What Is a Service Message?
A service message is a non-template reply, such as a typed answer, image, or document sent through the API by your team or a third-party automation. It can only be sent within 24 hours of the customer’s latest message. Each new customer message resets that window; your reply does not.How the 1,000 Free Deliveries Work
- The allowance belongs to each business phone number, across its customers and destinations. It is not 1,000 messages per customer, country, agent, or conversation.
- The allowance resets monthly. Unused deliveries do not carry forward.
- Count delivered messages, not chats. Sending three separate replies that all arrive consumes three deliveries.
- If you use API group messaging, 1:1 and group service deliveries share the same allowance. One group message delivered to five recipients consumes five deliveries.
- Reaction messages remain free and do not consume the allowance.
- Template messages do not consume or benefit from the service allowance.
Country-Wise Service Rates
These rates apply per delivered service message after your phone number’s monthly allowance is exhausted, effective 1 October 2026. Choose your account’s billing currency: INR (Indian rupees) or USD (US dollars). Amounts are displayed to six decimal places and exclude applicable taxes.Service messages have no volume tiers. INR and USD are separate billing currencies; the values are not exchange-rate conversions.
Calculate Your Monthly Charges
For one phone number sending only standard 1:1 service replies to one destination: Billable service deliveries = monthly eligible service deliveries minus 1,000, with a minimum of zero. Service cost = billable service deliveries × destination service rate. If you serve multiple countries, apply each destination’s rate to the deliveries charged after the shared allowance is used. Do not subtract 1,000 separately for each country. Exclude deliveries covered by an eligible free-message exception.Example: 1,500 Service Replies to India
Assume one business phone number, all deliveries inside open 24-hour windows, and no free entry point deliveries or other exemptions.
The INR and USD totals are alternatives for different billing currencies. This example excludes applicable taxes.
What Remains Free?
Incoming customer messages and reaction messages remain free. Service deliveries during an eligible free entry point window also remain free. This is a separate window associated with qualifying entry points such as ads that click to WhatsApp; a normal customer reply alone does not create it. See Meta’s free entry point rules. Meta also provides a service-message exemption for eligible government and nonprofit organizations through 31 December 2027. Eligibility is determined by Meta.This page covers standard WhatsApp Business Platform service messages. Meta Business Agent messages and businesses subject to Meta’s separate AI Providers pricing policy have different rules. A third-party bot replying for an ordinary business is not automatically a Meta Business Agent.