How much does the WhatsApp Business API cost in Sri Lanka?

Since 1 July 2025 Meta charges per message, with country-specific rates and four categories. In Sri Lanka you pay for every marketing and authentication template you send, and for utility templates sent outside the 24-hour service window. Service (free-form) replies are free. Enter your monthly volumes above to get a rupee figure; paste your exact rate-card numbers for a precise bill.

Are WhatsApp service (free-form) messages free?

Yes. Under Meta's per-message model, service messages — your replies to a customer inside the open 24-hour customer-service window — carry no WhatsApp fee. That is why an AI support bot answering inside the window pays nothing to Meta; you only pay the LLM for the tokens it generates.

What is the difference between marketing, utility, and authentication pricing?

Marketing templates (promotions, offers) and authentication templates (OTP/login codes) are always billed per message. Utility templates (order updates, receipts, alerts tied to a transaction) are free when sent inside an open 24-hour service window and billed otherwise. Each category has its own per-message rate on Meta's rate card, so the mix of categories changes your bill.

How much does an AI WhatsApp chatbot cost per month?

It has two layers. The WhatsApp layer is the per-message template fee. The AI layer is the LLM token cost of the free-form replies: replies × (input tokens × input price + output tokens × output price). For a Nugegoda shop doing 500 marketing templates and 3,000 Claude Haiku replies, the total lands near Rs 3,300 a month at Rs 305 to the dollar — the WhatsApp fee is the larger share.

Is the 24-hour customer service window still free after the July 2025 pricing change?

Service messages inside the window remain free, and utility templates are free inside the window too. What changed on 1 July 2025 is that Meta dropped conversation-based pricing and now bills per message; the old free-conversation allowance no longer applies. This calculator models the current per-message system only.

Do the AI replies count against my WhatsApp bill?

No WhatsApp fee applies to free-form service replies inside the window, so they add nothing to the messaging layer. They do cost LLM tokens, which is the AI layer this tool prices separately. Templates (marketing, utility, authentication) are pre-written and make no LLM call, so they cost zero AI tokens.

What USD to LKR rate does this use, and can I change it?

The default is Rs 305 per US dollar, an indicative CBSL figure, because Meta and every LLM vendor bill in dollars. You can edit the rate in the calculator to match your bank's telegraphic-transfer rate on the day you top up your Meta or API balance.

Are the WhatsApp per-message rates on this page exact?

The per-country rates are editable seed estimates pending a direct read of Meta's live rate card. The arithmetic is exact for whatever rate you enter, so paste your own rate-card numbers into each $/msg field for a bill you can quote to a client. The LLM prices are transcribed from vendor pricing pages and dated.

Sri Lanka · AI & Finance

WhatsApp Business + AI Chatbot Cost Calculator

Work out the real monthly cost of a WhatsApp AI chatbot: Meta's per-message fee (Sri Lanka rate card) plus the LLM token cost of the replies, in rupees and dollars. Free, no signup, every rate source cited below.

By Induwara Ashinsana— Executive Director, Ryzera TechnologiesUpdated Jul 4, 2026

WhatsApp bot monthly cost

Country (rate market)

Sets the seed per-message rates below. Sri Lanka is the default.

Currency

USD → LKRCBSL

Headline totals show in rupees.

WhatsApp messages / month

Template messages by category, plus the per-message rate applied to each.

Marketing

$/msg

Utility

$/msg

Free — window open

Authentication

$/msg

AI reply layer

Free-form replies inside the service window are free on WhatsApp, but the LLM still charges for tokens.

LLM model

Input / output price per 1M tokens.

AI-handled replies / month

Free-form conversations the bot answers

Avg input tokens / reply

≈ 798 tokens for a 600-word context

Avg output tokens / reply

≈ 146 tokens for a 110-word answer

BSP / platform fee (optional)

Business Solution Providers (360dialog, Wati, local aggregators) add a per-message markup and/or a fixed monthly fee. Leave at 0 for Meta-direct Cloud API.

Per-message markup (USD)

Added on top of every template message

Fixed monthly fee (USD)

Flat platform subscription, if any

Quick presets

Total monthly cost

Rs 3,325

$10.90

WhatsApp messaging

Rs 1,906

Template + auth fees

AI (LLM) cost

Rs 1,418

Claude Haiku 4.5

Cost per conversation

Rs 0.66

5,000 messages + chats

Cost by layer

WhatsApp messagingRs 1,90657.34%

AI (LLM)Rs 1,41842.66%

BSP / platformRs 0.000%

LLM split — input tokens Rs 732 (2,400,000 tok) vs output tokens Rs 686 (450,000 tok).

