From August 1, 2026, you will have to pay to use AI agent on WhatsApp Business. Not only this, the service messages which were completely free for the last two years will now have to be charged from October.
Let us know what this new rule of Meta is and how it will affect your business.
Meta has announced that starting August 1, companies using the Business AI agent on WhatsApp will be billed on a per-token basis. This is completely different from the existing per-message model. The company says that while AI plays a big role in customer service and sales, a lot of data and tokens are spent in processing user queries. Big AI companies like OpenAI and Anthropic also use the same token-based pricing model, and now Meta has also followed the same path.
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‘Meta Business Agent’ available on WhatsApp Business is an advanced AI tool. With its help, any business can create an AI robot that can immediately answer customer questions. This AI can book appointments for customers, recommend products and provide 24/7 customer support.
Under the new pricing model, companies will have to pay $2 i.e. approximately Rs 189 for 1 million tokens. According to Meta, a typical message costs about 20,000 to 25,000 tokens, which costs about 4 to 5 cents (about Rs 3.5 to 4.5).
For example, if a customer asks a short question like “When does your store open?” And it uses 4 messages, so it will cost about 80,000 tokens and its cost will be 16 to 20 cents. Whereas, if there is a complex technical question which takes 10 messages, then around 2.5 lakh tokens will be spent and the cost can go up to 40 to 50 cents.
WhatsApp Business users are going to get a second shock from October 1. Meta is reintroducing fees on non-template “service messages” after a nearly two-year exemption. The current price of these messages in India is around Rs 0.115 per message, and Meta will release its new rates by September 1.
According to estimates, WhatsApp has about 85 crore (850 Million) users in India. Meta receives more than $1 billion in revenue every year from India through business messaging. In such a situation, this new token system which is going to be implemented from August 1 and the message charge starting from October can increase Meta’s earnings manifold.