What changes on 1 October
Three changes land on the same day, and together they are the biggest move in WhatsApp Business API pricing since Meta switched to per-message billing in July 2025.
First, service messages — the replies your team sends after a customer writes to you — start being charged, after a free allowance of 1,000 a month per business number. Until now they were free. Second, utility templates sent inside the 24-hour customer service window stop being free. Third, Kuwait leaves the Rest of Middle East rate card and gets its own, with higher utility and marketing rates. Oman makes the same move on the same day.
What does not change: the price of your platform plan, the template categories, and the 72-hour free window that opens when a customer messages you from a Click-to-WhatsApp ad.
Kuwait's new rates
These are the rates Gallabox bills for a message delivered to a Kuwaiti number — Meta's rate plus Gallabox's markup — as published on Gallabox's rate card, checked on 17 September 2026. Other providers apply their own markup, so ask yours for the same two lines.
Marketing templates go from $0.0392 to $0.0911 per delivered message. Utility templates, authentication templates and service messages all bill at $0.0506, up from $0.0105 for utility. Service messages, which were free, now cost the same as a utility template once a number has used its 1,000 free ones for the month.
The rate follows your customer's phone number, not your business. If you message Saudi or Emirati numbers, their rows apply; our pricing page lists every GCC market.
A worked month, before and after
Take a Kuwait business on one number that sends 1,000 appointment reminders (utility), 500 offers to opted-in customers (marketing) and 1,500 replies to customers who wrote in (service) in a month, all to Kuwaiti numbers. The volumes are an example; the arithmetic is not.
Before 1 October: 1,000 × $0.0105 = $10.50, plus 500 × $0.0392 = $19.60, plus service replies at zero. About $30 in message charges.
From 1 October: 1,000 × $0.0506 = $50.60, plus 500 × $0.0911 = $45.55, plus the service replies — the first 1,000 are free, the other 500 × $0.0506 = $25.30. About $121. The platform plan is on top in both cases and doesn't change.
The line to watch is service replies. The free 1,000 go quickly for a busy inbox, and after that a team that answers in five short messages pays five times what one complete answer costs.
What to do this week
Pull last month's message counts by category from your provider and reprice them at the new Kuwait rates. That single number tells you whether this is a rounding error or a budget line.
Teach the team to answer in one complete message instead of several short ones, and use buttons and WhatsApp Flows for bookings and orders so a conversation takes fewer turns.
Check that your reminders and order updates are written as utility and stay utility. A reminder that reads like a promotion is approved as marketing and now costs almost twice as much.
Send more customers in through Click-to-WhatsApp ads, where the 72-hour window is still free. If you are directly on the Cloud API, add a payment method to your WhatsApp Business Account before 30 September — Meta stops delivering service messages for accounts without one. On a provider, make sure your message balance covers the higher October bill.
Where the numbers come from
The dates, the categories and the free allowance of 1,000 service messages per number come from Meta's WhatsApp Business Platform pricing documentation. The per-message rates are Gallabox's published rate card for Kuwait, which includes its markup; Meta's own base rates are lower.
We are a Gallabox partner and sell its plans at its published prices, with free setup. If you want the new bill worked out for your own volumes, message us on WhatsApp.
Frequently asked questions
Are WhatsApp service messages still free after 1 October 2026?+
Partly. From 1 October 2026 each business phone number gets 1,000 free service messages a month; after that Meta charges each one at the utility rate for the customer's market. For Kuwaiti numbers, Gallabox bills $0.0506 per delivered message. Replies inside the 72-hour window from a Click-to-WhatsApp ad stay free.
Why is Kuwait more expensive from October?+
Meta moved Kuwait off the shared Rest of Middle East rate card and gave it its own, with higher utility and authentication rates and a new authentication-international rate. Oman, Bangladesh, Iraq and a few other markets were moved on the same day.
Does my Gallabox plan price change?+
No. The change is to Meta's message charges, which are billed separately from the plan. Basic is still $112 a month billed yearly on Gallabox's published pricing.