WhatsApp cost by category

Category	Messages	Unit rate	Line cost
Marketing	500	$0.0125	Rs 1,906
Utility Free — sent inside the open 24-hour service window	1,500	Free	Rs 0.00
Authentication	0	$0.0058	Rs 0.00
Service (free-form AI replies) Free — replies inside the 24-hour customer-service window	3,000	Free	Rs 0.00
WhatsApp messaging total			Rs 1,906

Line-item total verified against the closed-form WhatsApp pricing formula.

Sources cited: Meta WhatsApp Business Platform pricing (per-message model, free service/utility-in-window rules), Anthropic pricing (authoritative for Claude), OpenAI and Google Gemini pricing pages (transcribed, dated 2026-07-04), and the CBSL indicative USD→LKR rate. Full links are in the Sources & references section below. The per-country WhatsApp rates are editable seed estimates pending a direct read of Meta's rate card — paste your exact rate into each $/msg field for a precise bill.

How it works

A WhatsApp AI chatbot bill has two layers that most calculators price only one of. This tool adds them together and shows each layer separately. It models the per-message system Meta moved to on 2025-07-01 — the older conversation-based pricing is gone.

Layer 1 — WhatsApp messaging. Meta bills per message, by category, with country-specific rates. Using M, U, A for the monthly count of marketing, utility and authentication templates and rfor each category's per-message rate:

WhatsApp = r_M·M + r_A·A + (window open ? 0 : r_U·U)

Service messages — your bot's free-form replies inside the 24-hour customer-service window — are always free. Utility templates are free too when sent inside that open window, so they only cost money if the toggle is off. Marketing and authentication templates are always billed. That single free-window rule is the biggest swing in a support-heavy workload.

Layer 2 — the LLM. Only the free-form AI replies call a language model; templates are pre-written and cost no tokens. With R replies, t_in and t_out average input/output tokens, and pthe model's price per million tokens:

LLM = R · ( (t_in / 1,000,000)·p_in + (t_out / 1,000,000)·p_out )

An optional third layer covers Business Solution Providers (360dialog, Wati, local aggregators) that resell the API: a per-message markup b on every template plus a fixed monthly fee F, so BSP = b·(M + U + A) + F. Leave both at zero for the Meta-direct Cloud API. The grand total is WhatsApp + LLM + BSP in USD, converted to rupees at your editable CBSL rate, and cost per conversation is the total divided by all messages and chats (guarded against divide-by-zero).

The WhatsApp line is computed twice — as a sum of per-category line items and again from the closed-form formula above — and the calculator confirms the two agree, the same cross-check discipline used on the income-tax tool.

Worked examples

Nugegoda clothing store — window open

500 marketing · 1,500 utility (free) · 3,000 Claude Haiku replies

WhatsApp: 0.0125×500 + 0.0058×0 + (window open → 0) = $6.25
LLM input: 3,000 × 800 / 1e6 = 2.4M tok × $1 = $2.40
LLM output: 3,000 × 150 / 1e6 = 0.45M tok × $5 = $2.25 → LLM = $4.65
BSP: $0 (Meta-direct)
Total: 6.25 + 4.65 = $10.90 → Rs 3,324.50 at Rs 305
Cost / conversation: 10.90 / 5,000 = $0.00218

Freelancer OTP bot — no AI

10,000 authentication codes · no marketing, no LLM

WhatsApp: 0.0058 × 10,000 = $58.00
LLM: $0 (templates only, no model call)
BSP: $0
Total: $58.00 → Rs 17,690 at Rs 305
Cost / conversation: 58 / 10,000 = $0.0058

Same store — window closed

Utility now billed — shows the free-window swing

WhatsApp: 0.0125×500 + 0.0030×1,500 = 6.25 + 4.50 = $10.75
LLM: $4.65 (unchanged)
Total: 10.75 + 4.65 = $15.40 → Rs 4,697 at Rs 305
The free-window rule alone swings WhatsApp by 0.0030 × 1,500 = $4.50

All figures use Sri Lanka's illustrative rates (r_M = $0.0125, r_U = $0.0030, r_A = $0.0058) and Claude Haiku 4.5 ($1 in / $5 out per 1M). Enter your own rate-card numbers for an exact bill.

Frequently asked questions

Sources & references

LLM prices were last cross-checked on 2026-07-04. The WhatsApp per-country rates are editable seed estimates pending a direct read of Meta's rate card; the arithmetic is exact for whatever rate you enter. Vendor prices move — re-check the linked pages before you commit a budget.

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