Since 1 July 2025, Meta has charged for the WhatsApp API per delivered message, not per conversation. For a Spanish number (+34), the euro rate in force since 1 October 2026 is €0.0585 per marketing message and €0.0166 per utility, authentication or service message. From that same date, service replies are charged again from the 1,001st message each month, per phone number.
Work out your bill: enter your volumes in our WhatsApp Business API cost calculator, with Meta's rates for Spain.
How Meta charges today
Meta charges the business, never the customer. Messages a user sends you are free, and of the ones you send, only those that are actually delivered are charged, according to its pricing page. The price depends on two things: the message category and the country code of the phone that receives it. A +34 number pays the Spain rate.
Meta has five categories. Each message belongs to only one, and generates one charge at most:
| Category | What it is | When you can send it |
|---|---|---|
| Marketing | Promotional template: offers, news, abandoned baskets | Any time, with an approved template |
| Utility | Template linked to something the customer asked for or did: appointment confirmation, order status | Any time, with an approved template |
| Authentication | Template with a code to verify someone's identity | Any time, with an approved template |
| Service | Free-form message (text, image, buttons) that replies to the customer, whether a person or a third-party AI writes it | Only inside the 24-hour window |
| Meta Business Agent | Free-form message generated by Meta's own AI agent | Only inside the 24-hour window |
The customer service window opens when the user messages or calls you. It lasts 24 hours, and each new message from them restarts it (service messages). Outside that window, you can only write to them with an approved template.
Watch the category. A template that mixes information and promotion, for example an order update with a discount, counts as marketing under the categorisation rules.
Rates for Spain in October 2026
Meta publishes its rates in one sheet per currency, as CSV and PDF, in the Rate cards and volume tiers section. The euro sheet is titled "Cost per message in EUR on the WhatsApp Business Platform, effective October 1, 2026". For Spain it says:
| Category | Price per delivered message |
|---|---|
| Marketing | €0.0585 |
| Utility | €0.0166 (list price) |
| Authentication | €0.0166 (list price) |
| Service | €0.0166 (from the 1,001st message of the month, per number) |
| Meta Business Agent | $2.00 per million tokens (global rate) |
Spain has no "international authentication" rate: the sheet marks that column as "n/a". The marketing rate for Spain went up on 1 July 2026.
Volume discounts
Only utility and authentication have volume tiers. Marketing and service always pay the same price. These are Spain's tiers, from the same euro sheet:
| Tier | Utility (messages a month) | Price | Authentication (messages a month) | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| List | 0 to 100,000 | €0.0166 | 0 to 300,000 | €0.0166 |
| -5% | 100,001 to 1,000,000 | €0.0158 | 300,001 to 2,000,000 | €0.0158 |
| -10% | 1,000,001 to 4,500,000 | €0.0149 | 2,000,001 to 10,000,000 | €0.0149 |
| -15% | 4,500,001 to 40,000,000 | €0.0141 | 10,000,001 to 20,000,000 | €0.0141 |
| -20% | 40,000,001 to 80,000,000 | €0.0133 | 20,000,001 to 40,000,000 | €0.0133 |
| -25% | Over 80,000,000 | €0.0125 | Over 40,000,000 | €0.0125 |
The discount applies only to the messages that fall within each tier, not to every message in the month. Meta adds up the messages from all the accounts in your business portfolio, by country and category, and only counts the ones it charges for. The counter resets each month, at midnight in your account's time zone. If you send fewer than 100,000 utility templates a month, you always pay the list price.
You choose the currency once
Meta bills in 16 currencies, the euro among them. The currency is chosen when you create the messaging account and can't be changed afterwards; to move to another one, Meta offers a migration API. If your customers are in Spain, create the account in euros and save yourself the conversions.
What's free and what stopped being free
These still cost nothing, according to the pricing page:
- The messages your customers send you.
- Messages that don't get delivered.
- The first 1,000 service messages each month, for each of the business's phone numbers. Unused ones don't roll over to the next month.
- Almost everything you send in the "free entry point window". It opens when a customer messages you from a click-to-WhatsApp ad, using the Android or iOS app, and you reply within the customer service window. It can last up to 7 days. Meta Business Agent messages are still charged.
- For public bodies and non-profits that Meta considers eligible, service messages beyond the 1,000 free ones, until 31 December 2027.
And the WhatsApp Business app is a free download. If you connect your app number to the API (what Meta calls "coexistence"), the messages you send from the app are still free; the ones sent through the API pay the normal rate.
What stopped being free on 1 October 2026:
- Service messages. They had been free since 1 November 2024.
- Utility templates sent inside the 24-hour window. They had been free since 1 July 2025.
One detail not to miss: if your account has no payment method, Meta delivers the 1,000 free service messages and stops delivering the rest. A bot that worked fine in September can go silent halfway through October.
Recent changes, in order
| Date | Change |
|---|---|
| 1 November 2024 | Service conversations become free |
| 1 July 2025 | Charging per message instead of per conversation. Utility free inside the window. Volume tiers for utility and authentication |
| 15 January 2026 | The terms restrict providers of general-purpose AI assistants (AI Providers) |
| 1 July 2026 | Meta Business Agent becomes the fifth category. The marketing rate for Spain goes up |
| 1 October 2026 | Charging comes back for service, with 1,000 free a month per number, and for utility inside the window |
In September 2025, Meta also published a pricing calendar: it only changes rates on the first day of each quarter. It gives a month's notice if a rate changes, three months if it adds something to the model and six months if it changes the whole model. The next possible date is 1 January 2027.
