WhatsApp Business API in Colombia: pricing, requirements and how to start

WhatsApp Business API pricing in Colombia in 2026

These are Meta's list rates for messages delivered to Colombian numbers (country code +57). They come from the USD and COP rate cards Meta publishes on its WhatsApp Business Platform pricing page, they are effective October 1, 2026, and we checked them on November 8, 2026. This is Meta's cost per delivered message; your provider's plan is separate.

How to read the table: the rate depends on two things, the message category and the country of the number receiving it, not the country of your company. A customer with a Colombian number is charged the Colombia row; if you write to a number in another country, Meta applies that market's rate. Meta lists 47 markets on its rate card, and countries without their own row fall into a region such as Rest of Latin America.

Meta also offers volume discounts, but only on utility and authentication messages, per market and per month. Marketing and service messages are charged at the list rate.

To estimate your month with your own volumes, use the WhatsApp pricing calculator. To compare countries, read WhatsApp Business API pricing in 2026 by country.

How does Meta charge for each message in Colombia?

Since July 1, 2025, Meta charges per message instead of per conversation. It charges only when a message is delivered, and only for messages the business sends. Each message has exactly one category, so it triggers at most one charge.

Meta defines five categories. Three are templates, which you can send at any time: marketing, utility and authentication. Two are messages without a template: service and Meta Business Agent. Those can only be sent inside the 24-hour customer service window, which opens, and resets, with every customer message. Outside that window you can only write to the customer with an approved template.

These are the rules that move the bill most since October 1, 2026:

• Service: Meta gives you 1,000 free service messages a month for each business phone number and charges from the 1,001st. Unused messages do not roll over to the next month.
• Utility inside the window: utility templates sent as replies inside an open window were free from July 1, 2025 and are charged again from October 1, 2026.
• Ads that click to WhatsApp: if a customer writes to you from a click-to-WhatsApp ad on the Android or iOS app and you reply inside the window, a free entry point window opens for up to 7 days, in which Meta does not charge marketing, utility, authentication or service messages.
• Payment method: if your messaging account has no payment method in Meta's Billing Hub, service messages are delivered within the first 1,000 and stop being delivered after that.

Meta only changes its rates on the first day of each quarter (January 1, April 1, July 1 and October 1), with at least one month's notice for a rate change. That is why the table carries a date: check it again before each quarter. We cover the operational side of the October change in WhatsApp service messages are now paid.

How much does a month of messages cost in Colombia? Examples

Four examples at Meta's current rates, calculated as charged messages times the rate in the table. These are list rates: they do not include your provider's plan or any taxes that apply to your billing.

What the numbers show: marketing weighs far more than everything else. A marketing message costs about 15.6 times a utility message (0.0125 versus 0.0008 dollars). Pick for each template the category that matches its real content.

AI agent replies count too. According to Meta, any non-template reply that does not come from Meta Business Agent is a service message, whether a person or a third-party AI writes it. HellouOne's AI agents reply with free-form text inside the 24-hour window, so their replies fall in that category and share the free 1,000 a month per number. The AI itself is part of your HellouOne plan, with AI messages included; Meta charges for the delivery.

Pesos or dollars? Meta's billing currency

Meta publishes its rates in 16 currencies, including the US dollar and the Colombian peso (COP), which has been available since April 1, 2026. Both columns in the table come from Meta's official USD and COP rate cards, not from a conversion of ours.

The currency is chosen when the messaging account is created, and Meta states it cannot be changed afterwards; for those who need another one, Meta offers currency migration APIs. Which currency your account gets depends on how it is created, so if you want Meta to bill you in pesos, ask your provider whether your account can be set up in COP before you connect the number.

Each provider also sets the currency of its own plan. HellouOne's is billed in US dollars (USD), monthly and with no lock-in, so its value in pesos moves with the exchange rate each month.

Requirements to use the WhatsApp Business API in Colombia

Meta documents what you need on your side. The requirements are the same in Colombia as in other countries, and most of the waiting is usually business verification.

