What does the WhatsApp API cost in Egypt? Replying is free

It comes down to one question: who spoke first?

Since 2026 Meta bills per message, not per conversation. There is no "open a 24-hour window and send what you like" any more; each template message you send is billed on its own. But — and this is the part nobody says — that only applies to messages you start.

The real rates — to an Egyptian number

Meta prices by the country of the number you send to, not yours. These come from our invoices: the lowest and highest amount we were ever charged are the same number, which is what a published rate looks like from the invoice side.

Converted at 55 EGP to the dollar. Meta bills in USD, so the pound figure is approximate and moves with the rate.

Regular WhatsApp, WhatsApp Business, and the API — which one costs money?

This is the most asked question, and where most of the confusion starts. There are three different things called WhatsApp, and only one of them is billed:

So if you are asking "does WhatsApp Business cost money?" — the app does not. The API does. And if you do not need a team, a bot, or a link to your shop, the free app is enough and there is nothing here worth paying for.

Bulk sends and broadcasts — how they are billed

There is no such thing as a "broadcast price". A broadcast is a set of messages and each one is billed on its own — the single-message rate multiplied by the count, not a flat campaign fee. A broadcast to a thousand numbers with a marketing template is 1,000 × 3 EGP = 3,000 EGP, whether they answer or not.

The same thousand as utility messages — an order confirmation or a shipping update — is 200 EGP instead of 3,000. The difference is not the count; it is the template category.

What changes on 1 October 2026

Your replies inside the 24-hour window are free today — and from 1 October 2026 each phone number gets 1,000 free a month, with the rest charged at the customer's market utility rate.

So the first row in the table above — "replying to a customer" — will not stay at zero forever. Meta calls that message a "service message": any free-form reply to a customer who wrote to you, whether a teammate or the AI agent typed it. It is billed per message, not per conversation, so a reply in three bubbles is three messages. Past the thousand, the rate is the same utility rate as to any Egyptian number, with no volume discount.

The allowance is per number; two numbers means a thousand each. Anyone answering fewer than a thousand a month — which describes most stores — will not notice. The full explanation, and the points still unsettled, are on the service-messages page, with more examples in the bill examples.

Three worked examples: 100, 1,000 and 10,000 orders a month

So the numbers compare, the assumptions are the same across all three: every order produces two utility messages (confirmation + shipping update), every order has a conversation with three replies from you, and the marketing broadcast — if you send one — is one message a month per customer. Replies are counted with the October allowance (first 1,000 free), so before 1 October that row is zero for you today.

All figures in EGP at 55 to the dollar; an estimate, not an invoice.

Read this table across, not down. At 100 orders the whole Meta bill is 40 EGP — the subscription is the bill, and that is where a free tier elsewhere makes sense if you need neither an AI agent nor a team. At 10,000 orders the single broadcast alone is 35,420 EGP, far more than the subscription — and there what matters is not the platform's name but how many marketing messages you start, and whether your alerts are registered as utility or marketing.

Work out your own bill

Put in a normal month. The calculator separates what you owe Meta from the platform subscription, and shows how many of those messages cost you nothing.

An estimate, not an invoice. Meta's fees are billed to your own Meta account, and nobody adds a markup on top of them here.

What decides the kind? The template, not the words

This is where most people go wrong. You do not choose "utility or marketing" as you send — you register a template with Meta, Meta classifies and approves it, and that classification is what gets billed. Put a promotion inside a template registered as an order confirmation and Meta will reject it or pause the template.

Four things that raise the bill for no reason

Meta's fees are one thing; the platform is another

Everything above goes to Meta, billed to your own account there — we take nothing on top of it. Then there is the platform that runs the API: it connects the number, runs the bot, puts your team on one inbox and keeps the conversations. Our WhatsApp plan is 1,000 EGP a month, which is the last line in the calculator.

And this is the question to ask any other platform: "what do you add on top of Meta's price?" — because some resell the message at their own rate above Meta's, and then you are paying twice.

The price changes by country

Meta prices by the country of the number you send to. These are utility rates from our own invoices:

A utility message to a Saudi number is about a third of the Egyptian price. A page per country, in its own currency, is on the way.

From Meta's report of our own numbers — pricing_analyticssample 21,667 messagesmeasured 5 September 2026

Questions we are asked