Pricing · 6 min read · Savina Bansal
How pay-as-you-go WhatsApp pricing works
No subscription and no card on file. You top up from ₹500 and each message draws it down. What gets billed, what is free, and when to call us instead.
Building the platform this article is about
Most WhatsApp Business API platforms ask you to pick a plan before you have sent a single message. You choose a tier, hand over a card, and find out afterwards whether the volume you guessed at was anywhere near the volume you actually send.
Pay as you go removes that step. There is no monthly subscription, no card charged on a cycle and no contract: you put money on a balance, and the balance goes down as you send. A month in which you send nothing costs ₹0.
This post is the mechanism, end to end — what you pay for, what you do not, and the point at which this stops being the right plan and a subscription becomes cheaper. All prices below exclude GST and assume messages sent to India.
How it works, in four steps
1. Connect your number. You get your own WhatsApp Business Account, registered in your business's name — not ours. Onboarding on this plan is self-serve.
2. Top up. The smallest top-up is ₹500. That is the whole commitment. There is no minimum term and no auto-renewing subscription behind it.
3. Send. Every template message you send draws the balance down at the published rate for that message type and that destination country. You can see what has been spent under Billing & Usage.
4. Top up again when you want to. Nothing expires monthly and nothing renews on a date. When the balance runs low you add more, or you move to a plan — covered further down.
What actually draws the balance down
WhatsApp template messages. These are the ones you initiate — a broadcast, an order update, a reminder. Meta sets the rate by your customer's country and publishes the card openly; Ohanvi adds 20% on Pay as you go. To India that comes to ₹1.0357 for a marketing message and ₹0.1380 for a utility one.
So ₹500 is roughly 482 marketing messages, or about 3,623 order updates and reminders. Utility messages are far cheaper because Meta prices them far lower, which is why a business built on delivery updates spends a fraction of what a broadcast-led one spends at the same message count.
Automated messages. Anything your system sends on its own — a chatbot reply, a cart-recovery nudge, an appointment reminder — is 75 paise each on this plan. Unlike the subscription plans, Pay as you go carries no monthly allowance of these, so every one is billed.
What is free. Messages customers send you, and — since Meta began charging replies again on 1 October 2026 — the first 1,000 replies a month inside conversations customers started, on every plan including this one. Neither is the platform itself metered: the shared inbox, the chatbot builder, the CRM and the campaign builder cost nothing to use.
Tax. 18% GST applies in India, on top of everything above.
What ₹0 a month actually gets you
The part that surprises people is that nothing is held back. Pay as you go is not a trial tier with the useful things greyed out — it carries the same product as the plan above it and the plan above that.
The chatbot and flow builder, the shared team inbox, the built-in CRM, WhatsApp broadcasts and campaigns, click-to-WhatsApp ads, the AI agent, Shopify and D2C workflows, social posting and email marketing are all available on it. What changes as you move up the rate card is volume, seats, support speed and the per-message price — never the feature list.
That matters more than it sounds, because the usual shape of this market is the opposite one. Elsewhere the entry plan is where the API, the chatbot builder or the integrations are withheld, so the cheap plan cannot do the job you bought it for and the real price is the tier above.
The other benefit is simply that unused capacity costs nothing. Seasonal senders, businesses running one campaign a quarter, and anyone still testing whether WhatsApp works for them are all paying a subscription for months they do not use. Here a quiet month is ₹0.
The honest limits
One seat. Pay as you go includes 1 user. Extra seats are ₹499 each, and if you need several people in the inbox a plan with them included is usually the better buy.
The highest per-message rate of the five plans. The percentage added to Meta’s rate falls as the plan gets bigger. This one sits at the top of that ladder, which is the trade for having no monthly fee.
A 10,000-contact limit and no allowance for automated messages. Pay as you go holds up to 10,000 contacts, and each one past that is 5 paise; the plans above it hold more, and Pro is unlimited. Every plan above this one includes a monthly block of automated messages.
Support is email, answered within 48 hrs. Paid plans move to faster response times, and the top plan to a named contact on the phone.
When a plan becomes cheaper — the crossover
On marketing messages alone, Pay as you go stays cheapest for a long way — often all the way. It has the highest per-message price, but from about 9,600 marketing messages a month a 10,000-message marketing commitment gives it the Starter rate — Meta’s rate plus 15% — with no plan fee. Each bigger commitment unlocks the next plan’s rate before that plan’s lower rate can pay for its fee, so for a business that only broadcasts, Pay as you go with the right commitment stays the cheapest plan at every volume.
