Meta announced Wednesday that it will charge developers for running chatbots on WhatsApp in areas where regulators are forcing companies to allow them. The move comes after the company’s ban on third-party chatbots on WhatsApp took effect on January 15.
Now, Meta will charge developers in Italy, where the country is The competition watchdog asked the company to suspend the policy last December. The company said the new pricing for non-template responses will start on February 16. Meta plans to charge $0.0691 / €0.0572 / £0.0498 per message to developers for AI responses. This can lead to steep bills for developers if users exchange thousands of questions with AI chatbots every day.
Earlier this month, Meta sent a notice to developers making an exception for Italian phone numbers and allowing AI chatbots to serve those customers. At the time, the company did not mention any plans to charge developers.
Currently, WhatsApp has charged companies for using APIs for various template responses to customers, including use cases like marketing, utility, or authentication. This includes messages users receive regarding payment reminders and shipping updates.
“Where we are legally required to provide AI chatbots through the WhatsApp business API, we introduce pricing for companies that choose to use our platform to provide these services,” a Meta spokesperson told TechCrunch. This could also set a precedent for other geographies if Meta should cave in and allow developers to operate chatbots.
Meta first announced this past October will block all third-party AI chatbots from using WhatsApp through its WhatsApp Business API.
Meta says the system is not designed to handle responses from AI bots and is under strain.
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“The emergence of AI chatbots in our Business API has resulted in our system not being designed to support it. This logic considers WhatsApp a de facto app store. The route to market for AI companies is their own app stores, websites, and industry partnerships; not the WhatsApp Business Platform,” the company said at the time.
Since then, various areas, incl EUItaly, and Brazil, have launched anticompetitive probes. Watchdog Brazil initially asked Meta to postpone his wisdom. However, the courts in Brazil side with Meta last week and rescind the preliminary order blocking the new policy. As a result, the company asked developers not to provide AI chatbots to users in Brazil, TechCrunch has learned.
Since the policy has been introduced, developers are forced to send predefined messages to AI chatbot users on WhatsApp to direct them to their site or app. Providers like OpenAI, Perplexity, and Microsoft announced last year that WhatsApp bots will stop working after January 15, asking users to access them on other platforms.