The free tools Google and Meta already give you, before you buy anything

Before you pay anyone for review replies or WhatsApp auto-replies, look at what the platforms hand you already. Google documents the Business Profile as costing nothing and generates your review link and QR code, and Meta puts a free away message and greeting message in the WhatsApp Business app. Two more features sit beside those and are not free in the same way: Google’s Gemini web app drafts review replies for a narrow group of owners at a price it does not publish, and Meta’s own AI agent will not deliver messages without a payment method on the account. We are building in this category and have nothing to sell yet, so this page is written against our own interest.

The features, in the platform’s own words

Three groups, because they do not all cost the same. A Google Business Profile costing nothing does not make everything reachable from it free, and two of these five are not.

Free, and the platform says so.

Feature, and where it lives	The platform’s wording
Review replies, in the Business Profile	“Collect and respond to reviews from customers.”
Review link and QR code, in the profile	“create and share a link or QR code to request reviews”
Away and greeting messages, in the WhatsApp Business app	“Respond automatically to messages received outside your business hours”

Price not published.

Feature, and where it lives	The platform’s wording
Reply drafting, in the Gemini web app	“Review replies: Draft or delete replies to customer feedback”

Google’s at-no-charge wording belongs to the Business Profile. The help page for what Gemini can do with a profile states no price, no free tier and no paid requirement, so we do not know what this one costs and we are not going to call it free on the strength of the profile being free.

Not free to start.

Feature, and where it lives	The platform’s wording
Meta Business Agent, in that app and on Cloud API	“becomes the primary responder in the customer conversation”

Meta’s pricing update makes delivery conditional on a payment method being on the account, and its messages are metered once they flow. The wording is further down, and it is the reason this row is not in the first table.

Across twelve vendor pages we fetched on 19 September 2026, nine pricing pages and three free generators, Meta Business Agent appears on none. Gemini appears once, on NiceJob’s page, about AI search visibility rather than reply drafting.

Google’s side, including the part we can never match

Google’s get-started page is explicit about the price of the profile: “With a Business Profile on Google, you can manage how your business shows up on Maps and Search at no charge”, and the list under it includes “Collect and respond to reviews from customers.” Replying is a control in the profile, not a product, and its precondition is verification: “Before you can reply to reviews, you must verify your business”.

Asking is free too, and here Google beats us outright. Its page for the request link opens on the point: “To make it easier for customers to leave reviews on your Business Profile, you can create and share a link or QR code to request reviews.” It names the channels as well: “You can also send review requests through email, WhatsApp message, or Facebook post.” One published limit: “Currently, reviews QR codes can only be generated on a computer browser, not on mobile devices.”

We cannot sell you any of that. mesej is reply-only by construction, with no code path that starts a conversation, so asking somebody who has not written to you is a job Google does for nothing and we will never do. Note the limit exactly: SendKind in src/lib/conversation/send_guard.ts carries a review_ask value, so the specification does allow asking inside a conversation the customer already opened. Never first, not never at all.

Flagging is free too, because Google says “you can flag it” when a review looks like a policy breach, which is the context for removal services and reporting a fake review.

Google drafts the reply, for a narrow group of owners

Google’s help page for managing a profile in the Gemini web app lists “Review replies: Draft or delete replies to customer feedback” among the things Gemini does, with an example prompt of “Help me draft a reply to my latest review”.

The published exclusions decide whether this is your answer. You must “Be an owner or manager of only one verified Business Profile on Google”, and Google states it is “Not available to owners or managers who have access to more than one verified Business Profile.” It is “Available wherever the Gemini web app is supported except the European Economic Area and the United Kingdom.” A personal account is required, because “For now, this feature isn’t available if you sign in with a work or school Google Account.” Google adds that the feature may “not be available to you just yet”.

So agencies, multi-location owners, the UK, the EEA and Workspace accounts are out. How much of the audience for this search that removes is not something anybody has measured, and we are not going to estimate it. The page also publishes no price for the Gemini feature itself, and Google’s at-no-charge wording belongs to the profile, which is why this feature sits in the price-not-published group above and not in the free one.

Meta’s agent, which takes the job rather than helping with it

Our sibling article verified this at Meta’s documentation and corrected four things our research had wrong, so these findings are its. Meta’s capabilities page: “When enabled, Meta Business Agent becomes the primary responder in the customer conversation.” The small-business route starts with “Set up Meta Business Agent in the WhatsApp Business app”, and Meta counts the surface: “You manage this through four key controls”.

Three things bound it. Eligibility on the platform route excludes a list of verticals, “all verticals are supported except Finance, Government, Health, Alcohol, Gambling, over-the-counter drugs, and matrimony services.” The country gate is real and unpublished: “the business must be based in a country authorized for Meta Business Agent”, while the product page says only “Available to eligible businesses in select markets, with additional markets launching soon.” A market list circulates in write-ups; it is on no Meta page we read, so we print none. Handoff is not yours either: “You do not configure the triggers.”

And it is not free to start, which our own research recorded wrongly until this week. Meta’s pricing update states: “For any business that does not have a payment method for their Meta Business Agent account, Meta will not deliver Meta Business Agent messages.” What it does have over any third-party tool is one meter instead of two, being “charged either as a Meta Business Agent message or as a service message, never both”.

The free WhatsApp automations, and where they stop

The WhatsApp Business app, which Meta describes as “built with the small business owner in mind”, ships the away message and its twin. Away: “Respond automatically to messages received outside your business hours to set expectations and let customers know when you’ll be back.” Greeting: “Automatically send a custom welcome message to new customers when they start a conversation with your business.”

Both are fixed text on a trigger. The away message fires on your hours, not on what the customer wrote, so an urgent question and a thank-you get the same sentence.

The line

Past these five points, and only past them, a paid tool is doing work the platforms do not:

• You manage more than one verified profile, or sit in the UK or the EEA, or sign in with Workspace. Google’s drafting is unavailable and the free path is typing in each profile.
• You need to know a reply was published. Google’s dashboard says only that you will be asked to edit an unapproved reply, and the state and the reason live in the API. See the published rejection reasons.
• Your vertical or country is outside Meta’s agent, or the handoff triggers have to be yours.
• The reply has to depend on what was asked, which no fixed away message does.
• Volume, where sameness across accounts becomes the problem rather than the blank box. See replying to a negative review.

We are not the answer past that line today. No channel is connected, production holds no owner accounts, there is no Google Business Profile code in the product at all, and nothing of ours sends anything to a customer. We are specified to draft for your approval, and we cannot ask anyone who has not written to you first, by design. We have not used Gemini’s drafting or Meta’s agent either, so there is no quality comparison here. For the paid category, read what each vendor publishes.

The short version

Verify the profile, reply from it, print the QR code, set the away message. That is free and first-party. Whether it is enough for your business is a question about your own message volume, and no page we read answers it for you. Check Gemini’s eligibility list before buying a drafting tool, and Meta’s vertical and payment rules before assuming its agent costs nothing. Then buy only what the platforms withheld.