Marketing Max-Price (Beta)

What Max-Price Is

The max-price feature on Marketing Messages API for WhatsApp lets you set the maximum price you are willing to pay per marketing message delivery. Meta charges that max-price or lower for each delivered message — never higher. The bid is encoded as a bid_spec object on the template.

There is no change to Meta's per-message pricing model. Max-price is an opt-in optimization knob — you can set it equal to, lower than, or higher than the published rate card to shape your delivery and cost trade-offs.

Rollout Status

The per-message multiplier (see below) is subject to change during beta.

Prerequisites

• WABA onboarded to MM API (see MM API Onboarding)
• WABA in a country eligible for MM API
• Sending through /marketing_messages (Cloud API rejects templates with bid_spec — error 131061)

How Bidding Works

bid_amount represents your max price per 1,000 deliveries, expressed in your WABA currency's smallest unit (cents for USD, paise for INR, centavos for MXN, and so on).

Three positioning strategies:

Meta's recommendation: set the bid at the template level, then use the per-message multiplier sparingly. Optimization performs better against the original template-level bid than against multiplier-adjusted bids on every send.

Create a Template with bid_spec

curl 'https://graph.facebook.com/<GRAPH_VERSION>/<WABA_ID>/message_templates' \
  -H 'Authorization: Bearer <ACCESS_TOKEN>' \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{
    "name": "seasonal_sale_promo",
    "category": "MARKETING",
    "language": "en",
    "components": [
      { "type": "BODY", "text": "Shop our seasonal sale! Up to 50% off selected items." }
    ],
    "bid_spec": {
      "bid_amount": "87000",
      "bid_strategy": "LOWEST_COST_WITH_BID_CAP"
    }
  }'

If bid_spec is omitted, the template uses standard rate card pricing — no bidding at all. If bid_spec is present at template creation, it cannot be removed later (you'd have to create a new template without it).

bid_strategy is currently always LOWEST_COST_WITH_BID_CAP.

Calculating bid_amount

Two-step conversion:

1. Convert your desired per-delivery price to the currency's smallest unit.
2. Multiply by 1,000 (because the field is per 1,000 deliveries, not per delivery).

Be precise — small rounding errors compound over high volume.

Retrieve and Update Max-Price

Retrieve:

curl 'https://graph.facebook.com/<GRAPH_VERSION>/<TEMPLATE_ID>?fields=bid_spec' \
  -H 'Authorization: Bearer <ACCESS_TOKEN>'

{
  "bid_spec": {
    "bid_strategy": "LOWEST_COST_WITH_BID_CAP",
    "bid_amount": 87000
  },
  "id": "1733678867511493"
}

Update:

curl 'https://graph.facebook.com/<GRAPH_VERSION>/<TEMPLATE_ID>' \
  -H 'Authorization: Bearer <ACCESS_TOKEN>' \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{
    "bid_spec": {
      "bid_strategy": "LOWEST_COST_WITH_BID_CAP",
      "bid_amount": 4000
    }
  }'

You can update bid_spec only on templates that were originally created with it. Adding bid_spec to a template that did not originally have it is not supported — create a new template.

Standard template edit limits apply: 100 edits/hour and 2,400/day on approved templates; unlimited on rejected or paused templates.

Per-Message Multiplier

Per-send adjustment is supported via bid_spec.per_message_bid_multiplier on the /marketing_messages request:

{
  "recipient_type": "individual",
  "messaging_product": "whatsapp",
  "to": "<WHATSAPP_USER_PHONE_NUMBER>",
  "type": "template",
  "template": {
    "name": "seasonal_sale_promo",
    "language": { "code": "en" }
  },
  "bid_spec": {
    "per_message_bid_multiplier": "1.5"
  }
}

The multiplier is a positive float applied to the template's bid_amount:

• 1.5 → effective max-price is 150% of template's bid
• 0.5 → 50% of template's bid
• 1 (default) → unchanged

A template with bid_amount: 2000 sent with per_message_bid_multiplier: 1.5 has an effective max-price of 3000.

Caveat from Meta: the multiplier is subject to change during beta, and delivery performance often differs from setting the equivalent template-level bid directly even when the effective max-price is the same. Prefer template-level bids for predictability.

Reach Estimation

Meta provides a reach-estimation endpoint that returns expected delivery and cost ranges across multiple bid amounts based on historical data:

curl 'https://graph.facebook.com/<GRAPH_VERSION>/<WABA_ID>/reachestimate?targeting_spec={"geo_locations":{"countries":["IN"]}}&date_interval=L7D' \
  -H 'Authorization: Bearer <ACCESS_TOKEN>'

Parameters:

• targeting_spec (required) — serialized JSON with geo_locations.countries, an array of ISO country codes
• date_interval (required) — historical lookback: L1D, L7D, L14D, L28D

Response:

{
  "waba_currency": "USD",
  "estimates": [
    {
      "bid_amount": 400,
      "users": 1000,
      "lower_bound_deliveries": 500,
      "upper_bound_deliveries": 570,
      "cost_lower_bound": 389.74,
      "cost_upper_bound": 390.74
    },
    {
      "bid_amount": 520,
      "users": 1000,
      "lower_bound_deliveries": 600,
      "upper_bound_deliveries": 650,
      "cost_lower_bound": 400.74,
      "cost_upper_bound": 510.74
    }
  ]
}

users is fixed at 1,000 during beta. Cost bounds are in the WABA currency's smallest unit. Estimates are informational only — actual results depend on platform conditions.

Metrics and Billing

Sends with or without bid_spec use the same Marketing Lite SKU for billing. They surface in analytics as:

Webhooks use lowercase, analytics APIs use uppercase. Account for both casings in any code that joins these signals.

Errors

Operational Notes

• Ramp gradually. When sending with a new bid_spec template for the first time, increase volume slowly. Aligns with template pacing best practices and gives the delivery system signal to optimize.
• Plan for GA. Once max-price reaches GA in Q2 2027, fixed published rates will only apply on Cloud API. WABAs sending high marketing volume should treat max-price as on the migration path now, not a curiosity.
• Dualhook does not currently expose bid_spec in its template management UI. If you create or update a template directly via Meta with bid_spec, Dualhook will sync the template's other fields, but managing bid_spec itself remains a Meta Graph API operation for now.