From 1st October, Meta will also charge for replies within the service window – the first 1,000 per number stay free every month. We're doubling your bonus and showing your costs transparently in the product.
What's changing at Meta?
Message type | Until now | From 1st October 2026 |
Service messages – free-form replies from team members, automations, or the AI Agent within the open 24-hour window | free | chargeable from the 1,001st message per month and number |
Utility templates within the open 24-hour window | free | chargeable per template |
Marketing and Utility templates outside the window | per template | unchanged |
New: 1,000 service messages per month stay free. This allowance applies per phone number and resets every month. Charges only start from the 1,001st service message. Unused free messages don't roll over.
Conversations from Click-to-WhatsApp ads keep their free 72-hour window.
💡 Note: Prices are now fixed: a service message costs the same in every market as a Utility or Authentication template. In the United Kingdom, that's €0.0182 per message; in Ireland, €0.0142 per message. Volume discounts don't apply to service messages.
What we've changed for you
1. We're doubling your Superchat Bonus
From 1ts October, we're doubling the monthly WhatsApp credit in the following plans:
Plan | Bonus from 1st October |
Basic | €20 / month |
Professional | €50 / month |
Advanced | €80 / month |
Your bonus is automatically used first for your WhatsApp charges every month. Unused credit expires; the full bonus is available again the following month. We pass Meta's fees through 1:1, with no markup. Contacts, conversations, and messages stay unlimited.
For 95% of the over 10,000 businesses we analysed, the bonus fully covers the new charges. Their out-of-pocket cost from 1st October: €0.
2. Your costs at a glance
Go to Settings → Plan & Billing → Budget. There you'll see, separately:
Superchat Bonus: how much of your free credit has been used this month
Your monthly budget: what you pay yourself once the bonus is used up – capped by your limit. Change it anytime via Adjust budget limit.
3. Usage & Analytics: history and breakdown
On the Budget page, click Usage & Analytics:
Spend over time, per day and colour-coded by template type
Filters for time period and WhatsApp account
Breakdown per account and number – by type and by destination country
This lets you see, before 1st October, how many replies and templates you're actually sending.
4. AI Agent: fewer messages per resolution
Since every reply from October onward counts toward your free allowance, the AI Agent now resolves requests using fewer messages:
Message grouping: if a customer sends several messages in quick succession, the AI Agent combines them and replies once – instead of replying three times to three messages.
Loop detection: if a conversation starts going in circles, the AI Agent stops repeating follow-up questions and hands off to your team instead.
Both are automatically active – there's nothing you need to change. This helps you stay under the 1,000 free service messages per number for longer.
What you should do now
Check your volume: Open Usage & Analytics and look at the last 30 days – this tells you whether you're going over 1,000 service messages per number each month.
Set a budget limit: Under Budget, set a limit that matches your volume.
Review your automations: Remove unnecessary confirmation and follow-up messages. Each one counts toward your free allowance.
FAQ
Is my Superchat plan or price changing?
No. This change only affects Meta's messaging fees. Your plan stays the same, and your bonus gets bigger.
Do I pay twice once the bonus is used up?
No. The bonus is always used up first each month. Only after that do you pay from your budget – up to your limit.
Do emoji reactions count toward service message billing?
No. Reactions are entirely excluded from billing, whether your business sends them or receives them from a customer. Reactions your business sends are never counted as service messages, and reactions a customer sends to you are inbound messages, which are never billed. Since they're excluded from billing entirely, reactions also don't count toward the 1,000 free service messages per number – they won't use up any of your free allowance either way.
Does the free allowance apply per workspace or per number?
Per phone number. If you have several WhatsApp numbers, each one gets its own 1,000 free service messages per month.
Where can I see which part Superchat is covering?
On the Budget page: Superchat Bonus is our share, Your spend is your own share.
More numbers on the price change
In our WhatsApp Business Cost Report 2026, we recalculated real usage from over 10,000 paying businesses against the new pricing – including forecasts for 11 industries and out-of-pocket cost after the bonus.