WhatsApp Business Pricing Update of July 2025: Everything You Need to Know

Over the years, WhatsApp Business has been adopted by thousands of brands around the world that exchange billions of messages every day. 

Every year, businesses spend thousands, if not millions, of dollars on WhatsApp marketing. This means, a slight update in WhatsApp’s pricing model can result in significant cost surges in your marketing budget. 

Starting from July 2025, WhatsApp Business is making changes in its pricing structure, moving away from the conversation-based pricing model that we all know to a per-message-based structure. This update to the pricing model particularly emphasizes how you use the Utility and Marketing messages.

Having said that, to help you understand the changes happening in the WhatsApp Business pricing, I’ll explain them in detail in this article, how it will affect your WhatsApp outreach, and tell you some of the ways to reduce your WhatsApp Business costs due to these changes. 

WhatsApp Business pricing updates: What is changing?

With the update to WhatsApp’s cost structure, your business has to rethink how it uses the platform for various use cases, such as marketing or customer engagement. These messages transform the way you leverage WhatsApp and force you to mold your WhatsApp marketing strategy so that it still fits your budget. Below are some of the major updates to the WhatsApp Business pricing:

Per-message pricing structure

The major change in this pricing structure is WhatsApp moving to a per-message from a per-conversation model. This change further emphasizes the importance of the 24-hour reply sessions by mandating that you pay for every message (Utility or Marketing) that is successfully delivered.

This change makes it so that you have to pay for all the messages you send in these two categories, resulting in higher marketing costs. Here’s a table explaining the difference between the previous and current WhatsApp Business pricing structure: 

On top of this new model, the cost of WhatsApp messages varies based on a few factors like: 

• The type of message you are sending (Marketing, Utility, or Authentication)
• The location of your customers
• Messaging volume

The new per-message model gets rid of the “24-hour” window where you can freely engage users after customer-initiated conversations. From July 2025, there will be no “freebies” and you will need to pay for the messages you successfully send.

Although this change might appear against you at first glance, it provides better control over your spending since you are being charged for each message. This ensures that you will send highly relevant messages that better engage customers.

Tier-based volume discounts

Volume-based discounts were not part of WhatsApp’s original per-conversation model. With the July 2025 update, WhatsApp gives brands volume-based discounts if they are sending large volumes of messages. These discounts give businesses the freedom to adjust their WhatsApp marketing campaigns. 

Based on this system, you will get an automated discount on your messages as your monthly volume goes past a certain limit. However, keep in mind that this discount applies only to Utility and Authentication messages, lowering your per-message expense as your overall message volume increases. 

Here are some of the aspects of this tier-based system:

• Every month your messaging count resets
• Every type of message and country has varying discount tiers
• Your per-message costs are adjusted automatically every time you bypass a threshold
• If you have multiple WhatsApp Business accounts, they are all collectively counted in these discount tiers 

WhatsApp took this step to ensure WhatsApp Business messaging can compete with SMS or email marketing initiatives. Essential messaging types like WhatsApp OTPs or utility messages will become more cost-efficient when sent in bulk. 

As I said before, the discounts apply to the messages once you move past the threshold limit of the tier. Let’s understand it with an example. Suppose you are sending 1 million Utility messages in a month. The first 300,000 messages are charged according to the per-message cost of the country you are sending to. The remaining messages are discounted by 5, 10, or 15% as you cross tiers until they are delivered.

WhatsApp tools like Zixflow allow you to monitor the delivery rate of messages in the reporting dashboard. This way, you can effectively track how many messages you sent and whether they match the amount charged by WhatsApp. 

Utilizing the 24-hour window

Customer-initiated WhatsApp messages still open a 24-hour service session for you. During this window, you can send Service messages and Utility templates (like shipping updates or order confirmations) to your customers. 

There is one change here as well. Compared to the previous 1,000 Service message limitation within the 24-hour session, now you can send unlimited Service messages. 

Apart from the customer-initiated messages, users who started a chat using a Click-to-WhatsApp ad or got redirected from a Facebook Page, open a 72-hour session instead. At this time, all WhatsApp templates can be sent without getting charged.

Strictness towards Utility templates

Since a major part of this pricing update involves Utility messages, WhatsApp has increased the strictness when it comes to approving the Utility templates. With this update, you have to ensure that utility templates:

• Must not contain any marketing aspects including promotions, offers, or upselling elements
• Should not include discounts 
• No time-limited or flash sale announcements
• Do not include any CTAs for further engagement

Also, these messages should be: 

1. Asked for by customers (like tell me my shipping status)
2. Important to the customers (account safety alerts, priority updates, or password resets)

Some of the example responses to user-initiated messages such as shipping inquiry or password reset are:

• “Your order # 5489 is being shipped right now.” 
• “Your account password is reset as per your request.” 

