WhatsApp Business API pricing in India: the rates, in rupees.

How Meta charges in India

Meta charges the WhatsApp Business Platform per delivered message. The rate depends on two things: the category of the message (marketing, utility, authentication or service) and the country calling code of the person who receives it. A message to a +91 number is billed at the India rate, whatever the country of the business that sends it — with one exception for authentication, explained below.

Messages customers send to the business are free. Replies inside the 24-hour customer service window (service messages) are free for the first 1,000 a month per business phone number, then charged. How the categories and windows work is explained in WhatsApp Business API: how it works and what it costs.

Marketing costs about 7.5 times a utility message

In India, a marketing message costs ₹0.8631 and a utility message ₹0.115: the gap is the first thing to design for. A booking confirmation, a delivery update or a payment receipt is utility when it is specific to the customer and has no promotion in it. Add a discount code to the same message and Meta treats it as marketing — and, since April 2025, approves a template submitted as utility as marketing when its content is promotional. We explain the rules in WhatsApp message templates.

Meta also lists India among the markets whose marketing rate went up on 1 January 2026, and whose authentication-international rate went up on 1 April 2026.

How the tiers are counted

Meta adds up the messages of the whole business portfolio, across all its WhatsApp accounts and phone numbers, separately for each market and each category. Only charged messages count, and the count starts again every month. For most small and mid-sized Indian businesses, the utility list rate applies: the first discount starts at 25 million utility messages a month.

Authentication codes sent from abroad

India has an authentication-international rate, in place since 1 July 2024. A business based outside India pays it for one-time passwords sent to Indian numbers once Meta has made it eligible — Meta's criterion is more than 750,000 messages outside customer service windows in a moving 30 days to users in the markets that have such a rate — and from a start date Meta sets for that business. A business based in India pays the domestic rate (₹0.115) for codes to Indian users.

INR billing: the deadline of 31 December 2026

Since 1 January 2026, Meta bills India-based businesses in rupees: it applies to solution providers and to businesses integrated directly with the platform whose Sold-To country in Meta's Billing Hub is India.

• Deadline: every messaging account of an eligible business portfolio must be migrated to INR by 31 December 2026.
• After that: from 1 January 2027, Meta says it will no longer deliver the messages of the non-INR messaging accounts of eligible businesses.
• How: a Currency Migration API has been available since 1 June 2026. The currency of an account is chosen when it is created and cannot be changed afterwards, which is why Meta provides a migration path.

A worked example

An illustration, not a client: imagine a clinic in Pune that sends, in one month, to Indian numbers only:

1. 10,000 marketing messages (a health check-up campaign): 10,000 × ₹0.8631 = ₹8,631.
2. 5,000 utility messages (appointment confirmations and reminders): 5,000 × ₹0.115 = ₹575.
3. 1,000 authentication codes (patient portal log-ins): 1,000 × ₹0.115 = ₹115.
4. 3,000 replies inside customer service windows, from one number: the first 1,000 are free, 2,000 × ₹0.115 = ₹230.
5. Meta's charges for the month: ₹9,551. Messages patients send to the clinic cost nothing. This estimate leaves out any tax shown on the invoice and any fee of a solution provider, which sets its own prices.

How to keep the bill low

• Answer while the customer is there. A reply in the service window costs nothing within the 1,000 free a month per number, then ₹0.115; the same answer the next day needs a template.
• Keep utility messages clean. A confirmation with an upsell in it is billed as marketing. Send the confirmation, and the offer separately, to people who opted in to offers.
• Send marketing to people who read it. Meta limits how many marketing messages a person receives when they stop engaging; see WhatsApp messaging limits.
• Plan the INR migration now. An account that is still billed in another currency on 1 January 2027 stops delivering.