Which WhatsApp Business API Has A Free Plan In India 2026?

AiSensy is the pick for a growing WhatsApp Business API team in India: its WhatsApp AI Agent plan starts at ₹1,350 a month and every tier carries unlimited team seats under a fair use cap, so adding agents does not raise your bill the way Wati’s per seat pricing does, as shown on AiSensy’s pricing page.

The same comparison approach I used for AI meeting notetakers in Otter, Fireflies, Fathom or Granola applies here: no single provider wins every dimension. Interakt suits a team that already runs Shopify and wants a bundled sales CRM alongside messaging. Wati suits a team that wants a seat based 24×7 support SLA and does not mind paying $24 to $69 per extra user, as priced on Wati’s pricing page. Gallabox suits a small team under three seats chasing the lowest entry price, or an enterprise that needs on premise data residency. Twilio suits a developer team that wants to build its own inbox on top of raw WhatsApp API usage rather than buy one off the shelf.

What Is The WhatsApp Business API?

The WhatsApp Business API is Meta’s channel for businesses to send and receive WhatsApp messages at scale through software rather than a phone’s WhatsApp Business app, the same kind of tool use connection I unpack in Long Context, Tool Use And Computer Use Explained Plainly. You do not get API access directly from Meta as a small business; you go through a Business Solution Provider, often called a BSP, such as Interakt, Wati, AiSensy, Gallabox or Twilio, which gives you a dashboard, pays Meta on your behalf, and adds its own markup on top of Meta’s per message fees. Meta documents the underlying rates in its own WhatsApp Business Platform pricing page. The API itself is identical underneath every provider. The differences that count are the inbox, automation and support you use every day.

Which Plan Is Really Free?

None of the five providers give away the WhatsApp Business API itself for free, because Meta’s per message fees apply no matter who you sign up through. What each one calls free is different. Interakt’s Starter tier is free but covers Instagram only, not WhatsApp, according to Interakt’s pricing page. Wati offers a 7 day free trial with no setup fee, as stated on Wati’s pricing page. Gallabox gives a free trial with 500 AI credits and no credit card, per Gallabox’s pricing page. AiSensy skips a trial and instead credits new signups ₹50 of conversation credit, as shown on AiSensy’s pricing page. Twilio offers a free trial with no card required, per its WhatsApp pricing page, but you still need a separate inbox tool to use it.

Does It Work In India?

Yes, all five providers operate in India, and Interakt, AiSensy and Gallabox price their India plans directly in rupees rather than converting from dollars. Interakt’s Growth plan is listed at ₹2,799 a month plus taxes on Interakt’s pricing page, AiSensy’s WhatsApp AI Agent plan at ₹1,350 a month on AiSensy’s pricing page, and Gallabox’s Basic plan at ₹2,399 a month on annual billing on Gallabox’s pricing page, all as shown from India as of October 2026. Wati and Twilio show pricing in dollars on their public pages, at $59 a month for Wati’s Growth plan per Wati’s pricing page, and usage based dollar rates for Twilio per its pricing page; a dollar figure is the global display, not proof a vendor skips India. None of the five pages mention Hindi language support.

Cloud API Or On-Premise Setup?

Four of the five keep the setup simple: Interakt, Wati, AiSensy and Twilio run on Meta’s Cloud API, meaning Meta hosts the infrastructure and the provider gives you a dashboard on top. Gallabox goes further and offers an on premise or private cloud option with data residency on its Enterprise tier, per Gallabox’s pricing page. Twilio also builds on Meta’s Cloud API and describes itself as managing WhatsApp Business Account creation, Meta business verification, and template approvals for you, per its WhatsApp channel page. If your team needs a WhatsApp number’s data to stay inside your own servers, Gallabox Enterprise is currently the only one of the five that states this outright on its pricing page.

Who Handles Blue Tick Verification?

Every one of the five can submit your verification application to Meta, but none decide the outcome, because that choice belongs to Meta alone. WhatsApp’s old green tick became a blue Meta Verified badge in 2024, and since July 2024 it has been open to businesses on the free WhatsApp Business app too, not only API accounts, per Gallabox’s explainer on the change. Interakt says it applies for the badge on your behalf for free once you have supported 50 or more WhatsApp users through its platform, per its blog post on the process. AiSensy says it submits the application free on any plan, with a typical Meta response time of 7 to 10 days, per its blue tick product page. Wati and Gallabox also offer the same submission support through their dashboards.

Whose Shared Inbox Wins?