What a paid plan buys is everything around the broadcast. Automated messages show it first: to India, Starter becomes cheaper than Pay as you go from about 1,350 automated messages a month, because every paid plan includes a monthly allowance of them and Pay as you go charges 75 paise for each. Extra people in the inbox and faster support tip the balance too.
Up the rate card, each plan trades a larger fee for a lower per-message price and a bigger included allowance, so the right one is whichever your real month makes cheapest. The calculator on our pricing page prices all five against your own numbers and names the cheapest, including tax, before you talk to anyone.
If you are on Pay as you go and the calculator says a plan would cost you less, move. We would rather you paid the lower number and stayed.
Sending a lot? Talk to our team rather than a pricing page
More than 10 people, or a very high message volume? That is where the published rate card stops. Past 10 people in the inbox, or at a very high message volume, the price is not something to read off a page — it is scoped to what you actually send.
Custom plan — volume pricing, unlimited seats, extended data retention, priority support and additional numbers. Talk to us about SSO and any compliance requirements.
This is the honest answer to high volume everywhere in this market, not just here: above a certain scale nobody sells at list price, ourselves included. If you are sending in the tens or hundreds of thousands, do not total up a published per-message rate and assume that is the bill — get a quote. Reach our team on +91 99718 05789 or at [email protected], or send us a WhatsApp message, and bring your real numbers: marketing and utility volumes a month, the countries you message, and how many people need to log in.
The same applies if you are unsure which plan you are on the right side of. It is a five-minute conversation and it is free, and we would rather have it than have you pick Pay as you go and quietly overpay for a year.
Questions this answers
- How does pay-as-you-go WhatsApp API pricing work?
- There is no monthly subscription. You top up a prepaid balance — from ₹500 on Ohanvi — and each message you send draws it down at the published rate for that message type and destination country. A marketing message to India costs ₹1.0357 and a utility message ₹0.1380; automated messages your system sends on its own are 75 paise each. Nothing renews on a date, and a month in which you send nothing costs nothing.
- What is included on Ohanvi’s ₹0 a month plan?
- Every feature. Pay as you go carries the same product as the paid plans — the chatbot and flow builder, the shared team inbox, the built-in CRM, broadcasts and campaigns, click-to-WhatsApp ads, the AI agent, Shopify workflows, social posting and email marketing. What changes higher up the rate card is included volume, seats, support speed and the per-message price, never the feature list. The plan includes 1 user and support is email, answered within 48 hrs.
- Is the WhatsApp message itself free on a zero-fee plan?
- No, and no provider can make it free. Meta charges for every template message a business initiates, bills per message rather than per 24-hour conversation, and prices by the country your customer is in rather than your own. On Ohanvi’s Pay as you go plan the price is Meta’s published rate plus 20%, which is ₹1.0357 for a marketing message to India. Since 1 October 2026 replies inside a conversation the customer started are charged too, after the first 1,000 a month on each number.
- When does a monthly plan become cheaper than pay as you go?
- For automated messages, from about 1,350 a month, when Starter becomes cheaper: every paid plan includes a monthly allowance of automated messages, and Pay as you go charges 75 paise for each. For marketing messages alone: from about 9,600 a month a marketing commitment gives Pay as you go the Starter rate with no plan fee, and a paid plan never becomes cheaper on marketing alone. The calculator prices all five plans against your own month and names the cheapest.
- What are the limits of the pay-as-you-go plan?
- Four, and they are the trade for having no monthly fee: it includes 1 user with extra seats at ₹499 each, it carries the highest per-message rate of the five plans, it holds up to 10,000 contacts with no monthly allowance for automated messages, and support is email, answered within 48 hrs rather than same-day. Every feature is still included.
- What should I do if I send a very high volume of messages a month?
- Talk to the Ohanvi team rather than reading a price off the page. The published rate card stops at 10 seats; past that it becomes a custom plan with volume pricing, unlimited seats, extended data retention, priority support and additional numbers. Above that scale no provider in this market sells at list price, so a quote is the only real number. Ohanvi can be reached on +91 99718 05789 or at [email protected].
