How to use the WhatsApp message cost calculator
The Korean edition of this page covers KakaoTalk Alimtalk and Chingutalk, two messaging products that do not exist in the US market. This version is rebuilt around the channel American teams actually bill for: WhatsApp Business Platform template messages, with SMS fallback for anything that does not get delivered. The cost structure is the same shape — a per-message rate that differs by message category, multiplied by volume.
No rates are pre-filled. Template message pricing depends on the recipient's country, the template category and your provider's volume tiers, and it changes over time. Hard-coding a number here would simply be wrong somewhere, so enter the rates from your own provider rate card or billing statement. Tax is entered the same way, since it follows your contract and location.
Add a delivery failure rate and the calculator shows how many marketing messages went undelivered and what SMS fallback for those would cost. Whether undelivered sends are still billable depends on your provider, so it is a dropdown, and the option you pick is written into the table row name. Failure counts are rounded up so you never see a fraction of a message, and the label says so only when rounding actually happened.
Frequently asked questions
Template messages are billed by category, and promotional messages are generally priced above transactional ones. Enter each category with its own rate so the mix is reflected instead of averaged away.
Leave the fallback rate blank. That row is dropped from the table and from the message cost total, and you still see the undelivered message count.