If your submitted template fails to stick to these guidelines, then it will either be rejected or considered a marketing message instead. One more thing to take into account is that if your message violates these conditions continuously, it can lead to lowered WhatsApp messaging limits or permanent/temporary suspension of your WhatsApp Business Account.

WhatsApp is already monitoring the messaging templates more strictly but after the implementation of the July 2025 pricing update, the approval process will get more intense. 

No changes to the message costs

Even though WhatsApp is changing the pricing structure to per-message, it did not change the cost of each message. The cost of each type of message and the country remain the same as they were before this update.

This point is crucial to highlight because it shows WhatsApp’s aim with this pricing update is to allow businesses to be able to better control their spending rather than increasing the overall cost of WhatsApp marketing.

How will your business be affected by these WhatsApp pricing updates?

With the adoption of a per-message pricing structure, you get granular control over your WhatsApp outreach. However, when handled poorly, it can significantly ramp up your WhatsApp marketing budget if used without proper monitoring. 

For this reason, you need a clear understanding of the changes and how you can leverage them to boost your WhatsApp marketing ROI despite these updates:

Correct categorization of messaging templates

A big part of this WhatsApp Business pricing update revolves around Utility and Authentication message templates. To ensure you are charged correctly for the type of messages you are sending, you have to correctly organize your templates. 

This is because Marketing messages cost more compared to Utility or Authentication ones. And if your templates are categorized incorrectly, you can be charged more for something that should cost less. 

With the July 2025 update, Utility template approval has gotten more stringent and if they include any promotional elements, they either get rejected, or worse, be categorized as a marketing message. If you are not careful with template categorization, you risk getting your messages marked as spam, which can lead to your account getting suspended.

Overall, WhatsApp Business pricing updates are a sign that you need to create a systematic marketing plan to engage users via WhatsApp in order to save on costs. You can no longer send haphazard messages as they will cost you extra now.

Keep an eye on your message timing

As I said before, the per-message model doesn’t mean a major jump in your marketing expenses. The reason is that you don’t send multiple messages to the same customers during the day. On the other hand, if your WhatsApp marketing strategy consists of sending more than one message per day to customers, then you might see a jump in overall marketing cost.

I can tell you one way to somewhat keep your costs under control, tracking how often you send these messages. Timing your messages across different times of the day and controlling their frequency can reduce extra charges you might have to incur. 

What are the ways to streamline your WhatsApp marketing after the July 2025 pricing changes?

If you haven’t been actively managing your WhatsApp marketing initiatives, this pricing update is a wake-up call for you to optimize your outreach. With these changes, you can make the most of your WhatsApp communication and utilize the volume-based discounts if you intelligently adapt your strategies. Below are some of the tips that can help you with that:

No more automated bulk campaigns

With the per-message model, Meta is trying to make sure businesses only send relevant, valuable messages that better relate to your customers. So, if you have been sending bulk WhatsApp messages to promote your offerings using automated triggers, you should be ready to get billed marginally more than before.

Instead, what you should do is set up automations where messages are sent based on the actions performed by your audience. A great example of this is WhatsApp's abandoned cart recovery messages. Whenever a visitor adds an item to their cart but leaves without completing the checkout, you can send a timely WhatsApp message with an exclusive offer to encourage them to finish the purchase. 

Compared to cold WhatsApp marketing messages, this approach is much more effective and costs significantly less than sending thousands of messages and hoping to get a conversion. 

Reduce the number of promotional messages per day

It is not considered a good practice to send multiple marketing messages to customers in a single day. Not only will it increase the overall costs under the new pricing model but it can also be considered as spam by customers.

To resolve this issue, you can make sure customers who have already received a marketing message, don’t receive any more promotions for at least 2-3 days. WhatsApp automation tools like Zixflow include a scheduling feature that lets you send messages at a pre-determined time or skip contacts that have already been engaged. 

WhatsApp customer segmentation

Sending WhatsApp Broadcasts to your entire customer base seems like a waste of resources, particularly when sending cold marketing messages that have a lower chance of converting leads. What you need is personalized messages that resonate with your potential customers, and to do that, you need proper segmentation of your audience. 

