Meta's 24-hour customer service window, explained

When a customer messages you, a 24-hour window opens. Inside it you can reply with any ordinary message and no template, and those service messages have been free for all businesses since 1 November 2024. When the window closes, any message you start has to be a template Meta approved, and it is charged.

There is a second window, and almost nobody uses it

If the customer reached you through a Click-to-WhatsApp ad or a call-to-action button on your Facebook page, a free entry point window opens for **72 hours** — and inside it you can send any type of message at no charge. It is the most under-used lever on this platform: a company spending on Click-to-WhatsApp ads and paying for messages that could have been free, because its system does not tell the two windows apart.

What is charged and what is not

• Service messages — your replies inside the 24-hour window — have been free for all businesses since 1 November 2024.
• Utility templates are free inside the window and charged outside it.
• Marketing templates are always charged, from the first delivered message.
• Since 1 July 2025 billing is per delivered message rather than per conversation, and the old allowance of 1,000 free conversations is gone.

What it means for how you work

1. Answering quickly is not a courtesy, it is money. A reply inside the window is free; the same message after it closes is a charged template.
2. Your system has to know which window each conversation is in. Without that you cannot tell a customer why their bill moved.
3. If you run Click-to-WhatsApp ads, those 72 hours are a real difference in cost. Ask your provider whether they track it.

Not the same as our reply time

This 24-hour window is a Meta rule about billing and templates. The reply time this site promises is a different thing entirely: it is our own commitment that your enquiry gets an answer. Both happen to be 24 hours, and they have nothing to do with each other.