1. A phone number you own. It needs a country and area code (short codes are not supported) and must be able to receive an SMS or a voice call with the verification code. Meta recommends a mobile number, and a number behind an IVR can be registered if the registration call reaches a person. If the number is already active on WhatsApp, it has to be deleted first or connected through coexistence. Details in Meta's business phone number documentation.
2. A Meta business portfolio and a WhatsApp account. With a provider, the Embedded Signup flow asks you to log in with your Facebook or Meta Business credentials, pick or create the portfolio and the WhatsApp account, verify the number and enter the display name.
3. Business verification. A new portfolio starts with a limit of 250 unique recipients per day outside the 24-hour window, and verifying your business is one of the routes to raise it to 2,000. Meta asks for documents that prove your company's legal name and address; the process happens in Business Manager, and Meta describes it here.
4. A display name that matches your business, as your customers know it. Meta reviews it against its guidelines when your number reaches a higher messaging limit, and you can change it up to 10 times in 30 days (Meta: display names).
5. Two-step verification: Meta requires a PIN when you register the number.
6. Approved templates to write first or outside the 24-hour window. Meta reviews them automatically when you create or edit them, and it does not translate their content, so you write the templates in Spanish for your customers in Colombia (Meta: templates).
7. A payment method in Meta's Billing Hub, so service messages keep being delivered once the free allowance is used.
8. Your customers' consent to receive messages. Meta requires that they opted in, and Colombian law regulates how consent is obtained; the detail is further down.

The limit counts the people you write to outside the 24-hour window, it is set per portfolio and all your numbers share it (Meta: messaging limits). A new portfolio can register up to 2 numbers, and once it is verified, or reaches the 2,000 limit, Meta raises that cap to 20.

If you already use the WhatsApp Business app on that number, read how to move your number to the API without losing it first.

App, API or coexistence: which path fits

The WhatsApp Business app is built for one person on one phone plus up to four linked devices. The API is the platform your software operates: team inbox, AI agents, templates billed per message and reports. There are two ways to take a number from the app to the API.

A simple rule from our migration guide: if the business is one person's phone today, start with coexistence; if three or more people already answer, go straight to full migration.

Meta documents the conditions of coexistence in its guide to onboarding WhatsApp Business app users. Our guides summarize them in how coexistence works and in 7 signs you need the API.

Consent and contact hours in Colombia: Ley 1581, Decreto 1377 and Ley 2300

This section summarizes the rules with their articles so you know where to look. It is not legal advice: if your case is complex, check it with a Colombian lawyer.

To process your customers' personal data, Ley 1581 of 2012 (habeas data) requires the data subject's prior and informed authorization, obtained by any means that can be consulted later (art. 9). It is the authorization you need on top of the opt-in Meta asks for.

• What to tell people when you ask: how their data will be processed and for what purpose, their rights as data subjects, and who is responsible, with their address and phone (Ley 1581, art. 12).
• How it is given: in writing, orally or through unequivocal conduct of the data subject, and silence never counts as authorization (Decreto 1377 of 2013, art. 7).
• What to keep: a copy of the authorization and proof of it (Ley 1581, art. 17 point b; Decreto 1377, art. 8).
• Who supervises: the Superintendencia de Industria y Comercio (SIC), which can impose fines of up to 2,000 monthly legal minimum wages (Ley 1581, art. 23).

In practice you can ask for the authorization in a form, at checkout or in the first message, saying what you will use the number for (order notices, offers, collections) and keeping the evidence. Responsibility for having it stays with your company; the tool helps you organize the information but does not replace that duty.

Ley 2300 of 2023 sets contact hours. Its article 3 allows collection contact with a consumer Monday to Friday from 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. and Saturdays from 8:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., with no contact at all on Sundays or holidays, and once direct contact is made you cannot follow up through several channels in the same week or more than once on the same day. Article 5 extends the same terms to advertising sent by SMS, app or web messaging, email and phone calls, and its paragraph 3 says those advertising messages may only be sent within the article 3 hours. If your WhatsApp message is advertising, the prudent course is to send it within those hours. The Superintendencia Financiera and the SIC sanction non-compliance (art. 9).

Check a date and time with the Ley 2300 contact hours tool.

In HellouOne, WhatsApp campaigns send approved templates to contacts who agreed to receive messages (how campaigns with built-in consent work). In voice campaigns, an admin confirms consent before launch, the do-not-call list is always respected and, for collection calls in Colombia, the Ley 2300 rules are on by default.

