Respond.io Pricing: Respond.io Cost, Plans and WhatsApp Pricing per Contact
The $79 on respond.io's pricing page is a yearly price. Billed month to month, Starter is $99, and the plan that can actually send a broadcast starts at $199 before you add a single contact past 1,000.
Plan prices and contact tier prices come from the price table respond.io's own pricing page loads. Meta's US message rates are the pass-through figures Twilio publishes.
Respond.io monthly bill calculator
US dollarsEstimated respond.io bill per month
$433.00
That is $0.0433 per message. Skipping the tier and paying on-demand for the extra contacts would cost $480.00 instead of the tier price.Starter has unlimited contacts but cannot send broadcasts.
Contact tier and seat prices are respond.io's own figures for the plan and billing period chosen. Meta fees use $0.0034 per US utility or authentication message outside the 24 hour window; replies inside an open window are free until September 30, 2026. Marketing templates are left out because they do not currently deliver to US numbers.
How much does respond.io cost?
Respond.io costs $99 a month for Starter, $199 for Growth and $349 for Advanced on monthly billing. Paid yearly, those drop to $79, $159 and $279 a month, which are the numbers most articles quote. Growth and Advanced include 1,000 monthly active contacts, and every contact past that is billed through a larger tier or on-demand. Meta's WhatsApp fees are charged separately.
The line that decides a respond.io bill is contacts, not messages. A business that broadcasts to a 5,000 person list once a month needs Growth plus the 5,000 contact tier: $399 a month on monthly billing, or $319 a month paid yearly. If the list grows past the tier mid-month instead, on-demand contacts cost $12 per 100, which adds $480 to Growth, not $200.
Respond.io plans and prices in US dollars
Respond.io's pricing page opens with the yearly toggle already selected, and the prices under it are yearly charges divided by twelve. The struck through figure under each plan, $1,188, $2,388 and $4,188, is what twelve monthly payments cost. The table shows both.
| Starter | Growth | Advanced | Enterprise | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Billed monthly | $99 a month | $199 a month | $349 a month | Custom |
| Billed yearly | $948 a year ($79) | $1,908 a year ($159) | $3,348 a year ($279) | Custom |
| Users included | 5 | 10 | 10 | Unlimited |
| Extra user, yearly / monthly | $12 / $15 | $20 / $25 | $24 / $30 | Included |
| Monthly active contacts | Unlimited | From 1,000 | From 1,000 | Custom |
| Broadcasts | Not included | Included | Included | Included |
| Workflows, AI agents, developer API | Not included | Included | Included | Included |
| Zapier, Make and n8n | Not included | Included | Included | Included |
| SSO, multiple workspaces | No | No | Yes | Yes, higher limits |
| AI credits a month | 5,000 | From 10,000 | From 20,000 | From 40,000 |
The yearly discount is a flat 20% on every plan: $79 against $99 is 20.2%, $159 against $199 is 20.1%, $279 against $349 is 20.1%. Extra AI credits cost $15 per 1,000 on every paid plan and switch on automatically, with a hard cap at 200% of your allowance.
Respond.io pricing per contact: the contact tier table
Respond.io's pricing page has a dropdown asking how many contacts you talk to every month, with 1,000, 2,500, 5,000, 10,000 and more than 10,000. The prices it adds are not printed anywhere on the page as text. They sit in the price table the page's calculator script uses, which is where these figures come from.
| Contacts a month | Growth, monthly | Growth, yearly | Advanced, monthly | Advanced, yearly |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1,000 (included) | $199 | $159 | $349 | $279 |
| 2,500 | $299 (+$100) | $239 (+$80) | $529 (+$180) | $419 (+$140) |
| 5,000 | $399 (+$200) | $319 (+$160) | $699 (+$350) | $569 (+$290) |
| 10,000 | $559 (+$360) | $449 (+$290) | $989 (+$640) | $789 (+$510) |
| More than 10,000 | No public price. The page swaps its sign up buttons for a demo request. | |||
Buying the tier is up to three times cheaper than on-demand
Go past your contact allowance without upgrading and respond.io keeps working, then bills on-demand contacts at the end of the cycle: $12 per 100 on Growth and $15 per 100 on Advanced. The 10,000 tier on Growth works out to $4 per 100 extra contacts on monthly billing. Respond.io itself says on-demand contacts are meant for temporary, seasonal spikes, and the arithmetic agrees.
