WhatsApp policy: what Meta requires, and what VegaDūta enforces¶
All facts below were fetched from Meta's own pages on 2026-10-14. A statement that could not be confirmed from a Meta page is marked unconfirmed and nothing in the product is built on it. Meta changes these terms often; re-verify before relying on any date or rate (Meta's pricing calendar only changes rates on 1 Jan, 1 Apr, 1 Jul or 1 Oct).
1. General-purpose AI assistants¶
Source: WhatsApp Business Platform Terms, section 4.7 "AI Providers" https://www.facebook.com/legal/Meta-Terms-for-WhatsApp-Business-Platform (page "last updated September 23, 2026"; fetched 2026-10-14).
Confirmed from that page (paraphrased except the two short quotes):
- "AI Providers" are developers and providers of AI/ML technologies, such as large language models, generative AI platforms and general-purpose AI assistants. Meta decides, at its sole discretion, who counts.
- AI Providers "are strictly prohibited from accessing or using the WhatsApp Business Platform" (directly or indirectly) to offer those technologies when they are the primary functionality, rather than incidental or ancillary. Meta decides what counts as primary.
- The section allows those technologies to be made available in certain countries, listed on Meta's AI Providers pricing page.
- A business may keep an AI Provider as its Solution Provider, but the platform data may not be used to build, train or improve AI models (fine-tuning a model for the business's own exclusive use is allowed).
- The pricing page dates the terms update to 15 January 2026 (https://developers.facebook.com/documentation/business-messaging/whatsapp/pricing/ai-providers, fetched 2026-10-14).
Regions, from that same pricing page, where Meta says it is legally required to permit general-purpose AI assistants: Italy (+39, from 2026-02-16), Brazil (+55, from 2026-03-11) and 29 European countries (2026-03-11 to 2026-05-12). The page says Meta charged AI Providers per non-template message from 2026-02-16 and "will no longer charge" from 2026-05-13. It does not say whether the European arrangement ended or continued after 2026-05-12: unconfirmed. Treat the exceptions as unstable and do not build a product on them.
What the page does not say: that a business running an AI agent for a specific purpose (support, bookings) is restricted. The restriction targets products whose primary offering is the AI assistant itself. News coverage describes customer-service bots as unaffected; that is third-party reporting and is unconfirmed by Meta's own pages.
Practical consequence for VegaDūta: an agent attached to a WhatsApp number must have a defined business task. An open-ended "ask me anything" agent is the shape Meta's terms target. Meta, not VegaDūta, makes the final call.
2. Opt-in, templates, frequency, quality¶
Opt-in and templates: WhatsApp Business Messaging Policy https://whatsappbusiness.com/policy/ (page "last updated September 23, 2026"; fetched 2026-10-14). Quotes: "You may only contact people on WhatsApp if: (a) they have given you their mobile phone number or username" (section 1) and "You may only initiate conversations using an approved Message Template" (section 2).
| Topic | Confirmed | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Opt-in | Contact only people who gave you their number/username (section 1; the rest of the clause was not retrievable). | policy page above |
| Marketing-specific opt-in wording | unconfirmed (not retrieved). VegaDūta therefore requires an opt-in record for every template send, not only marketing. | n/a |
| Business-initiated messages | Must start with an approved template. Only APPROVED templates can be sent; review can take up to 24 h. Non-template messages are free-form only inside the 24 h customer service window. |
templates overview, pricing page |
| Per-user marketing cap | Exists: Meta limits how many marketing templates one WhatsApp user can receive from any business. The number is not published on the pages fetched. | templates overview |
| Quality | Template quality is Quality pending / High / Medium / Low; Low risks pause, paused and disabled templates cannot be sent. Message limits depend on "high quality" and user feedback. | templates overview, policy section 7 |
| Messaging limit tiers | 250 (new default), 2,000, 10,000, 100,000, Unlimited unique users per rolling 24 h outside service windows. Field: whatsapp_business_manager_messaging_limit. |
messaging limits page |
| Phone number quality | quality_rating is a field on the phone number node; the examples show GREEN, NA, UNKNOWN. Other values (YELLOW, RED) were not confirmed on that page. |
manage phone numbers page |
URLs (all fetched 2026-10-14):
- https://developers.facebook.com/documentation/business-messaging/whatsapp/templates/overview
- https://developers.facebook.com/documentation/business-messaging/whatsapp/messaging-limits
- https://developers.facebook.com/docs/whatsapp/business-management-api/manage-phone-numbers
Error codes VegaDūta reacts to¶
Source: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/whatsapp/cloud-api/support/error-codes (fetched 2026-10-14).
