Nothing to pay to be called
When the customer dials, your business is charged nothing. Money only ever changes hands on calls your team places.
Voice calls
Answer voice calls on your WhatsApp Business number
A customer taps call inside the thread. It rings in the inbox, an agent answers with the whole exchange already on screen, and the call files itself against that contact.
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- Inbound calls cost nothing
- Voice on the number you already use
- Official WhatsApp Business API provider
Incoming callFree to take
New contact+1 415 ··· ····
- The owner of this numberAlready on a call
- A free teammate assigned to itRinging
A busy line is never handed a second caller, and a call belongs to whoever picks it up first. Any agent reaching for it afterwards is told it has already been answered.
Voice, in the inbox
Calls that cost nothing to take
The thread is already open on the customer's phone. Letting them press call inside it adds no bill for you to watch and no equipment for your team to look after.
One number does both jobs
Voice rides the same WhatsApp Business number your team already replies from. There is no second line to buy, no switchboard to wire up, nothing for agents to install.
Whoever answers already knows the story
The agent picking up is looking at the messages, the contact fields and the team's private notes while the phone is still ringing. Nobody is asked to explain themselves twice.
It refreshes the service window
A call opens or renews the 24-hour customer service window, so the message you send afterwards carries no extra fee.
In the thread
Every call lands in the chat it came from
A call writes itself into the conversation under the same contact, and every step it goes through gets its own line: that it rang, whether anyone picked up, whether it went unanswered, and how long the two sides were connected. Each of them waits there for whoever opens the thread next.
- Agents take the call in a browser tab with something to listen through, and nothing gets installed.
- Filed against the contact, not against an extension number nobody remembers.
- Left in plain sight for the next agent, so a handover never loses the call.
New contact+1 415 ··· ····
Voice call in progress04:12
Hi there, could someone talk me through the delivery options?
Voice call · taken by ALSending over the two options we just went through.
Incoming · freeLogged to the contact
Who rings
Ring one agent, or ring the whole team
Each number carries its own answer rule, and you set it per number rather than once for the account. One of them suits a line a single person owns; the other suits a line the room shares.
One agent rings
The out-of-the-box rule. A call goes to whoever owns the number. If that person is already talking to someone else and a teammate assigned to the number is free, the free teammate gets it instead. Nobody who is mid-call is ever handed a second caller.
DefaultSkips anyone mid-call
Everyone rings
Flip the number to ring all agents and the call reaches every signed-in teammate who has access to it. Nobody is nominated in advance, which is what you want on a support line where the fastest free pair of hands should win.
One switch per numberFirst to accept keeps it
A call only ever belongs to one person
Accepting a call claims it outright. A second agent reaching for the same one is turned away with a plain "already answered" rather than being dropped onto a customer who is mid-sentence with a colleague.
Answering and dialling are separate rights
Roles decide each one on its own, and each can be narrowed: every contact, only contacts already saved, or only the chats assigned to that agent. Seeing the call history is a third right again.
Missed calls
The ones nobody can take still get an answer
Every step a call goes through raises its own event, from placed and connected to ended, failed and missed. Point your automation at the missed one and the reply is already moving while the caller is still putting the phone down.
Automation · after hours20:14
Missed call · +1 415 ··· ····Reply sent in seconds
Second missed call todayCallback queued for Sales, 09:00
Nobody was free · the customer still heard back · the callback is waiting for the morning shift
Call settings
Calling is a per-number switch, not an account-wide one
The controls sit beside everything else that number does. Run voice on the sales line and leave the billing line silent, or change your mind on a Tuesday afternoon.
Call hours
Weekly opening hours with a timezone of their own, plus a holiday schedule for the days you are shut. The button stops offering a call nobody is there to answer.
Whether the call icon shows at all
Hide it and the number goes back to being a messaging number, with no visible way in for voice.
Pause voice, keep chat
Stop incoming calls on a number without touching the messaging that runs on it, which is what you want for the week your team is short-handed.