Direct with Meta or through a provider
Many people call the intermediaries "BSPs". Meta mainly distinguishes two types of partner, Solution Partners and Tech Providers:
| Route | Who bills you for the messages | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Direct Cloud API | Meta, using your payment method | You, or your developer, build the app, the server and the webhooks |
| Tech Provider | Meta bills you for API usage; the provider bills you for its services | You need your own payment method with Meta |
| Solution Partner | The partner, who can bill you directly for API usage | They can sign you up on their own credit line, without you adding a payment method |
Meta's pricing page only charges per delivered message; it doesn't publish a monthly fee for using the Cloud API. If you go with a partner, ask three things in writing: whether they pass on Meta's rates as they are or with a mark-up, what fixed fee they charge, and how you take your number with you if you change provider.
There is one case where a partner is mandatory: if you want to keep using the WhatsApp Business app on the same number you connect to the API. That coexistence can only be switched on by a Solution Partner or a Tech Provider, and it limits the number to 20 messages per second.
How to work out your monthly bill
Follow these steps with the figures from a normal month:
- Count the free-form replies you send: those are service messages. Subtract 1,000 for each number.
- Count the utility templates: reminders, confirmations, status updates. Since October 2026 they all pay, inside or outside the window.
- Count the marketing templates.
- Add the verification codes, if you send any.
- Multiply each group by the Spain rate, if your customers have +34 numbers. Customers on foreign numbers, which are common on the Costa Blanca, are billed at the rate for their own country code.
- Add what Meta doesn't bill: the AI model, the server and the provider, if there is one.
An example with the official rates
Take an estate agency with a single number. In one month it sends 3,000 replies to enquiries, 1,200 viewing reminders and 400 new-listing alerts to contacts who agreed to receive them. The figures are an assumption made for the calculation, not a real case.
| Item | Messages | Rate | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Service (3,000 minus 1,000 free) | 2,000 | €0.0166 | €33.20 |
| Utility (reminders) | 1,200 | €0.0166 | €19.92 |
| Marketing (listing alerts) | 400 | €0.0585 | €23.40 |
| Meta total | €76.52 |
If some of those contacts came from a click-to-WhatsApp ad and you replied in time, those messages are free for as long as their free entry point window lasts.
If the 3,000 replies are written by Meta's AI agent instead of your own system, they change category. Meta estimates that a Meta Business Agent message uses between 20,000 and 25,000 tokens, or about 4 to 5 US cents. That would come to around $120 to $150 a month for that line, without the 1,000 free messages, which don't exist in that category.
What doesn't appear on Meta's bill
Meta's rate is only one part. An AI bot adds three more:
- The AI model. You pay the provider per token. For example, Anthropic charges $0.10 per million input tokens and $0.50 per million output tokens with Claude Haiku 5.5, and OpenAI charges the same with gpt-6-luna. This guide to chatbots has a calculation per 1,000 replies.
- The server that receives the messages and calls the model.
- Build and maintenance. As a reference, our published prices, excluding VAT, are €1,500 to €6,000 for one automation workflow, €5,000 to €20,000 for several workflows and €4,000 to €12,000 for a first AI product. Always at a fixed price, after a free assessment that takes 2 to 5 days.
The pieces you need to put together are set out step by step in how to build a WhatsApp AI agent.
Five ways to overpay
- Putting a promotion in a utility template. It becomes marketing and, in Spain, each send costs €0.0585 instead of €0.0166: about 3.5 times more.
- Splitting each reply into several messages. From the 1,001st, each service message counts separately. On top of that, the API only allows one message every 6 seconds to the same user on a sustained basis.
- Not having a payment method. After the 1,000 free service messages, Meta stops delivering them.
- Choosing the wrong currency when you create the account. Afterwards it can only be changed with a migration.
- Messaging people who aren't expecting it. You need the recipient's prior opt-in, and Meta limits businesses whose quality stays low. A new portfolio can only message 250 unique users every 24 hours outside the window until it moves up a level.
If you want us to estimate your bill with your real volumes and tell you what is worth automating first, see our process automation or AI solutions services. We do the work ourselves, without subcontracting, with data hosted in the EU.
Sources
- Meta, Pricing on the WhatsApp Business Platform (updated 30 September 2026), with the rate cards per currency under Rate cards and volume tiers: EUR sheet "effective October 1, 2026".
- Meta, New pricing policy for AI Providers (updated 15 October 2026).
- Meta, Service messages and the 24-hour window.
- Meta, Template fundamentals and Template categorization.
- Meta, Partners: Solution Partners and Tech Providers.
- Meta, Onboard WhatsApp Business app users (coexistence).
- Meta, Messaging limits, Get opt-in for WhatsApp and About the WhatsApp Business Platform.
- WhatsApp, About WhatsApp Business.
- Anthropic, Pricing.
- OpenAI, API Pricing.