Building a WhatsApp CRM where you can divide customers into custom lists by defining characteristics like previous purchase or browsing history. Once again, Zixflow is built to let you manage your contacts by creating multiple lists to segment them effectively. 

With customers divided into tailored lists, you can engage all of them with a personalized WhatsApp message at scale. Since you are sending highly relevant messages to contacts who are already segmented based on different aspects, you have a higher chance of getting quick conversions without having to send too many follow-ups.

Pay special attention to Utility messages

How you use Utility messages will play a huge role in controlling your marketing costs. When crafting these templates, you have to make sure that you are not violating any guidelines that are being tightened even more after the July 2025 pricing update. 

Make the templates to the point and be absolutely sure not to add any marketing content within them. The simpler your templates, the higher the chances of them getting approved and categorized correctly. 

Adopt a multichannel marketing strategy

The reason why WhatsApp switched to the per-message pricing structure is to make WhatsApp similar to other marketing channels in terms of costs. So, if you are heavily dependent on WhatsApp marketing, now might be a good time to consider a multichannel outreach approach to interact with your customers on other channels. 

Modern channels like RCS or traditional ones like email or SMS can be a great alternative to WhatsApp, allowing you to engage your customers without worrying about the additional costs of WhatsApp marketing. 

Having an omnichannel marketing infrastructure allows you to deliver a 360-degree customer engagement while leveraging channels that better fit your use cases. For example, RCS messaging is very similar to WhatsApp in terms of features but recipients don’t have to download any app. RCS is a native part of all the Android devices manufactured in the last few years.

Handle customer consent the right way

WhatsApp takes customer consent very seriously. If you are sending unsolicited messages to WhatsApp users, you risk getting them considered spam which can result in your WhatsApp Business account getting penalized. 

To avoid this from happening, only send messages to customers who have given you explicit permission to reach out to them. WhatsApp opt-ins are crucial as they allow you to connect with customers without worrying about getting punished by Meta for spammy or unsolicited messages. 

In addition to that, providing customers with a clearly visible opt-out option enables you to stop sending messages to uninterested customers, thereby lowering your outreach expenses. 

Stay on top of the WhatsApp Business pricing update

With the recent pricing update going live from 1 July 2025 WhatsApp is making major changes to its Business Platform. At a glance, the new per-message pricing structure might seem too expensive compared to the per-conversation one, but that is not the case. 

While the per-message model can be expensive for marketers who are not monitoring their campaigns, if you are actively keeping an eye on your WhatsApp communications, then you have more control over your budget than ever before. 

With the changes happening to the Utility guidelines and tier-based volume discounts, there is still potential for you to save on your marketing costs and stay in touch with your customers throughout the stages of the sales funnel.

However, to make the most of these features effectively, you need to go over your WhatsApp workflows and design your messaging templates to ensure you don’t accidentally miss any detail that can come back to bite you in the form of inflated costs.

We at Zixflow understand that even after going through this article, you might have some questions about how your business will be affected by this pricing change. Get in touch with our support team or book a demo if you need personalized help with adjusting your WhatsApp outreach strategy.

Frequently asked questions about WhatsApp Business pricing update of July 2025

Here are some of the common questions that you might have regarding the pricing update of the WhatsApp Business Platform:

Which aspect is mainly impacted by this pricing change?

The biggest change is WhatsApp moving to a per-message billing compared to previously well-known conversational-based pricing. You will be billed for all the messages sent successfully from your account. 

Is my WhatsApp marketing expense going to inflate after this update?

Not if you manage your campaigns. Unless you are sending more than one message to customers each day, the pricing change shouldn’t make much difference to your overall marketing expenses. 

What changed for Utility messages?

Previously, you got 1,000 free Utility messages every month. Now, you can send free unlimited Utility messages during the 24-hour customer-initiated session.

What are the guidelines for designing Utility templates?

Your Utility message templates: 

• Does not consist of any marketing content
• Do not ask recipients to take an action
• Have a straightforward tone
• Be sent as requested by the user 

What happens if my Utility messages don’t follow these guidelines?

If you submit Utility templates that violate WhatsApp’s message guidelines, then it can lead to them being rejected or considered as Marketing. If this happens, you might end up paying more or get your account penalized for sending the wrong type of message.

Can I save on my WhatsApp marketing spend after this pricing update?

To cut on your WhatsApp outreach expenses, you can:

• Engage customers once a day
• Consider getting rid of automated cold marketing campaigns
• Send WhatsApp messages based on customer actions
• Leverage other channels like RCS, email, SMS, or Push Notifications