WhatsApp rates – updated

We previously indicated where our rates for WhatsApp Calling and Messaging would land. We’re now fully approved by Meta and in active beta and looking to finalise them (hint: they’re changing). Pricing intentions are correct at time of publication but if reading this in the future, it will be superseded by formal pricing documents.

The first thing to be clear on is who charges for what. When we refer to our pricing/rates, we’re referring to charges Simwood makes to you for handling messages or calls. Over and above this, WhatsApp levy a charge on the end-user business, directly by default but we’re working on bringing those through to be rebilled by Simwood (in addition to our own charges) for packaging into your solutions so you can own the entire relationship. You can see WhatsApp’s pricing (including January 2026 changes) in their Developer Docs.

While WhatsApp Messaging has been available for some time through CPaaS platforms, as the only actual carrier in the world to implement WhatsApp Calling (and Messaging), we look at things in a very different way. Twilio et all can profit from the lockin of their platform and charge based on the value delivered (whether directly or not), in a market with little competition. This makes them incredibly expensive when looked at through the lens of an operator used to charging in a cost+ way, allowing the lion’s share of margin to be captured by our downstream operators and integrators. CPaaS platforms tend to be our customer rather than our competitors, but this is one area where we need to price such that they and others can consume from us and be competitive in the market. Hopefully we’ve achieved this.

Taking Twilio as a benchmark, one massive difference is billing increments. They will charge for WhatsApp calls on a 60/60 basis we understand; our rates are 1/1, i.e. per second. WhatsApp’s own charges follow the US standard of 6/6, i.e. 10 second increments. The difference between paying per second and per minute is absolutely enormous for any enterprise and we’ve seen anecdotes of businesses saving $100k’s a month optimising this alone – regardless of actual rates – as it makes a difference of up to 60x.

The second major difference is platform operators like to charge for calls in both directions; as a carrier, we’re far more used to not levying charges to our customers on inbound calls. This is often because we bill the interconnected carrier, although that isn’t the case here. However, we are upholding this principal for WhatsApp, reducing charges a further 2x compared to the likes of Twilio who will monetise both directions. To be clear, we will ‘bill’ (i.e. raise a CDR) for these flows but at a rate of zero.

Continuing our convention around PSTN and SMS, voice calls will only be charged when connected but messages will be charged per attempt regardless of outcome. Policy amongst CPaaS operators varies here and is at best vague, with some even charging an uplift for failed messages. We recognise the merit of this in spam prevention terms, but given WhatsApp do so much already to combat this, it is not a measure we intend applying at the present time.

Finally, to the rates themselves, these are largely as previously indicated but with one change around actions within customer service windows. If you recall these are specific 24 blocks triggered by a WhatsApp user contacting (or responding to) a business and during these windows the WhatsApp rates vary for messages and it is the only time during which a business can make a call to a user. However, identifying whether a window is active (and thus what the cost will or should be is tricky). As such, we’re going to relent to the CPaaS model and charge the same regardless of whether the window is open or not. Meta’s charges will of course vary by this status.

That results in a modified charging table which looks more like this:

At current exchange rates, you’ll note these rates are up to 74% cheaper than Twilio’s, before the multiplying factors above – 2x for unidirectional billing, 60x for per-second billing – which we hope leaves plenty of room for solution provision and the creation of amazing use cases. Some may say we’re leaving money on the table here for what is a unique capability at our level, and we’re accused of that often by knuckle-draggers, but we think the days of simply reselling with no value-added are over. We want our customers to create genuine innovation and value, delivering unique capabilities to major enterprises and high volumes of SMEs. This pricing enables that and should hopefully ensure we see volume – we’re less interested in you enabling your own doorbell (that’s what Twilio is for) and far more interested in volume, whether through a few large end user businesses or a high volume of end-user SMEs. We passionately believe that anyone with a PSTN phone today needs WhatsApp calling and you can deliver massive value to your base by doing so.

If you missed it and want a preview of how to get started, please see SimCron 7, where we deep-dive.