New WhatsApp Pricing (2023)

The WhatsApp pricing model change in 3 different stages (March, April, and June 1 2023,) for the new business-initiated conversation categories to reflect the different values each of these conversation types drives for businesses and people.

Key WhatsApp Pricing Model Changes

Timeline

March 1, 2023

Changes to free entry point conversations

User-initiated messages through free entry-point conversations will have an extended free conversation window from 24 hours to 72 hours.

April 1, 2023

A. Conversation categories

To replace the Business-initiated and User-initiated Conversations, WhatsApp introduce 4 new conversation categories regarding different conversation scenarios:

Utility conversations

Business-initiated conversations relating to a transaction

Post-purchase notifications
Recurring billing statements to customers who have opted in.

Authentication

Business-initiated conversations enable businesses to authenticate users with one-time passcodes at multiple steps during the login process.

Account Registration
Account recovery
Integrity challenges.

Marketing conversation

Business-initiated conversations to market a product or service to customers

Relevant offers to customers who have opted in.
Other types of conversation that not qualified as authentication or utility conversations

Service conversations

Any user-initiated conversations like resolving a customer inquiry.

B. New Template category

Marketing

*Recommend by WhatsApp

Most flexible – they do not relate to a specific, agreed-upon transaction and instead may relate to the business and/or its products/services, including:

Promotions or offers Welcoming/closing messages
Updates, invitations or recommendations
Requests to respond or complete a new transaction.

Utility

Related to a specific, agreed-upon transaction and accomplish one of the following:

Confirm or suspend a transaction
Provide an update or reminder post-transaction.

Authentication

Enable businesses to authenticate users with one-time 4-8 digit alphanumeric passcodes potentially at multiple steps in the login process such as

Account Verification
Account recovery
Integrity challenges etc...

Any template that has a mix of utility and marketing content will be classified as a marketing template.

Changes to template creation

Category selection will be required in the template creation process. This will also gate whether a business gets access to features like specific ROI metrics for marketing or one-tap for authentication.
Category selection will be available in the WhatsApp Manager and Graph API.
All templates with variables must have a sample to be submitted to WhatsApp for review.

Changes to template review and approval

When a template is submitted, WhatsApp will prompt users to change categories if their selection does not match the classification.

WhatsApp will provide a response verifying whether the category selected was accepted or rejected when a template is created via API.

The template category will not change after the approval process, so you will always know the price of a conversation before it begins

June 1, 2023

A. Changes to free-tier conversations

For every WABA account, the first 1000 conversations per month are Free for Service conversations (user-initiated) ONLY.

User-initiated conversations will not be charged unless the business responds with free-form messages or auto-replies.

B. Conversation charges will be based on the template category

Cost per conversation in USD, effective August 1, 2024

Market	Marketing	Utility	Authentication	Service
Argentina	0.0711	0.0391	0.0422	0.0363
Brazil	0.0719	0.0092	0.0362	0.0345
Chile	0.1022	0.0230	0.0606	0.0522
Colombia	0.0144	0.0002	0.0089	0.0069
Egypt	0.1234	0.0060	0.0711	0.0741
France	0.1647	0.0345	0.0795	0.0988
Germany	0.1570	0.0633	0.0883	0.0942
India	0.0123	0.0016	0.0016	0.0046
Indonesia	0.0473	0.0230	0.0345	0.0219
Israel	0.0406	0.0061	0.0194	0.0207
Italy	0.0795	0.0345	0.0435	0.0444
Malaysia	0.0989	0.0161	0.0207	0.0253
Mexico	0.0501	0.0115	0.0275	0.0121
Netherlands	0.1837	0.0575	0.0828	0.1025
Nigeria	0.0593	0.0077	0.0330	0.0357
Pakistan	0.0544	0.0062	0.0262	0.0163
Peru	0.0808	0.0230	0.0434	0.0206
Russia	0.0922	0.0460	0.0493	0.0458
Saudi Arabia	0.0523	0.0132	0.0260	0.0224
South Africa	0.0436	0.0087	0.0207	0.0193
Spain	0.0707	0.0230	0.0393	0.0424
Turkey	0.0125	0.0061	0.0095	0.0035
United Arab Emirates	0.0442	0.0181	0.0205	0.0219
United Kingdom	0.0608	0.0253	0.0412	0.0446
North America	0.0288	0.0046	0.0155	0.0101
Rest of Africa	0.0259	0.0070	0.0166	0.0417
Rest of Asia Pacific	0.0842	0.0181	0.0489	0.0258
Rest of Central & Eastern Europe	0.0989	0.0406	0.0641	0.0288
Rest of Latin America	0.0851	0.0130	0.0512	0.0486
Rest of Middle East	0.0392	0.0181	0.0205	0.0251
Rest of Western Europe	0.0681	0.0345	0.0435	0.0457
Other	0.0695	0.0089	0.0350	0.0167