New Pricing for the Twilio API for WhatsApp

January 21, 2019
Written by

Twilio WhatsApp Business API Integration
  • WhatsApp announced updated pricing for Template Messages today that will go into effect on March 1, 2019. Explore it in detail here.
  • WhatsApp charges a separate rate to deliver messages to each of more than 140 countries today.
  • This update greatly simplifies pricing for Template Messages by introducing per-country pricing for the top 24 WhatsApp markets and per-region pricing for other countries. For example, countries in Latin America that are not in the list of top 24 countries will all have the same price.
  • It also introduces standard volume tiered pricing that provides progressively increasing discounts for higher volumes.
  • It does not affect Session Messages, which will continue to be priced at $0.005 per message.

Simplified Pricing

A Template Message is a pre-approved message template for outbound notifications like delivery alerts and appointment reminders. You must use a WhatsApp Template Message to reach a user if more than 24 hours have elapsed since they last responded to you. WhatsApp charges a per message price for Template Messages. Before this update, each of more than 140 countries had a separate price. For example, it would cost you $0.0042 to send a message to someone in India, $0.0085 to the United States and $0.0473 to Brazil. WhatsApp decides which country they belong to based on the country code of the phone number linked to their WhatsApp account.

The new pricing greatly reduces the number of per-country rates you need to keep track of. Instead of providing separate pricing for each country, WhatsApp now provides per-country pricing for only their top 24 countries, with per-region pricing for the rest. These per-country rates for the top 24 countries are the same as before. For example, if you have users in India, Vietnam, Cambodia and Bangladesh, instead of paying a separate price for each country, you will now pay a per-country rate of $0.0042 for India, since it is a top-24 country, and a per-region Rest of Asia-Pacific rate for Vietnam, Cambodia and Bangladesh of $0.0505.

WhatsApp Session messages are any messages sent and received in response to a user-initiated message to your application. A messaging session starts when a user sends your application a message, and lasts for 24 hours from the most recently received message. Twilio charges a flat price of $0.005 for each Session Message you send or receive which will remain unchanged.  

Explore the new pricing in detail on the Facebook website here. Pricing on the Twilio web page will be updated shortly to reflect the new rates.

Volume Tiered Pricing

The following monthly volume tiers are now available, with progressively increasing discounts for each — first 250k, next 750k, next 2 million, next 3 million, next 4 million, next 5 million, next 10 million and greater than 25 million. Message volumes will not be aggregated across countries or regions while determining discounts.

Explore the volume discounts in detail on the Facebook website here