After intense regulatory pressure, Meta has reversed a policy that had locked third-party AI chatbots out of WhatsApp and is now allowing rival AI providers to operate on the platform, but at a cost.
The company recently announced it would open WhatsApp’s Business API to general-purpose AI chatbots in Europe and in Brazil for the next 12 months, charging those providers between €0.0490 and €0.1323 per non-template message, depending on the country. This move follows formal warnings from the European Commission, which had threatened to impose emergency competition measures against Meta if the policy remained in place.
Meta Policy That Started It All
The story begins in October 2025, when Meta updated the terms governing its WhatsApp Business Platform to prohibit general-purpose AI chatbots from using its Business API. The change took full effect on January 15, 2026, and from that date, the only AI assistant available on WhatsApp was Meta’s own product, Meta AI. Services that had built significant user bases through WhatsApp, including OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, Perplexity, were effectively removed from the platform.
Meta’s stated justification was technical. The company said the surge in AI chatbot activity placed heavy and unanticipated strain on its systems, which were not built to support the volume of back-and-forth messages, media uploads, and voice interactions that general-purpose AI assistants generate.
A Meta spokesperson told TechCrunch, “The purpose of the WhatsApp Business API is to help businesses provide customer support and send relevant updates.” The company framed the restriction as a clarification of the API’s intended use, not a competitive move.
There was, however, a straightforward revenue angle. WhatsApp’s Business API is one of Meta’s primary monetisation tools, charging businesses per message across categories such as marketing, utility, authentication, and customer support.
There was no pricing structure for AI chatbots under the old terms, which meant companies like OpenAI and Perplexity were generating large volumes of traffic on WhatsApp without contributing to its revenue. And during Meta’s Q1 2025 earnings call, CEO Mark Zuckerberg had already identified business messaging as a major growth opportunity for the company.
Regulators Push Back
The response from competition authorities was swift. The European Commission opened a formal antitrust investigation, citing concerns that by blocking rival AI assistants while keeping Meta AI available, Meta was likely abusing its dominant position in the consumer messaging market.
Italy’s Competition Authority, the AGCM, moved first by quickly issuing an emergency order in December 2025 that required Meta to suspend the ban in Italy pending the outcome of its investigation.
Then in February 2026, the European Commission further escalated the matter as it formally notified Meta that it intended to impose interim measures. Teresa Ribera, the EU’s competition chief, was direct in her public statement when she said, “We must protect effective competition in this vibrant field, which means we cannot allow dominant tech companies to illegally leverage their dominance to give themselves an unfair advantage.”
The Commission’s position was that WhatsApp functions as an important gateway for AI companies to reach consumers, and that excluding competitors while favouring Meta AI was distorting that market.
Meta pushed back on each of these measures, with a spokesperson that the EU had “no reason” to intervene. The company maintained that the AI services market was highly competitive and that users could access competing chatbots through app stores, search engines, and other channels.
Meta U-Turn: Access Returns, But With a Price Tag
Faced with the prospect of formal measures from Brussels, Meta announced on March 5 that it would allow general-purpose AI chatbot providers to access WhatsApp through its Business API in Europe for 12 months.
In a statement to Reuters, Meta said, “For the next 12 months, we’ll support general-purpose AI chatbots using the WhatsApp Business API in Europe in response to the European Commission’s regulatory process. We believe that this removes the need for any immediate intervention as it gives the European Commission the time it needs to conclude its investigation.”
The access, however, comes with a fee structure. Meta will charge third-party AI providers between €0.0490 and €0.1323 per non-template message, which is every conversational reply their chatbot sends to a user. Given that most AI assistant interactions involve multiple back-and-forth exchanges, the cumulative cost per conversation could be substantial.
The European Commission said it is still analysing the impact of the fee structure on its ongoing investigation, leaving open the question of whether the new arrangement fully satisfies regulators’ concerns.
Marvin von Hagen, CEO of Poke.com, one of the AI providers that filed antitrust complaints against Meta, criticised the arrangement, saying, “What Meta presents as good-faith compliance is in reality the opposite. The company is now introducing vexatious pricing for AI providers that makes it just as impossible to operate on WhatsApp as the outright ban did.”
Who Is Affected and Who Is Not
The policy, both in its original form and in the new fee-based version, draws a clear line between two types of AI use on WhatsApp. General-purpose AI assistants, those where AI is the core service being offered to users, are the target of the restriction, while customer-service bots deployed by businesses to handle their own clients are explicitly excluded.
What this implies is that a retailer using an automated bot to answer order queries, or a bank offering AI-assisted account support, can continue operating without disruption. The restriction targets standalone AI services like ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Copilot, where the AI itself is what is being used.
What This Means for AI Companies and the Broader Market
For Meta, this new arrangement turns meeting a compliance obligation into a revenue stream.
WhatsApp’s more than three billion users make it one of the most valuable distribution channels in the world for any consumer-facing product, and AI chatbots are no exception. By requiring providers to pay per message, Meta gains income from competitor activity on its platform while maintaining Meta AI as the only natively integrated option for users who do not seek out other alternatives.
The European Commission’s investigation remains open, and its conclusion will determine whether the 12-month access window leads to a permanent arrangement or another round of disputes. For the AI industry, the WhatsApp Third-Party AI integration is already being read as a preview of how large messaging platforms intend to manage the growing pressure to open their ecosystems to competing AI services and at what cost.
