WhatsApp bot development on Meta's official Cloud API

What this page is, and what it is not

This page describes how a WhatsApp bot is built on Meta's official WhatsApp Cloud API. There is no public WhatsApp demo here, and the page is not a record of past WhatsApp launches. Where a fact below comes from Meta's published pricing FAQ, it is described as Meta's rule. Details we have not re-checked in Meta's developer documents are left out rather than stated as procedure.

The same assistant can also be discussed for Telegram or a website. The platform-neutral brief is custom bot and AI assistant development. The conversation and handoff pattern is on AI customer service and orders.

Jobs it can do

A WhatsApp bot on the Cloud API is a good fit when customers already write to a business number: questions about a price, a booking, an order status, or a document you want stored. The build is still scoped around one or two of those jobs first.

• Answer from your price list, policies and product notes, and pass anything uncertain to a person.
• Turn a chat into an order or a booking and notify the person who fulfils it.
• Send a status the customer asked for, such as a booking reminder or a delivery update, inside the rules of the message type.
• Write the agreed fields to a sheet or a CRM when that system has an API and you can grant access.
• Stop and hand the thread to a teammate, with the transcript and the reason it was handed over.

Whose account, and who pays Meta

The phone number, the WhatsApp Business account, business verification and message templates sit in your Meta business account, not in ours. Meta's own FAQ says a developer calling the API directly can do so only for their own business. In practice that means you open the account and authorize the build, or the project goes through a Meta-approved solution provider. We do not ask you to park the number in a shared account.

Meta bills messages that are delivered. The price depends on the message category and the recipient's country calling code. The categories Meta publishes are marketing, utility, authentication, service and Meta Business Agent. Utility and authentication use tiered rates. Marketing is charged at the market rate for that category. The invoice from Meta comes to you. Our development fee and any hosting fee are separate, and so is the cost of the AI calls if the bot uses a model.

A service message is a reply in the window after the customer writes first. Meta's pricing FAQ, which we treat as the current rule where it disagrees with an older marketing page, says that from 1 October 2026 the first 1,000 service messages per number each month are free, and messages from the 1,001st are charged. Template messages outside that window — marketing, utility and authentication — are charged at their own rates. We do not quote Meta's per-country price list here, because Meta changes it and the bill is yours.

What we do, and what you keep

We design the conversation, receive the webhook, connect the systems you approve, suggest template wording, and can host the bot. You keep the Meta account, the verification documents, the phone number and the payment method Meta will bill. Template review and any business verification are Meta's process. We do not promise Meta's review time.

A number you already use on the WhatsApp app may or may not be movable. Meta's current account rules decide that, and those steps were not re-checked against the developer documents for this page, so they are not written here as a procedure. Before launch we confirm the current steps with you inside your Meta account.

If you want the bot kept running after launch, hosting covers the webhook, failures, small copy edits inside an allowance, and watching for relevant API changes. Hosting and maintenance is a monthly fee, priced by complexity, once the scope is clear. The build itself starts at US$500. AI usage, if any, is billed on top.

Messages people agreed to receive

The bot sends messages a person has a reason to receive: they wrote first, they asked for an update, or they opted in to a specific template. Bulk marketing to people who did not agree, scraped contact lists and unsolicited blasts are out of scope. The project has to follow the WhatsApp Business Policy. A campaign that is really a spam run will not be built, even if it is described as customer care.

Handoff to a person is part of the design, not a failure. When the bot lacks the fact, the policy or the confidence, it stops and notifies the owner. That is the same rule as on the AI customer-service page, and it is tested against a question list before launch.

Work we do not take

We do not take gambling, adult content, fake engagement or account farming, spam, or scraping that bypasses captchas or logins.

Questions before a WhatsApp project

Can we use the number we already have?

Maybe. It depends on Meta's current account rules. Those migration steps are not restated here. We confirm them with you in your Meta account before launch.

Can it send marketing to a large list?

Only to people who agreed to receive that kind of message, and only inside the WhatsApp Business Policy. Unsolicited blasts and scraped lists are refused.

How long does launch take?

The build depends on the scope. Template review and business verification take as long as Meta takes. We do not publish Meta's review time as if it were ours.