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WhatsApp message charges come from Meta, not from the platform you use. On Fliok they are billed by Meta directly to your own WhatsApp Business account; we do not resell messages or add a margin. Here is how those charges work, and why a share of marketing messages is never delivered at all.
How Meta charges
Since 1 July 2025 Meta charges per message rather than per conversation. The price depends on the template’s category and the recipient’s country, and it applies when a message is delivered. As of 1 October 2026, Meta also charges per message for free-form (service) replies, at the same rate as utility messages, and for utility templates sent inside an open 24-hour customer service window, which used to be free (Meta’s non-template message charges).
For recipients in India, as of October 2026 (Meta’s India card, per delivered message):
Swipe the table sideways to see every column.
| Category | Per message (India) | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Marketing | about ₹0.8631 | None |
| Utility | about ₹0.115 | Charged inside an open 24-hour customer service window too, since 1 October 2026 |
| Authentication | about ₹0.115 | None |
| Service | about ₹0.115 (the utility rate) | Free-form replies inside the 24-hour window, charged since 1 October 2026 |
Those are India’s rates. A message to a number in another country costs that country’s rate: see Meta’s rates for every country.
The one exception is the free entry point window: when someone messages you from a Click-to-WhatsApp ad and you reply within 24 hours, Meta charges nothing for the messages you send them while the window is open, which Meta says may be for up to 7 days. See the free window for ad leads.
Note: Meta also discounts utility and authentication messages at high monthly volumes, but not service messages, which have no volume tiers. Meta revises its rate card, so treat Meta’s published rate card as the authority. The figures above are for planning.
A worked example. 1,000 marketing templates delivered to Indian numbers comes to about 1,000 × ₹0.8631 ≈ ₹863, before any tax on Meta’s invoice. The same 1,000 order updates sent as utility templates come to about 1,000 × ₹0.115 ≈ ₹115, and as of October 2026 that is true even when they land inside an open service window, which used to make them free.
Why some marketing messages never arrive: error 131049
Meta limits how many marketing messages any one person receives from businesses in a period, so that people are not flooded. When a recipient has reached that limit, Meta accepts your message and later reports it as failed with error 131049, "not delivered to maintain healthy ecosystem engagement" (see Meta’s error codes).
A few things follow from that:
- It is not a fault in your template or your platform, and you cannot appeal it for a single message.
- It hits marketing messages. On the numbers we run ourselves, most failed marketing sends were 131049, while utility templates sent to the same people rarely failed.
- Because Meta charges on delivery, a message that fails this way is not billed.
- Sending the same person another marketing message soon afterwards usually fails the same way.
What Fliok does about it
- When Meta returns 131049 for a contact, Fliok marks that contact as capped for 24 hours and skips marketing templates to them in that time. The send is recorded as skipped, not failed, so it does not distort your failure rate.
- A 48-hour guard stops two marketing templates reaching the same person within 48 hours.
- Utility and authentication templates and free-form replies are never held back by either guard.
- The analytics page groups failures by the reason Meta returned, so a 131049 problem looks different from a bad number or a template error.
A separate limit: how many people you can message first
Meta also caps how many different people you can start conversations with in a rolling 24 hours. New accounts start at 250. To reach 2,000, verify your business with Meta, or have 2,000 messages delivered to different people within 30 days using templates with a high quality rating; Meta then checks your message quality. After that Meta raises the limit by itself each time you have used at least half of it in the last 7 days while your messages stay high quality. Replies to people who messaged you first do not count against this limit. Fliok shows your number’s current limit and quality rating in Settings, and notifies you if either drops.
How to get more of your marketing delivered
- 1Send fewer, better marketing messages. Frequency is what the cap punishes.
- 2Use the utility category for genuinely transactional messages, such as order updates and booking confirmations. Meta reviews categories and can reclassify a template, so do not disguise promotions as utility (Meta’s template categories).
- 3Ask for opt-in and honour opt-outs. Fliok enforces opt-outs before every business-initiated send.
- 4Watch the failure breakdown after each campaign rather than the headline delivery rate.
For what the platform itself costs, see pricing.
Written by the Fliok team
The team that builds the product. Plain explanations of Meta's rules and of what Fliok does with them.
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