I Ran 89,479 WhatsApp Messages Through WAHA. Twilio: $604.

Last month, the author ran 89,479 WhatsApp messages through the WAHA platform, only to discover they received no invoice for these messages. To gain a clearer understanding of the costs associated with self-hosting versus using a third-party service like Twilio, the author sought to compare the expenses side-by-side.

The calculations were performed on August 27, 2026, using data gathered from WAHA and Chatwoot, a self-hosted messaging solution. The author utilized WAHA's incoming and outgoing message counts, along with other metadata, to determine the true cost of outbound messages that were not responses to incoming messages within a 24-hour window. This calculation excluded messages that were free due to being within an open customer service window or utilizing utility templates, which are charged differently by Meta.

By applying the appropriate rates, the author estimated that the cost of running WAHA in-house would be approximately $604. This compared to Twilio's charge of $604 for the same volume of outbound messages, based on a per-message rate. However, the breakdown of costs varied depending on the type of message templates sent. Utility templates, which are free for self-hosting, could result in a cost of around $166 for marketing templates on Twilio, while marketing templates could cost upwards of $1,493 on Twilio.

The biggest cost-saving factor, however, lay in the infrastructure expenses. The self-hosted WAHA solution was running on a minimal 2 vCPU / 4 GB / 40 GB instance, with negligible compute load, resulting in a hardware cost of around $10 per month. This made self-hosting a significantly cheaper option compared to the $604 charged by Twilio for the outbound messages.