WhatsApp Business vs the API

How to tell which one you have

Three questions settle it, and you can answer all three in about ten seconds.

Did you install an app and scan nothing?

If you downloaded WhatsApp Business from an app store and messages arrive on your phone, you are on the free app. The platform has no app — it has no interface at all.

Do you get a bill?

The platform bills you. If nobody charges you anything for WhatsApp today, you are on the free app. That is the fastest test there is.

Did somebody set it up for you?

Access to the platform goes through a provider — a signup, a business verification, a number migration. If none of that happened, you are on the app.

Most small businesses should stay on the free app

This is the part vendor comparisons leave out, so it is worth saying plainly: if the free app is working for you, moving will cost you money and get you very little.

The app handles one person answering messages on one phone, with automated greetings, quick replies, labels and a product catalogue. For a shop, a practice, a studio, a one-person business, that is usually the whole job. You would be paying per message for capabilities you have already got.

There are three real reasons to move:

• A team needs one inbox. Several people answering the same number, without passing a phone around.
• Something else has to send the messages. Order updates from your shop, login codes from your app, reminders from your booking system — anything a human is not typing.
• You need to message more people than the app allows. Broadcast lists on the app cap at 256 contacts, and only reach people who have saved your number.

If none of those describe you, the honest answer is to stay where you are.

What starts costing money the moment you move

Three separate things, and they arrive on two different bills.

1. Every template message you send. Marketing, order updates and login codes are all charged per message, at a rate Meta sets by country. Marketing costs several times what the others do.
2. From 1 October 2026, your replies too. Answering a customer inside the 24-hour window after they message you has always been free. From that date it is charged. If you are support-heavy, this is the change that matters most — what it actually means.
3. Your provider's monthly fee. A separate bill from a separate company, for the software you answer messages in. It ranges from nothing to several hundred a month, and it is the only part of the total that switching providers changes.

What a “BSP” is, since everyone uses the word

A Business Solution Provider is a company Meta authorises to sell access to the platform. You cannot practically buy from Meta directly, so you buy from one of these — there are well over a hundred, and they are not selling the same thing as each other.

Some sell a pipe: API access, no interface, you supply the software your team works in. Others sell the software itself — a shared inbox, seats, automation — with the pipe included. A €49 pipe and a €299 inbox look like competing prices in a comparison table, and they are not comparable at all. Working out which kind you need is most of the decision.