Gupshup WhatsApp API pricing in India: the $0.001 fee, Meta's rates, and what a month costs

Gupshup is one of the oldest WhatsApp Business Solution Providers in India, and its self-serve pricing page is one of the plainest. There are no plan names, no seat counts and no free trial. There are two numbers: 0.001 USD per message, “a standard fee”, and a 0.000708 USD markup on marketing messages, with WhatsApp’s own fees “billed at actuals” on top. We read the page on 11 October 2026; this is what it says, what it leaves out, and what a month actually costs.

What the page lists

Item	Gupshup fee, USD	Note on the page
Template message (outgoing text)	0.0010
Session message (outgoing and incoming text)	0.0010	Both directions
Media messages	Free	Listed as free of the Gupshup fee
Voice calls, business- or user-initiated	0.0001 per second
Markup on marketing messages not sent through Marketing Messages Lite	0.000708	On top of the 0.0010
WhatsApp’s own fees	At actuals	By country; first 1,000 service messages free; ad-click conversations free for 7 days

Three things to notice.

The fee is on incoming messages too. A session message is any text inside the customer’s 24-hour window, and the page lists “outgoing and incoming”. A customer who writes to you five times has generated five Gupshup fees before you have sent anything. Meta, by contrast, charges nothing for incoming messages.

There is no plan fee, and no plan. Self-serve means an API key and a console. The page does not mention an inbox, agents, campaigns or a bot builder; the enterprise page does, and it does not carry prices.

India’s WhatsApp fees are shown in dollars. Pick India in the country selector and the page lists WhatsApp fees of $0.0118 per marketing message, $0.0014 per utility, authentication or service message, $0.0304 per international authentication message, free conversations from Click-to-WhatsApp ads for 7 days, and $0.0053 a minute for outbound calls. At about ₹85 to the dollar the marketing figure is about ₹1.00, against Meta’s rupee list rate of ₹0.8631, and the page does not say why. Ask whether your WhatsApp fees are billed in rupees at Meta’s card or in dollars at the page’s figure.

Meta’s India rates, the part Gupshup passes through

Meta’s pricing page, with the rate card effective 1 October 2026, lists India at:

Message category	Meta rate, INR
Marketing	0.8631
Utility	0.1150
Authentication	0.1150
Service (customer-initiated window)	0.1150, after 1,000 free per number each month

These are the same numbers whoever your provider is. What differs between providers is the plan fee and the markup, and Gupshup’s markup is the $0.001.

What a month costs

Take a team that sends 6,000 marketing messages and 4,000 utility messages a month, and receives 3,000 messages from customers. At an exchange rate of about ₹85 to the dollar:

Line	Calculation	INR
Meta, marketing	6,000 × ₹0.8631	₹5,179
Meta, utility	4,000 × ₹0.1150	₹460
Meta, service	3,000 incoming, 1,000 free, 2,000 × ₹0.1150	₹230
Gupshup fee	13,000 messages × $0.001	about ₹1,105
Gupshup marketing markup	6,000 × $0.000708	about ₹361
Total before GST		about ₹7,335

Gupshup’s two fees are about 20% of the bill. Against the plan-based providers below, that is among the lowest markups in the market: they list ₹0.95 to ₹1.10 per marketing message against Meta’s ₹0.8631, a markup of 10 to 27 paise, plus a plan fee. One caveat: the page’s own dollar figure for an Indian marketing message, $0.0118, is about ₹1.00; if you are billed at that rather than at Meta’s rupee card, the marketing line above is about ₹6,020, not ₹5,179.

The catch is in the word “team”. That ₹7,335 buys API access. If the people answering those 3,000 incoming messages need a shared inbox, assignment, templates in a dropdown and a campaign screen, that is either software you build on the API or Gupshup’s enterprise product, and the enterprise price is not on the page.

Five alternatives with published India plans

The numbers below are as listed on each provider’s pricing page on 7 October 2026, from our provider pricing audit. Billing periods matter: a “per month” price billed quarterly is a quarter’s commitment.

Provider	Entry paid plan, per month	Billing	Users included	Own India rate per marketing message
AiSensy	₹1,500	Monthly	Not stated as a cap	₹1.09
Interakt	₹2,799	Monthly	Unlimited agents	₹0.949 to ₹0.970
Wati	₹2,999	Monthly	3, no add-on on Growth	₹0.9667 to ₹1.0357
Gallabox	₹2,999	Quarterly	3, hard cap	₹0.9926
DoubleTick	₹3,500	Quarterly	5	₹0.99
Conecxt	₹2,499	Monthly	5, plus 2 WhatsApp numbers, web chat, 1 AI agent	Meta’s rate, no markup

For the same month, a plan-based provider’s bill is the plan fee plus its own rate card applied to the 6,000 marketing messages: on a ₹0.99 card that is ₹5,940 for marketing alone, so the markup over Meta is about ₹760 before the plan fee. The Gupshup route is about ₹1,470 of fees and no plan. Which is cheaper depends entirely on whether you need the plan’s inbox.

Who should pick which

Pick Gupshup self-serve if you have a developer, you are building your own inbox or bot, your volume is high and your incoming traffic is low. The fee is small, the API is mature, and there is nothing to subscribe to.

Pick a plan-based platform if the people replying are salespeople, not engineers, and they need an inbox on Monday. Compare on four things: the plan fee and its billing period, the users included and the price of the next one, who bills the per-message charges and at what markup, and what is sold as an add-on. Our provider comparison walks through that checklist.

Either way, the Meta line is the same. The only numbers a provider controls are the plan fee and the markup, and Gupshup’s page is unusually honest about the second one.

Where Conecxt fits: a shared inbox for WhatsApp, Instagram and web chat on a monthly plan from ₹2,499, with Meta’s per-message rates passed through at no markup. The plan fee is the whole provider cost.