WhatsApp Replies Stop Being Free on 1 October — What It Costs Indian Businesses
From 1 October 2026 Meta starts charging for the free-form replies businesses send inside WhatsApp's 24-hour window. Indian businesses get 1,000 free per number, then Rs 0.1150 each.
Meta is ending one of the most widely used free allowances on the WhatsApp Business Platform. From 1 October 2026, the free-form replies a business sends inside the 24-hour customer service window become chargeable, and utility templates sent inside that same window lose the exemption they have had since July 2025.
For Indian businesses the rate is Rs 0.1150 per service message, the same as a utility template, before 18% GST. Each business phone number gets 1,000 free service messages a month; billing starts at the 1,001st. The allowance resets monthly, does not roll over, and unlike utility and authentication messages, service messages get no volume discount at any scale.
Who this actually hits
Businesses whose WhatsApp bill is dominated by marketing broadcasts will barely notice. The businesses that will feel it are the conversational ones — clinics, salons, coaching institutes, service teams working a shared inbox — where enquiries arrive and a human answers back and forth fifteen times before anything is decided. Every one of those replies is now a line item.
A salon chain running three outlets, sending 4,000 marketing messages, 5,000 in-window appointment reminders and 9,000 replies a month, moves from roughly Rs 4,100 to roughly Rs 5,600. That is a 36% increase on a bill nobody modelled to move.
What has not changed
Inbound messages remain free. The 72-hour free entry point window that opens from a Click-to-WhatsApp ad or a Facebook Page CTA button survives intact, which makes paid acquisition the last genuinely free delivery path after October. And India is not among the markets whose marketing, utility or authentication rates move on 1 October — those changes affect nine other markets being shifted onto standalone rate cards.
One thing to do this week
Meta has indicated that service message delivery can stop if a valid payment method is not on file before the charges begin. Accounts that have been coasting on free service traffic and never added a card should check the billing section in Meta Business Suite now, not on 1 October.
We have published the full India rate card, worked examples by vertical, and a calculator that shows your bill before and after the change.
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