WhatsApp chatbot in Colombia or AI agent: which one fits

Many companies search for a WhatsApp chatbot in Colombia when what they need is an AI agent. A rule-based chatbot follows a menu and looks for keywords; an AI agent reads the whole message, answers from your business knowledge base, uses the tools you connected and hands the chat to a person when needed. Both run on the same API and are billed the same by Meta: their replies are service messages inside the 24-hour window.

A rule-based chatbot still works for very closed flows, like confirming an appointment with a yes or a no. For open questions about prices, deliveries, balances or appointments, an AI agent leaves fewer customers without an answer. If you automate with AI on your number, also read the WhatsApp AI policy for 2026: general-purpose assistants are restricted, but AI that serves your own customers is still allowed.

To see what an AI agent can do in your operation, read the WhatsApp AI agent guide, how to set one up step by step and what it costs in 2026.

• Rule-based chatbot: menus, keywords and fixed answers.
• AI agent: understands free text, answers from your knowledge base and uses tools like your calendar or your store.
• AI agent with handoff: knows its limits and passes the chat to a person with the full history.

How the WhatsApp API works with HellouOne in Colombia

HellouOne connects your number to the official WhatsApp Business API and gives you, on that same number, a team inbox, AI agents, campaigns and AI voice agents. These are the terms that matter when you compare:

• Priced in US dollars, monthly, with no lock-in. Plans start at USD 49 a month; you pay Meta's rates straight to Meta from your own account, with 0% HellouOne markup. The plan is the whole platform cost.
• A free 7-day trial, no card, with 2 agents, 2 inboxes and 100 conversations.
• Guided connection. You connect your number with WhatsApp Cloud; LIA walks you through it, and you can choose coexistence if you want to keep using the WhatsApp Business app on the same number.
• A team inbox with assignment rules (round robin, priority or online-only) and five visibility levels, as explained in WhatsApp shared inbox.
• AI agents that answer first from your knowledge base and pass the chat to a person with the full history.
• AI voice agents with telephony in Colombia included, from USD 499 a month and billed per second, with Colombian-accent voices. More in AI voice agents.
• Integrations that matter in Colombia: Alegra for invoice status and balances, Mercado Pago for payment links inside the chat, and DataCRM, HubSpot, Pipedrive and GoHighLevel to sync contacts. There are 16 connectors in total.
• A public API and webhooks documented in English and Spanish at one.hellou.ai/docs, for development teams.
• Support in English and Spanish, and AI agents that reply in the language customers write in.

WhatsApp and web chat are on every plan. A no-AI mode also exists, for example Starter at USD 24 a month. Current prices and terms are on the pricing page.

Do you need a WhatsApp CRM in Colombia?

When two or more people answer the same number, or you get more than 30 new conversations a week, the WhatsApp Business app stops being enough and you need a shared inbox with CRM features: every conversation with an owner, the history next to the customer, labels and a sync with your CRM.

The criteria for choosing and how to set it up are in the WhatsApp CRM guide for Colombia and LATAM. If what you want is several agents on one number, see WhatsApp multi-agent.

WhatsApp API providers in Colombia: how to choose

To use the API you need a provider, and Meta requires the platform you connect through to be a Solution Partner or a Tech Provider. Every provider connects your number to the same Meta API, so the difference is not in the messages but in everything around them. These eight criteria work for any provider you compare:

How HellouOne scores: 0% markup on Meta's rates, a monthly USD plan with no lock-in, AI agents included in the AI plans, AI voice agents with telephony in Colombia, coexistence, support in English and Spanish, 16 connectors including Alegra and Mercado Pago, and a documented API.

If you want side-by-side comparisons with other WhatsApp platforms, see alternatives.

How to start with the WhatsApp API in Colombia in 6 steps

This is the order that avoids most delays.

1. Decide what you will use it for: support, sales, order notices or collections. That decides which templates and categories you need.
2. Prepare the number and the Meta Business account: a number you own that receives an SMS or a call, and admin access to the portfolio.
3. Ask your customers for consent and keep the evidence, to comply with Ley 1581 and with Meta's opt-in.
4. Create your HellouOne account and connect the number with WhatsApp Cloud. Choose coexistence if you want to keep the app.
5. Create your templates in Spanish, with the right category, and submit them for review.
6. Launch to a small group, check the cost in the calculator and your account's messaging limit, and switch on the AI agent and assignment rules.

Step-by-step guides: connect WhatsApp Cloud to HellouOne and WhatsApp templates. For your website, create a chat link with the WhatsApp link generator.