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.
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.
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 untangles them.
Five steps. A marketing team sees the first and the last.
It sends one message to one person. Everything a marketer would call a campaign is missing.
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 (). 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.
To the same person, the API allows roughly one message every six seconds.
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 (). Using the route means accepting its terms once in WhatsApp Manager.
For a marketing team this is a setting in the software you use, not a different way of working.
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 (). There is no volume discount on marketing messages. For your own countries and volumes, the calculator on our pricing page works it out.
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:
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.
Meta bills the messages at its list price. We charge a fixed fee for the software.