What changes
From October 1, 2026, the free-form replies you send inside the 24-hour window are billed per message.
Here's the pricing object on a support reply, before and after:
"pricing": { "billable": false, "billable": true, "pricing_model": "PMP", "type": "free_customer_service", "type": "regular", "category": "service"}
The free_customer_service type from Chapter 0.5 stops being how your support replies come back. The category doesn't move, which is easy to miss. If you count billable messages by category, service has been there all along, always free, and from October it's billed.
What doesn't change
- Inbound is still free. However many messages customers send you, they cost nothing.
- The window still works the same way. It governs what you can send. It no longer makes what you send free.
- Templates are unaffected. Marketing, utility and authentication carry on as they are.
Volume tiers
Meta has said service messages will be billed at each market's utility rate. What isn't known yet is whether the rate-card update expected on September 1 moves those rates. The other difference is in the discounts. The volume tiers that reduce your effective rate as you scale apply to utility and authentication only. Service messages don't tier.
For a business whose support volume grows with its order volume (most businesses), the service line grows linearly while the rest of the bill grows sub-linearly.
What determines your exposure
How much of this reaches your bill comes down to how many outbound messages you send inside the window. It's largest for three profiles:
- Support-heavy businesses. Long human conversations, many turns each.
- Automated agents. An AI assistant that asks clarifying questions can take ten or fifteen turns to resolve something, and from October each of those turns is billed.
- Split messages. Sending three short messages instead of one long one has been a free style choice. From October it's three charges instead of one.
If you're almost entirely outbound templates with little back-and-forth, the change may barely register. The next chapter is how to put a number on it, whichever profile you are.