| Code | Meaning (Meta) | VegaDūta behaviour |
|---|---|---|
| 131049 | Not delivered "to maintain healthy ecosystem engagement"; if you suspect the marketing limit, wait at least 24 h, earlier resends fail again. | Pause marketing templates to that recipient for 24 h. A template whose category cannot be looked up is treated as marketing. |
| 131050 | Recipient stopped receiving marketing messages from the business. Do not retry. | Pause marketing templates to that recipient until a fresh opt-in is recorded. Utility templates are unaffected. |
| 131048 | Sending restricted, likely too many blocked/spam-flagged messages. Check quality status. | Surface the error; no per-recipient state. |
| 132015 / 132016 | Template paused for low quality / permanently disabled. | Surface the error; fix the template. |
| 130429 / 80007 | Throughput / account rate limit; try later or reduce frequency. | Surface the error. |
3. Pricing¶
Source: https://developers.facebook.com/documentation/business-messaging/whatsapp/pricing and https://developers.facebook.com/docs/whatsapp/pricing, fetched 2026-10-14.
- Pricing is per message (since 2025-07-01); conversation-based pricing is gone.
- Template categories: marketing, utility, authentication. "Service" appears only as the category of free non-template messages.
- Only delivered template messages are charged; rates vary by category, volume tier and the recipient's country calling code.
- Non-template messages are free inside an open 24 h customer service window. Utility templates sent inside an open window are free. A 72 h window opened by a Click-to-WhatsApp ad or Page call-to-action makes all messages free.
- Volume tiers lower utility and authentication rates monthly, per market and category.
- Rate cards in effect from 2026-07-01; the next scheduled update is 2026-10-01 (final rates announced by 2026-09-01). Whether the 2026-10-01 rates have been published and what they are: unconfirmed.
- Numeric rates: unconfirmed. The pricing page text contains no rates. They live in an interactive widget at https://whatsappbusiness.com/products/platform-pricing/ and in per-currency CSV/PDF rate cards that were not retrievable. The figures the cost calculator used before (marketing ₹0.8631, utility ₹0.115–0.145) came from third-party blogs and are no longer shown as defaults.
4. What the product enforces¶
| Rule | Where |
|---|---|
| Binding an agent to WhatsApp needs a declared task (support, booking, orders, lead qualification, reminders, payments follow-up), stored on the channel binding with who and when. | PUT /api/channels/whatsapp/default-agent (fields task, acknowledgeOpenEnded). PUT /api/channels/routing/whatsapp refuses to change the agent (it only flips modes for the current agent); channel_default_agent.declared_task* (V492) |
Open-ended prompt/tools raise a warning (HTTP 409 WHATSAPP_OPEN_ENDED_AGENT); the tenant can proceed with acknowledgeOpenEnded=true; the override is stored and written to the audit log. Not a hard block. |
OpenEndedAssistantCheck, WhatsAppBindingPolicy |
Template sends need an active opt-in record for the recipient (record with POST /api/channels/whatsapp-compliance/opt-in, revoke with DELETE; GET lists the tenant's records newest first with limit, offset, activeOnly and X-Total-Count). |
WhatsAppSendGuard, whatsapp_opt_in |
| 131049 / 131050 pause marketing templates to that recipient. | WhatsAppSendGuard, whatsapp_recipient_backoff |
| Phone number quality rating shown on the channel page when the API returns it. | GET /api/channels/whatsapp-compliance/quality |
Limits of this guard: the open-ended check is a keyword heuristic and cannot
predict Meta's decision; per-conversation rebind of an existing session, and
contact/group agent overrides, do not re-run the check; the AI-generated-agent and brief-apply paths refuse to bind WhatsApp at all (connect it on the Channels page); free-form replies inside
the 24 h window are not gated by opt-in records (the user messaged first).
5. Console¶
On the Channels page, the WhatsApp section shows three cards: the binding card (declared task and
the open-ended warning), the phone number quality card, and an opt-in card
(web/app/components/channels/WhatsAppOptInCard.tsx) where a tenant records a recipient's opt-in
(phone number, a source of website_form, inbound_message, checkout, in_person or import,
and optional evidence text) or withdraws it by number. The card's table lists the tenant's records
from GET /api/channels/whatsapp-compliance/opt-in, paged by the server; when that endpoint is
unavailable it falls back to the records handled in the current browser session. Numbers recorded
earlier can always be revoked by typing them. Opt-in is the tenant's own record of consent: the
console does not verify that the consent was real, and Meta's rules in section 2 still apply.
See also the console guide.