WhatsApp Business app or Cloud API: what changes when you move

These are two products, not two tiers of one. The WhatsApp Business app is software you log into, and the free greeting and away messages live inside it. The Cloud API is an interface something else has to drive, it has no greeting or away message of its own, and reaching it from an existing app number happens by one of two routes: one deletes your chat history, the other keeps both running.

What each one is, in Meta’s words

The Business app’s product page names its audience in a line: “The WhatsApp Business app is built with the small business owner in mind”. The platform documentation opens with the opposite disclaimer: “This documentation is intended for developers using our APIs.”

One is software you operate. The other is something a developer connects to.

Cost

Neither Business app page we read publishes a price for the app. Meta’s onboarding documentation states the billing split for a business running both:

After a business customer has been onboarded to Cloud API, messages sent by the business via the WhatsApp Business app will continue to be free, but messages sent via Cloud API will be subject to Cloud API pricing

Cloud API pricing is per message: “Effective July 1, 2025, Meta charges on a per-message basis for messages businesses deliver to WhatsApp users”, and “You are only charged when a template message is delivered”.

Free-form replies stop being free on 1 October 2026, and the rest of the cost question belongs to one page rather than this one. The rates, the monthly allowance Meta adds on the same date, the delivery stop for an account with no payment method, and the reason a rate card carries no United States row are in what changes on 1 October 2026.

Who can be logged in

The Business app is an account on a phone plus companion clients. Meta’s onboarding page says businesses can link up to four WhatsApp companion clients on other devices, and it excludes WhatsApp for Windows and WearOS from support once you have onboarded. The features page markets a larger number to Meta Verified subscribers: “Handle more orders and respond to more customers by linking up to 10 devices and agents to your account”.

Cloud API has no notion of being logged in: “Authentication uses OAuth (not 2.0) access tokens, while permissions restrict access to specific resources.” Where the app has a device count, it has a throughput ceiling: “Business phone numbers can send up to 80 messages per second by default, with capacity upgrades available.” Run both on one number and that ceiling drops:

To remain compatible with the WhatsApp Business app, business phone numbers that are in use with both the WhatsApp Business app and Cloud API have a fixed throughput of 20 mps.

Onboarding also signs your other devices out once. Meta writes that “all companion apps will be unlinked from the account, and the business can then re-link any supported companion apps.”

Whether greeting and away messages survive

Here the intuitive reading is backwards. The API sounds like the route to more automation. Meta’s onboarding page publishes a feature table that lists the app’s free automation as unsupported on Cloud API. The left column below is Meta’s wording, the right is our reading of it.

Meta’s feature row	What it means for you
“Messaging tools (for example, marketing messages, greeting message, away message, quick replies, labels)”	Unchanged inside the app after onboarding. Not available on Cloud API.
“Group chats will not be synchronized.”	Groups stay in the app and never reach your API tooling.
“Disappearing messages will be turned off for all individual (1:1) chats”	Turned off, not paused, and Meta documents no way to keep them.

Broadcast lists go further. Meta writes “Broadcast lists will be disabled.” and, in the same row, “Existing Broadcast lists will become read-only.”

So the greeting and the away message survive, but only inside the app, and only on the onboarding route. They do not become Cloud API features. Reproducing them through the API means building and hosting that behaviour yourself.

Whether automation is possible at all on the app

It is, within limits Meta describes on a product page rather than in a spec. The greeting will “Automatically send a custom welcome message to new customers when they start a conversation with your business.” Away messages “Respond automatically to messages received outside your business hours”.

What that page does not publish is any ceiling: no maximum number of quick replies, no scheduling detail, no rate limit. We have not tested those limits and will not assert numbers on someone else’s account of them.

Meta’s migration page gives two routes to an existing app number: one deletes the account and loses its messaging history, the other onboards through a partner and preserves it. Which route you are on, what deregistering undoes and what it does not, is set out in moving a WhatsApp number.

Neither route changes the clock, and Meta’s onboarding page is explicit about it:

The 24-hour customer service window restriction applies to messages sent via Cloud API. Messages sent from the WhatsApp Business app are not subject to the customer service window and do not create, extend, or affect Cloud API conversation windows or Cloud API pricing.

Answering from your phone does not buy your API integration another 24 hours of free-form replies.

What Meta does not document

Whether deregistering a number restores the labels, quick replies and greeting you had configured. Whether history older than the window Meta syncs is recoverable. How long a deregistered number takes to work in the app again. None of those are on the pages cited here, and we will not guess.

The answer

If one or two people answer messages from a phone, the app is the product Meta built for you, and moving costs you automation you already have for free. Move when something other than a person has to send, and move through a partner who supports business app onboarding, since that is the only route Meta documents as preserving history. Then price it against the country calling codes you actually message, market by market.

Judging a tool by what its platform documents rather than by what its landing page claims is the same exercise as picking review management software.