Meta to begin charging for third-party AI chatbots on WhatsApp for some users

Last October, Meta announced that starting January 15, it would ban general-purpose AI chatbots from operating on its platform through the WhatsApp Business API. This sweeping change directly affected third-party providers, meaning services like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and others could no longer offer their general query and response capabilities to WhatsApp's massive user base.

Two months later, in December, Italy's antitrust regulator, the AGCM, stepped in. The competition watchdog told Meta to suspend the policy immediately while the regulator investigated whether the move was anti-competitive, which could limit consumer choice and favor Meta's own AI service within the app. Meta immediately contested the order, labeling it as "fundamentally flawed" and announcing its intention to appeal the regulator's decision.

Now, according to TechCrunch, Meta will charge developers for running these specific general-purpose chatbots, but only in regions where competition watchdogs force the company to allow them.

In a statement to TechCrunch, a Meta spokesperson said that where the company is "legally required to provide AI chatbots through the WhatsApp business API, we are introducing pricing for the companies that choose to use our platform to provide those services."

Starting February 16, non-template responses from AI developers operating in Italy will incur a specific fee. Meta plans to charge $0.0691, or €0.0572, or £0.0498 per message to developers for these AI responses.

This is a substantial charge because if a developer has thousands of users exchanging numerous queries with a popular AI chatbot every single day, those bills could become very steep very fast.

It is worth remembering that WhatsApp already charges companies for standard template messages sent via the Business API, which cover mundane, specific use cases like shipping updates or authentication reminders.

The platform actually shifted to a per-message pricing model back in mid-2025, moving away from the old conversation-based system for business-initiated chats. Companies currently pay different rates based on whether they send Marketing, Utility, or Authentication templates. While Marketing messages cost the most, mundane updates like shipping notifications usually cost pennies.