Contacts are counted once a month, not per message
A contact becomes active the first time you talk in a billing month, whether they wrote first or you did. Send that person one message or ten and they still count once. So respond.io gets cheaper per message the more often you contact the same list, and most expensive for a single monthly broadcast to a large list, which is exactly how many US businesses use WhatsApp.
Respond.io WhatsApp pricing: what Meta adds on top
Respond.io states that WhatsApp fees are not included in any subscription and that Meta charges them based on your usage. Its plan comparison describes respond.io as an official WhatsApp partner with no usage markups or hidden fees. So unlike Wati, which prices messages from its own rate card, a respond.io customer pays Meta's rate for each template message.
For US recipients that rate is $0.0034 for a utility or authentication template sent outside the 24 hour service window. Replies inside an open window and utility templates sent inside it are free until September 30, 2026. From October 1, Meta's own pricing documentation says it will charge for both, with service messages billed at the same per market rate as utility and authentication and no volume tiers. Marketing templates have not been delivered to US phone numbers since April 1, 2025, so a US list cannot receive promotional broadcasts through any provider, respond.io included.
| US message type | Meta's fee | Respond.io markup |
|---|---|---|
| Utility, outside the window | $0.0034 | None stated |
| Authentication | $0.0034 | None stated |
| Service replies and in-window utility | Free to Sept 30, then the utility rate | None |
| Marketing | Does not deliver to US numbers | Not applicable |
Meta has said it will publish the October 1, 2026 rates, including service messages, by September 1, 2026; as of September 18 they are still not in its pricing documentation. Bird's documentation says each business number gets 1,000 free service messages a month, which Meta's own page does not mention, so treat that allowance as unconfirmed. We track that on our WhatsApp service messages page, and the full category breakdown is in our WhatsApp Business API pricing guide.
Three respond.io pricing claims that do not match its own page
"Starter is $79 a month"
Only if you pay for a year. Respond.io's page loads on the yearly toggle; month to month, Starter is $99. Budget with the monthly number unless you are ready to commit $948 up front.
"Starter includes broadcasts and ten users"
A widely repeated summary says so. Respond.io's own plan table gives Starter 5 users and lists broadcasts, workflows and AI agents from Growth upward. The Starter feature list is inbox work.
"Overage can double your bill"
True only if you never pick a tier. On-demand contacts are $12 per 100 on Growth, but the 5,000 tier adds $200 a month, not $480. Choose the tier that matches your list before you send.
Respond.io cost vs Wati, Twilio and WaBulkSend for one US campaign
The scenario: one utility template (an account or order update) sent to a 5,000 person US list each month, billed monthly. These tools are not the same product, so the table also says what each price buys.
| Option | Subscription | Messages | Monthly total | What you get |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Respond.io Growth, 5,000 tier | $399 | $17.00 Meta | $416.00 | Omnichannel inbox, 10 users, AI agents, workflows |
| Wati Pro | $149 | $30.60 at $0.00612 | $179.60 | WhatsApp inbox, 5 users, chatbot builder |
| Twilio | None | $42.00 at $0.0084 | $42.00 | An API; you build the sending and the inbox |
| WaBulkSend Pro | $99 | $17.00 Meta | $116.00 | Bulk campaigns from contact lists, 10,000 messages a month |
Wati figures are from Wati's US dollar rate card; see our Wati pricing breakdown. Twilio's $0.005 per message fee on top of Meta's rate is on our Twilio WhatsApp pricing page. WaBulkSend Pro is $49.50 a month on yearly billing. Paid yearly, respond.io's line becomes $319 plus the same $17 in Meta fees.
Is respond.io worth the price?
