--- title: "WhatsApp Cloud API for Marketing Messages" description: "What the WhatsApp Cloud API does and what it leaves to you: one call per message, templates, webhooks, speed, cost — explained for marketing teams." url: https://getrapio.com/resources/whatsapp-cloud-api/ updated: 2026-10-01 --- [Resources](https://getrapio.com/resources/) › WhatsApp Cloud API # WhatsApp Cloud API for marketing messages The part of Meta's platform that actually sends — what it does, what it leaves to you, and how one marketing message travels through it. Updated 1 October 2026 · 7 min read In short The WhatsApp Cloud API is the service, hosted by Meta, that sends and receives WhatsApp messages for businesses. Software calls it once for every message: this number, this approved template, this person. It reports back what happened — and that is all it does. Customer lists, opt-outs, sending to thousands and reports are left to whatever is built on top of it. ## What the Cloud API is Meta's hosted way to send WhatsApp messages from software — and, since October 2025, the only one. Meta opened the Cloud API to every business on May 19, 2022. Until then the API had to be installed and run on a company's own servers, or on a provider's. Meta shut that older version down on October 23, 2025, so today every approved way of sending WhatsApp messages in bulk goes through the Cloud API. There is no fee to connect. Meta charges for the messages it delivers, and nothing for the API itself. If the names confuse you — Business API, Business Platform, Cloud API — [this explainer](https://getrapio.com/resources/whatsapp-business-api/) untangles them. ## How one marketing message travels Five steps. A marketing team sees the first and the last. **Your software** picks the person and the template → **Cloud API** one call per message → **WhatsApp** delivers, holds or drops it → **Customer** sees it, reads it, taps *←* **Webhooks** carry the result back to your software: sent · delivered · read · failed 1. **Software picks the message.** One person from your list, one approved template, and the details that make it personal — a first name, an image, a link. 2. **One call to the Cloud API.** This number, this template, this person. Ten thousand people means ten thousand calls. 3. **Meta accepts it.** A brand-new template can be held back for a short while as Meta watches how the first recipients react; if the reaction is bad, the template is paused and the waiting messages are dropped. 4. **WhatsApp delivers it — or doesn't.** A message won't arrive if the person stopped marketing messages from your business, if WhatsApp decides they have had enough marketing for now, or if the number is in the United States. 5. **Results come back as [webhooks](https://getrapio.com/resources/glossary/#webhook).** Sent, delivered, read or failed — each one arrives as an event. Meta charges when a message is delivered, not when it is sent. ## What it doesn't do It sends one message to one person. Everything a marketer would call a campaign is missing. **No customer lists** The API doesn't know who your customers are. It takes one phone number at a time. **No sending to thousands** A send to 50,000 people is 50,000 separate requests — plus pacing them, trying again when one fails, and staying inside your daily limit. **No opt-out book** Meta tells you when someone stops marketing messages from your business. Remembering it for every future send is up to you. **No lasting reports** Meta keeps template statistics for 90 days, and reads and clicks stop updating seven days after a send (as of October 2026). **No campaign** There is nothing that groups messages together, so nothing that tells you how one send did compared with the last. ## How fast, and how many Speed belongs to the phone number. Reach belongs to the business. A phone number sends up to 80 messages a second, and the largest senders are raised to 1,000 (as of October 2026). At 80 a second, 100,000 people take about 21 minutes — fast enough for almost everyone. How many people you can reach in a day is a separate number, your messaging limit. It starts at 250 and grows as you send. [How messaging limits work.](https://getrapio.com/resources/whatsapp-messaging-limits/) To the same person, the API allows roughly one message every six seconds. ## The Marketing Messages API A second route for the same templates. Meta offers a second sending route built only for marketing messages. It carries the same templates at the same price; the difference is that Meta optimizes delivery on it, and it lets you set how long a marketing message stays valid before it is dropped. In some places — the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom, Japan and South Korea among them — that optimization doesn't apply (as of October 2026). Using the route means accepting its terms once in [WhatsApp Manager](https://getrapio.com/resources/glossary/#whatsapp-manager). For a marketing team this is a setting in the software you use, not a different way of working. ## What it costs Connecting is free. Meta charges per delivered message, by country. A delivered marketing message costs from $0.0109 in Turkey to $0.1597 in the Netherlands (as of October 1, 2026). There is no volume discount on marketing messages. For your own countries and volumes, [the calculator on our pricing page](https://getrapio.com/pricing/#calculator) works it out. ## What this means for a marketing team You don't choose the Cloud API. You choose what sits on top of it. Every approved product sends through the same API, at the same Meta prices. What differs is everything the API leaves out. Five questions separate one product from another: - Is the WhatsApp Business Account yours, or the provider's? - Who pays Meta — you directly at list price, or the provider with a markup? - Are people who opt out left out of every later send automatically? - When your list is bigger than your daily limit, is the send split across days for you? - Do reports outlive Meta's 90 days? Where Rapio fits Rapio sends through the Cloud API on your own WhatsApp Business Account. Meta bills the messages to your card at its list price; Rapio charges a fixed monthly fee for what the API leaves out — customer lists and opt-outs, templates, sending to thousands within your limit, and reports that don't expire. ## Sources 1. [Get started with the WhatsApp Business Platform](https://developers.facebook.com/documentation/business-messaging/whatsapp/get-started) — Meta 2. [Webhooks](https://developers.facebook.com/documentation/business-messaging/whatsapp/webhooks/overview) — Meta 3. [Marketing Messages API](https://developers.facebook.com/documentation/business-messaging/whatsapp/marketing-messages/overview) — Meta 4. [Message templates](https://developers.facebook.com/documentation/business-messaging/whatsapp/templates/overview) — Meta 5. [Pricing on the WhatsApp Business Platform](https://developers.facebook.com/documentation/business-messaging/whatsapp/pricing) — Meta 6. [On-Premises API sunset](https://developers.facebook.com/docs/whatsapp/on-premises/sunset) — Meta 7. [Announcing new products to make business messaging easier (May 19, 2022)](https://about.fb.com/news/2022/05/announcing-new-products-to-make-business-messaging-easier/) — Meta ## Keep reading - [What is the WhatsApp Business API?](https://getrapio.com/resources/whatsapp-business-api/) - [Messaging limits, from 250 to unlimited](https://getrapio.com/resources/whatsapp-messaging-limits/) - [What the WhatsApp Business Platform is (and what you still need)](https://getrapio.com/resources/whatsapp-business-platform/) [Glossary](https://getrapio.com/resources/glossary/) · [All resources](https://getrapio.com/resources/)