Meta has announced a new pricing structure for its WhatsApp Business platform, shifting to a metered, token-based system designed to better reflect the computing costs of generative artificial intelligence.
The new model will apply to businesses using the Meta Business Agent, which automates customer support and sales interactions.
Instead of paying a flat fee per message, businesses will now be charged based on the amount of data processed by the AI.
Under the revised system, pricing will be determined by the total number of tokens consumed when the AI processes a user’s prompt and generates a response. Meta has set a global rate of $2.00 per 1 million tokens.
The company estimates that a typical multi-turn AI conversation uses around 20,000 to 25,000 tokens, translating to approximately $0.04 to $0.05 per interaction. More complex queries requiring deeper reasoning will cost more, while shorter responses will cost less.
Meta said the change is intended to align pricing more closely with the underlying computational demands of generative AI systems and provide a more scalable model for businesses using automated messaging tools on WhatsApp.
