What an AI bot charges your wallet for the tokens it reads and writes, by model. In US dollars per 1 million tokens.
Model
Input
Cached input
Output
Effective , excluding GST. Input is what the bot reads (your instructions, the conversation and any documents); output is what it writes, including reasoning. GPT-6 and GPT-5.6 models: on prompts of 1,024 tokens or more, new input is charged at 1.25 times the input rate, as OpenAI charges for writing it to its cache. Very long prompts (over 272,000 tokens on GPT, 200,000 on Gemini Pro) are charged at a higher long-context rate. AI voice calls are charged per minute.
How WhatsApp pricing works
When am I charged for a message?
Only when a message is delivered. Messages that fail are not charged, and messages your customers send you are always free. Every delivered message has one category and one charge.
What are the message types?
Marketing is for offers and promotions. Utility is for updates about an order or account. Authentication is for one-time passwords. Service is any free-form reply to a customer. The first three are templates approved by Meta, and Meta decides which category a template falls in.
What is the 24-hour customer service window?
When a customer messages you, a 24-hour window opens, and it resets each time they message again. Inside it you can reply free-form. Outside it you can only send templates. Since 1 October 2026, utility templates are charged even inside the window.
What is free?
Messages from your customers. The first 1,000 service messages each month on every business number (unused ones do not carry over). And chats that start from a Click-to-WhatsApp ad on the mobile app: once you reply, Meta opens a free window that can stay open for up to 7 days, and marketing, utility, authentication and service messages in it are not charged.
Does the price depend on the country?
Yes. The rate is set by the country code of the person receiving the message, not by where your business is. Meta publishes rates for 47 markets. The rates above are for India. For other countries, use the WhatsApp cost calculator.
Are there volume discounts?
Meta lowers its utility and authentication rates at very high monthly volumes, counted across all your WhatsApp accounts and reset every month. For India the first tier starts after 25 million utility or 750,000 authentication messages in a month. Marketing and service messages have no volume tiers. If you send at that scale, talk to us about Enterprise pricing.
What is the authentication-international rate?
Meta charges a higher authentication rate, ₹2.4971 per message for India, to large businesses based outside the country they are messaging. It applies once a business passes 750,000 such messages in 30 days, and Meta gives 30 days of notice first.
What about Meta Business Agent?
Meta Business Agent is Meta’s own AI agent and a separate category. Meta charges $2.00 per 1 million tokens, roughly 4 to 5 US cents a reply, and these replies are never free. Estimate it with the bot cost calculator.
How often do these rates change?
Meta can change its rates on the first day of a quarter (1 January, 1 April, 1 July, 1 October), with at least one month of notice. The rates on this page are effective 1 October 2026.
All prices exclude GST. Usage beyond your included bot credits is charged to your wallet.
