Integrate a WhatsApp Business API and expand your global reach
Start engaging customers on WhatsApp, the world’s most popular messaging app. With the WhatsApp Business Platform and Twilio Messaging APIs, you can build for any use case across the customer journey: support, notifications, verifications, and personalized promotions.
What can you build with the WhatsApp Business Platform? Sky’s the limit.
Read the WhatsApp API docs
Explore quick-start guides, code snippets, SDKs, and more in our comprehensive resource library to accelerate your WhatsApp solution.
Create a WhatsApp message
Build your perfect WhatsApp engagement solution with Twilio
Start connecting with customers on WhatsApp with pay-as-you-go, conversation-based pricing.
WhatsApp Business Calling is now GA
Give customers the choice to call or message you right from a WhatsApp conversation–no need to exit the app to talk to a person on the phone.


FAQs
To enable WhatsApp messaging, you first need a Twilio account. If you don’t have one already, you can sign up for a free trial to start. Once you’re in your account, register a phone number, set up a sandbox for testing (optional), and configure your webhook URL so you can send and receive messages.
For step-by-step instructions, check out our WhatsApp self-sign up docs.
To create a new WhatsApp Business Profile with Meta, you must provide a WhatsApp Business Account Name as well as a WhatsApp Business display name that customers will see. You will also need to select a category that describes your business and provide a business description and a website link.
Then, you’ll complete a few verification steps. That includes verifying phone number ownership and going through the Meta Business Portfolio verification process. The verification process can take between 5-20 days to complete.
Get detailed instructions in our WhatsApp Sender Registration docs.
Templated messages
There are three types of WhatsApp message templates that you can use for outbound messages.
Authentication: One-time passcodes
Utility: Messages to confirm, suspend, or change a transaction or subscription that are related to a specific agreed-upon transaction
Marketing: Promotional offers, product announcements. Also, Meta considers any message that contains an element of marketing content as a Marketing template.
These templates must be submitted to and approved by WhatsApp. They can contain rich content like product catalogs, carousels, lists, location information, card messages with text and images and buttons, and dynamic buttons.
See more WhatsApp message features.
Free-form messages
Free-from messages are non-templated messages you can send in reply to a customer, when a customer has reached out to you directly or responded to one of your templated messages.
Inbound messages
Incoming messages may include text or media, such as JPG, JPEG, PNG, audio files, and PDF files.
After your message templates have been submitted to WhatsApp and you receive approval, you can send messages using our APIs. See more details on sending a WhatsApp message using a template.
To get your message templates approved in the first place, you’ll create them in the Twilio Console or via API, then send them to WhatsApp for approval. Most templates are reviewed by a machine learning assisted process and approved in minutes. Some that require human review can take up to 48 hours.
View our guide Message template approvals and statuses.
There is a 24-hour window after a customer initiates a WhatsApp conversation with you, called a “customer service window.” During this time, you can send free-form messages.
The customer service window lasts for 24 hours after the last inbound message you receive from a customer. After the customer service window closes, you need to use an approved template to re-engage the user.
Twilio charges a per-message fee ($0.005), plus Meta’s per-template fee which ranges based on country and template type.
Get an estimate of WhatsApp messaging costs with Twilio’s calculator. Or, review Meta’s rate cards for details on per-template pricing.
To send WhatsApp messages to customers, you must first get explicit opt-in from them. You can collect opt-ins on your website, mobile app, over a voice call, through SMS, or in person. Make it clear that the person is opting in to receiving communications from your business, and even better: give them the option to opt-in or opt-out of different types of messages from you so you can avoid sending them unwanted or unexpected messages.
Visit our WhatsApp Business Platform docs for full details on opt-in requirements.
You can set a Status Callback URL to receive real-time status updates for your outbound WhatsApp messages.
Get more information on monitoring the status of outbound WhatsApp messages.
The Messages Per Second (MPS) limit for outbound message throughput is 80 MPS by default. The MPS for text-only messages can be increased to a maximum of 400 MPS with approval—contact the Twilio Support team to request a higher rate limit.
Use our quickstart for the WhatsApp Business API to try sending WhatsApp messaging in Node.js, Python, Java, C#, PHP, or Ruby with just a few lines of code.
Once you’re comfortable, move on to the API Reference for more advanced integrations.