AiSensy and Wati both support a multi agent shared inbox, and both also ship a WhatsApp AI agent that routes chats to a bot before a human sees them, the same one tool at a time logic I cover in What MCP Is In Plain Words, And Which One To Connect First. AiSensy lets multiple team members drive live chat support on the same WhatsApp number with routing by tags and campaigns, and this applies to unlimited users under its fair use policy rather than a fixed seat count, per AiSensy’s pricing page. Wati includes a shared inbox on every plan too, but caps included seats at 3 on Growth and 5 on Pro and Business, charging $24 to $69 for each extra seat, per Wati’s pricing page. For a team that plans to add agents every quarter, a per seat cap is the number to check before the headline price.

Five Pricing Traps, Ranked By Cost

Beyond the plan price, five costs decide what a WhatsApp API bill looks like in India this year, ranked here by how often they catch a growing team off guard. The biggest is Meta’s own per message pricing, which replaced the old flat 24-hour conversation fee on July 1, 2025, so a single busy day of marketing templates can now cost more than a whole month used to, per Meta’s own pricing documentation. The second is carrier level delivery filtering during festive sales seasons, when Indian telecom networks throttle bulk business traffic and a provider’s support speed in unblocking a number counts for more than any feature list. None of the five publish delivery rate guarantees or blocked number SLAs on their pricing pages, so this is the one question worth asking a sales rep directly before signing.

1. Per message Meta fees replacing flat conversation pricing since July 2025, which raises the cost of marketing heavy campaigns specifically.
2. Per seat charges on Wati, $24 to $69 per extra user, and Gallabox’s hard 3-seat cap on Basic, which bite only after a team grows.
3. Carrier level filtering during peak sales seasons like Diwali, where none of the five publish a delivery rate guarantee.
4. Blocked number recovery speed, which depends on how fast support escalates to Meta rather than on any published SLA.
5. Add-on costs such as Wati’s $4.99 Shopify integration or AiSensy’s ₹2,000 annual virtual number, which sit outside the headline plan price.

Which CRM Tools Fit Best?

The integration depth splits roughly by use case. Interakt lists more than 60 plug and play integrations including Shopify, Razorpay, PayU, WooCommerce, Moengage and Clevertap, per its pricing page, plus a separate Sales CRM add-on at ₹2,499 a month. Gallabox goes deepest on enterprise CRM, naming Zoho, HubSpot, Pipedrive and Salesforce, alongside Shopify, Razorpay and Stripe on commerce, per its pricing page. Wati names HubSpot from its Pro plan and Salesforce from Business, with unlimited integrations only at the top tier. AiSensy lists Shopify, Razorpay, WebEngage and LeadSquared as its named integrations. Twilio does not publish a CRM integration list on its WhatsApp pricing page at all, because it expects you to connect your own stack through its APIs rather than a pre-built integration menu.

You are a procurement analyst helping a small business in India choose a WhatsApp Business API provider. Here is my situation: [describe team size, monthly message volume, whether you need Shopify or CRM integration, number of support agents who will share the inbox, and your monthly budget in rupees]. Compare Interakt, Wati, AiSensy, Gallabox and Twilio only on the criteria that matter for my situation, not a generic feature list. For each one, tell me the single biggest risk of choosing it given my situation, and the one question I should ask their sales team before signing. If you are missing any detail about my team, ask me before giving a recommendation. End with one clear pick and one runner-up, and say what would change your mind.

You are a cost auditor reviewing a WhatsApp Business API quote I received. Here is the quote text: [paste it]. Break the total monthly cost into three parts: the platform's own subscription fee, Meta's per-message fees by category (marketing, utility, authentication, service), and any add-on fees like extra seats, extra WhatsApp numbers, or third-party integrations. Flag anything in the quote that is usage-based rather than fixed, since that is where costs grow unexpectedly as my message volume grows. If a cost category is not itemized in the quote, say so explicitly rather than estimating it. Ask me for my expected monthly message volume by category if you need it to estimate my real bill.

You are helping me decide whether to switch WhatsApp Business API providers. I currently use [name your current provider] and pay [amount] a month for [number] seats. My main complaints are: [list them, for example slow support during peak season, no CRM integration, or per-seat costs growing]. Using only what I have told you, tell me which complaints are solved by switching providers versus which are caused by how our team uses the tool rather than the tool itself. Do not recommend a specific new provider until you ask me what integrations and team size I expect in twelve months.

Act as a blunt hiring manager who has read ten thousand resumes, not a career coach. I will paste my full resume and the job description I want. Rewrite the whole resume for that role, section by section, in this order: summary, experience, skills, education. Rules: every experience line leads with impact, not duty. Use bracketed placeholders like [8 percent] for any number I did not give you, and list at the end every placeholder I need to replace with a real figure. Keep it to one page of text. Plain formatting only, no tables or columns, so screening software can parse it. After the rewrite, tell me the three weakest claims that need evidence before I send this anywhere. My resume: [paste resume]. The role: [paste job description].