Meta is changing how WhatsApp Business messaging is billed. From 1 October 2026, service messages (free-form replies inside an open 24-hour window) and utility templates sent inside that window both become chargeable. Both have been free until now.

This is a Meta platform change and applies to every business on WhatsApp, on any provider. Keep it here for more updates:

Every WhatsApp Business Account still gets 1,000 free service messages a month. After that, service messages bill at the same rate as a utility template in your market, with no volume discount.

Independent of this change, Meta is extending the free click-to-message ads (CTWA) window from 72 hours to 7 days. The change is effective immediately.

Check your region's rate on the Wati pricing page, and read our optimization guide for ways to lower your message count before the change lands.

⚡ Enhancement

✨ What's new

• Save custom Inbox filters as views — keep them private, share them with selected agents, or make them visible to everyone.
• Filter conversations by date or date range, and use the improved Unreplied and Unread filters (with counts on saved filters) to spot chats that still need attention.

💙 Why you'll love it

Admins and Operators can cut through inbox clutter, prioritize what needs a reply, and keep the whole team looking at the same views.

Available on: Growth, Pro & Business

📚 Learn more

How to search or filter conversations in Team Inbox

🆕 New Feature

✨ What's new

• Astra AI agents can now reply to your Instagram DMs 24/7, using the same instructions, knowledge, and testing tools as your WhatsApp agents.
• Create an agent, pick the Instagram channel, and install it on the Instagram account already connected in Wati. Each agent runs on one channel, so WhatsApp and Instagram use separate agents.
• Phone numbers and emails shared in the chat are saved to the Wati contact, and your agent can hand the conversation to a teammate in your inbox.

💙 Why you'll love it

If you sell or support customers on Instagram, you no longer have to answer every DM by hand — your agent handles the routine questions while your team focuses on the conversations that need them.

Available on: Growth, Pro & Business

⚡ Enhancement

✨ What's new

• A redesigned Campaigns page shows performance over time, with a this-week vs. last-week benchmark, category filters (Authentication, Marketing, Utility), and your spend for the selected date range.
• On Pro and above: see a breakdown of failure rate across all your campaigns, and retarget across campaigns based on who replied, clicked, opened, or ignored.

💙 Why you'll love it

Spend less time exporting data to analyze it elsewhere, and more time seeing how your templates really perform — then act on it with cross-campaign retargeting.

Available on: Growth, Pro & Business (rolling out gradually)

📚 Learn more

How to view campaign analytics

Watch the how-to video

⚡ Enhancement

✨ What's new

• Tell Ask what you want and it builds your automation rules and chatbot flows for you — just paste your requirements.
• Ask can also review the automations you already have, find conflicts and weak spots, and fix them once you approve.
• Hire the Automation Health Check agent to review your automations every week and send you suggestions. Nothing goes live without your approval.

💙 Why you'll love it

If you're new to Wati, your first automation can go live on day one without learning the builder first. If you already run automations, you get a weekly watchdog that keeps them healthy.

Available on: Growth, Pro & Business (rolling out gradually)

📚 Learn more

How to use Ask Wati AI and Wati AI Agents

Watch the demo

⚡ Enhancement

✨ What's new

• New Astra AI Agent and Custom AI Agent nodes let your chatbot hand the conversation to an AI agent in one step, on WhatsApp and Instagram.
• Smart Escalation brings in a human when a customer asks for an agent or sounds upset, on WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook Messenger.
• Existing chatbots that assign to AI agents keep working just as they do today.

💙 Why you'll love it

Let your chatbot handle the structured steps, let AI take the open-ended questions, and make sure frustrated customers reach a person instead of looping.

Available on: Growth, Pro & Business (rolling out gradually)

📚 Learn more

How to connect your AI agent to a chatbot flow in Wati

How to use Connect AI Agents to connect your own AI agents

How Smart Escalation works in chatbot flows

Watch the demo: New AI nodes in Chatbot Builder

Watch the demo: Enable Smart Escalation for human handoff

⚡ Enhancement

✨ What's new

• The AI Assist node now collects a detail — an email, a phone number, or a custom value like a pincode — through a normal conversation and saves it to a contact attribute.
• Customers can answer in their own words. Add simple checks in the prompt (for example, "the pincode must be 6 digits") and route Success or Failure to the next step.
• Works on WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook Messenger.

💙 Why you'll love it

Typos and extra text no longer trip up your chatbot, so leads, bookings, and orders flow in smoothly — and Instagram or Messenger chats can even move over to WhatsApp.

Available on: Pro & Business (rolling out gradually)

📚 Learn more

How to use the AI Assist node to collect information

Watch the demo: AI Assist Nodes in Chatbot Builder (from 1:38)

🆕 New Feature

✨ What's new

• Connect Wati once (Account > Data sources > Connect Wati) and Astra turns your past 1:1 Team Inbox chats into a knowledge base your agents answer from.
• Personal data like phone numbers, emails, and card or ID numbers is removed before any AI processing, and knowledge comes only from your team's replies in closed 1:1 chats.
• A daily sync keeps it current, and you can review and edit the knowledge — your edits are kept on every update.

💙 Why you'll love it

Your new Astra agent starts with the answers your team already gives, instead of a blank page — so you can move support or sales to Astra without starting over.

Available on: Pro & Business (rolling out gradually)

📚 Learn more

Watch the walkthrough

🆕 New Feature

✨ What's new

• Vibe now keeps a persistent memory of your business context, so a new session picks up where the last one left off instead of asking for the same details again.
• Shared across all your agents: business identity, universal boundaries (safety, privacy, and escalation rules), and brand communication defaults like tone, language, and phrases to avoid. Individual agents can override them.
• Per agent, Vibe remembers how each builder works: preferred workflow, work in progress and next steps, what the last change touched, and editing approaches to avoid repeating.
• View and edit everything anytime from the Vibe memory management UI.

💙 Why you'll love it

If you build and manage Astra agents — especially on teams where several people edit the same agent, or work stretches across days — no more re-briefing Vibe at the start of every session.

Available on: Growth, Pro & Business

🆕 New Feature

✨ What's new

• Wati Academy now lives right inside the product — no need to go hunting for help elsewhere.
• Click the new icon in the left nav to open guided demos for setting up Wati features, whenever you need them.

💙 Why you'll love it

Learning how to use a feature is now just a click away, right where you're already working — no tab-switching, no searching for the right help doc.

Available on: Growth, Pro & Business