Respond.io's pricing makes sense when
- ✓A team of five to ten answers customers across WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger, email and calls from one inbox
- ✓You talk to the same contacts many times a month, so the once-per-month contact charge spreads across lots of messages
- ✓You want AI agents and workflows that route and answer conversations without writing code
- ✓You would rather pay Meta's rate directly than a provider's marked up rate card
Look at other options when
- ✕Your main job is a broadcast to a large list once or twice a month, where every recipient becomes a billable contact
- ✕You only need broadcasts, which rules out Starter and makes Growth at $199 the entry price
- ✕Your list is past 10,000 contacts and you want a public price instead of a sales call
- ✕One or two people run WhatsApp, so ten seats and an omnichannel inbox are capacity you pay for and leave idle
The broadcast case is where respond.io's model costs the most. Contact based pricing rewards conversation depth, and a campaign is the opposite: one message to many people. WaBulkSend is built for that job. You import a contact list, merge fields into an approved template, schedule the send and track delivery and replies, on plans priced by messages: $29 a month for 1,000, $99 for 10,000 and $299 for unlimited, or half that billed yearly. Meta's fees are paid to Meta at its own rate. If you are moving off respond.io, our respond.io alternative comparison covers the switch, and the cheapest WhatsApp API provider guide shows how the cheapest option changes with volume.
Questions people ask about respond.io pricing
How much does respond.io cost per month?
On monthly billing respond.io costs $99 for Starter, $199 for Growth and $349 for Advanced. Paid yearly, the same plans work out to $79, $159 and $279 a month, charged as $948, $1,908 and $3,348 a year. Growth and Advanced include 1,000 monthly active contacts, and larger contact tiers, extra users and Meta's WhatsApp fees are added on top.
Is the $79 respond.io price monthly or annual?
Annual. Respond.io's pricing page opens on the yearly toggle, so $79, $159 and $279 are monthly equivalents of a yearly charge. Switch the toggle to monthly and the same plans cost $99, $199 and $349. The crossed out figures under each price, $1,188, $2,388 and $4,188, are twelve monthly payments.
What is a monthly active contact on respond.io?
A monthly active contact is anyone your workspace talks to during the billing month, either because they message you or because you start a conversation with them. A contact counts once per month no matter how many messages you exchange, so a broadcast to 5,000 people makes all 5,000 of them active contacts for that month.
Can you send broadcasts on the respond.io Starter plan?
No. Broadcasts start on the Growth plan, along with workflows, AI agents, the developer API and Zapier and Make integrations. Starter has unlimited monthly active contacts, but it is built for answering conversations. The 7 day free trial runs on Growth features and also excludes broadcasts.
How much does respond.io charge for extra contacts?
Two ways. If you pick a larger tier in advance, Growth adds $100 a month for 2,500 contacts, $200 for 5,000 and $360 for 10,000 on monthly billing. If you go over your tier without upgrading, on-demand contacts cost $12 per 100 on Growth and $15 per 100 on Advanced, which is up to three times the tier rate.
Does respond.io charge a markup on WhatsApp messages?
Respond.io says it adds no usage markup. It states that WhatsApp fees are not included in any subscription and that Meta charges them based on your usage. For a US business that means Meta's own rate, such as $0.0034 for a utility or authentication message sent outside the 24 hour service window.
How much does a respond.io extra user cost?
On yearly billing an extra user costs $12 a month on Starter, $20 on Growth and $24 on Advanced. On monthly billing the same seats cost $15, $25 and $30. Starter includes 5 users, Growth and Advanced include 10, and Enterprise has unlimited users on a custom quote.
Is respond.io worth it for bulk WhatsApp campaigns?
Only if you also need its shared inbox, AI agents and workflows. Because respond.io bills by contacts reached, a monthly campaign to a 5,000 person list needs Growth with the 5,000 contact tier at $399 a month on monthly billing, before Meta's fees. A campaign focused tool prices the same send by messages instead.
Does respond.io have a free plan?
No. Respond.io offers a 7 day free trial with no credit card, giving 5 users and 1,000 monthly active contacts on Growth features except broadcasts. After the trial you choose a paid plan starting at $79 a month billed yearly or $99 billed monthly.
What happens above 10,000 contacts on respond.io?
The public price table stops at 10,000 monthly active contacts. Choosing more than 10,000 on respond.io's pricing page replaces the sign up buttons with a demo request, so volumes above that are quoted by sales, and Enterprise pricing is custom.
Pay per message sent, not per contact reached
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