000, 100,000 and unlimited as the business is verified and the messages stay high-quality.⁴ Second, billing in rupees: Meta launched INR billing for Indian businesses on 1 January 2026 and says messaging accounts in India must move to INR by 31 December 2026, after which it stops delivering messages from non-INR accounts.¹

bananaleaf.ai charges Meta's rate plus a stated per-message markup, prepaid, and only for delivered messages: a broadcast reserves its estimated cost at launch and the undelivered part is refunded. Our platform plan is set per organisation; ask us for one monthly total that includes the plan, your users and your expected message volume. See also WhatsApp broadcasts for how the messaging limit shapes a bulk send.