WhatsApp Now Charges for Service Messages: What Changed on October 1, 2026

A service message is any normal reply you send inside the 24-hour customer service window: the text, photos, voice notes and buttons your team or your AI agent sends after a customer writes to you. Meta made these free in November 2024. From October 1, 2026, they are charged per delivered message.

Utility templates sent inside that window, such as an order confirmation or a delivery update, are charged again too. They had been free inside the window since July 1, 2025.

The rules for when you can message are the same. You can still send free-form messages only while the 24-hour window is open, and you still need an approved template after it closes. Only the price changed.

Every business phone number gets 1,000 free service messages each calendar month. Charging starts at the 1,001st delivered service message. A reply that fails to deliver doesn't use the allowance.

The allowance belongs to each phone number, not to your account. If you have three WhatsApp numbers, you get three separate allowances of 1,000.

Unused messages don't roll over. The count starts again at zero each month, so a quiet month doesn't buy you extra free messages for a busy one.

A service message costs the same as a utility or authentication message in the same market. The price depends on your customer's country, not yours.

For customers in Sri Lanka, a service message now costs $0.0020. The same October update cut Sri Lanka's utility and authentication rate by about 82%, from $0.0113 to $0.0020. Some other rates: India $0.0014, North America $0.0034, the United Arab Emirates $0.0157, the United Kingdom $0.0220 and Germany $0.0550.

Here is what that means in practice. Say a Sri Lankan shop sends 3,000 service replies to local customers in a month. The first 1,000 are free, and the other 2,000 cost 2,000 × $0.0020 = $4.00. The same 3,000 replies to customers in Germany would cost $110.

Rates for marketing, utility and authentication templates are published separately by Meta and change from time to time. Check Meta's rate card for your customers' countries before planning a big campaign.

Chats that start from a Click-to-WhatsApp ad or a Facebook Page call-to-action button open a 72-hour free entry point window. Every message inside that window is still free, service messages included, and those messages don't use your 1,000.

A free-form message is only ever charged once. A promotional line inside a normal reply is charged as a service message, not as an extra marketing message.

Messages you send from the WhatsApp Business app on your phone aren't part of this change. It only covers messages sent through the WhatsApp Business Platform (the API), which is what Convertlr uses.

Convertlr does not charge for WhatsApp messages and adds no markup. Meta bills message fees straight to the payment method on your own WhatsApp Business Account, the same way it already bills marketing templates.

Your Convertlr plan price doesn't change because of this, and message fees never use your AI credits. Your Convertlr subscription and your Meta message bill are two separate things.

This is the step that matters most. Meta said it would stop delivering service messages from any account without a payment method on file once charging started. If your account has no card, your replies may not be reaching customers.

To check, open Meta Business Suite, go to Billing & payments (Billing Hub) and select your WhatsApp Business Account. Make sure a valid card is listed. If you aren't sure who manages your Meta business, ask whoever set up your WhatsApp number.

Convertlr now shows how many of the 1,000 free service messages each of your numbers has used this month, on the Billing page in your dashboard. Once a number goes past 1,000, it also shows how many messages Meta has charged. The numbers come from Meta's own analytics and update every hour.

Your AI agent is also careful with replies. When a customer sends several messages in a row, it answers them in one reply instead of one reply each. It doesn't answer OTP codes and automated notifications other businesses send to your number. And it stays quiet when a customer just says "ok" or "thanks" and there's nothing left to answer.

If you run Click-to-WhatsApp ads, Convertlr marks chats that came from an ad and shows how long the 72-hour free window has left. Your team can then answer the questions that matter while replies are still free.

Does Convertlr charge me for messages? No. Meta charges message fees directly to your WhatsApp Business Account. Convertlr adds no message fees or markup.

Is the free allowance per number or per account? Per number. Each WhatsApp number gets its own 1,000 free service messages a month.

Do messages I send from the WhatsApp Business app on my phone count? No. The change covers the WhatsApp Business Platform (the API) only.

Are templates affected? Marketing templates are charged as before. Utility templates sent inside the 24-hour window are now charged at the utility rate, and utility templates sent outside it were already charged.

What happens after the first 1,000? Your messages keep sending as normal. Meta charges each extra delivered service message at your customer's country rate, as long as there's a payment method on your account.