Ringing back from the conversation
Decide whether agents may return a call from inside the chat, or keep the number strictly one-way and inbound.
Call log
A record nobody has to type up
Each row carries the direction, the outcome, the name against it and the connected time. The clock starts when the two sides join, not when the phone starts ringing, so a long wait never pads out a short conversation.
| Contact | Direction | Agent | Status | Duration |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| +1 415 ··· ···· | Inbound | AL | Answered | 4:12 |
| +44 7·· ··· ··· | Outbound | DM | Answered | 2:41 |
| +49 1·· ··· ··· | Inbound | None | Missed | None |
| +1 415 ··· ···· | Inbound | KT | Answered | 6:03 |
Illustrative log. Numbers are masked and agents are initials.
Calling out
Customers opt in before a business can dial them
WhatsApp will not let a business ring whoever it likes, which is precisely why people pick up when you do call. They say yes once, and the line stays open for a week.
- From the chat
Ask to call
A call permission request goes out without leaving the conversation. The same contact can be asked once in any 24-hour period, twice at most across a week.
- One tap
They say yes
Their answer makes that contact callable on the spot, with nothing to install on their side and nothing to configure on yours.
- 7 days
Dial when it suits
The permission holds for a week. If they are away from the phone, try again inside that week instead of asking a second time.
What it costs
Free to be called, metered to call out
Freewhen the customer dials you
6 sthe smallest block billed
0added to what Meta charges
24 hservice window a call opens
What an outgoing minute costs depends on where it lands. Every destination carries its own rate, that rate steps down as your monthly volume to the destination grows, and the counter returns to zero when a new month starts.
The meter only starts once somebody picks up. Placing the call, sitting through the ring tone and hanging up unanswered all cost nothing. Voice is metered separately and leaves your messaging bill alone.
What it takes
Five things have to be true of the number
Voice is part of the official WhatsApp Business API, so qualifying is really a question about the number rather than about WaliChat. A number already on the API usually clears all five and only wants the last one flipped.
- It lives on the WhatsApp Business API. A QR pairing carries messages only, never audio.
- Meta has verified the business standing behind it.
- Its messaging tier sits at 2,000 conversations a day or higher.
- The WhatsApp Business Account has billing set up, which outgoing calls draw on.
- Calling is toggled on for that number in WaliChat.
Number paired by QR code?
Migrating it to the WhatsApp Business API costs nothing, and neither the number nor the conversations already in it change hands. Your customers see no difference.
How connecting worksCountries and exceptions
Receiving follows the WhatsApp Business API's own map, minus a handful of embargoed territories:
- Syria, Cuba, North Korea and Iran, plus the Donetsk, Luhansk and Crimea regions.
Dialling out is narrower. A business number registered in any of these cannot place calls yet:
- Nigeria, Vietnam, Egypt, Canada and the United States.
Both lists belong to Meta and are theirs to change.
For developers
Build on the call events
Voice is not a closed feature with a screen you can only look at. Every state a call passes through is delivered to your endpoint, so a call can update a CRM, open a ticket or start a follow-up without anyone retyping it.
Webhook events a call raises
- call:in:new
- call:out:new
- call:connected
- call:ended
- call:failed
- call:in:missed
Each one carries the call, the contact and the agent it was routed to.
Questions about calling
Do incoming WhatsApp calls cost anything?
No. Whenever the customer is the one dialling, your business pays nothing at all. Charges only ever attach to calls your own team places.
Is anything stopping me from dialling a customer?
One thing does. The customer has to grant permission before you can dial, and once they have you can ring straight away or at any point over the following week. The asking itself is rate-limited, so the same contact can receive one request in any 24-hour period and two across a week.
When does an outgoing call start costing money?
At the moment of pickup. Everything before it is free: placing the call, the ring tone, a call nobody takes. From pickup the clock runs in six-second blocks, and a part-used block counts as a whole one.
Does calling change what my messages cost?
No. Voice is billed on its own. A call also opens or refreshes the 24-hour customer service window, which is the period where free-form replies carry no extra fee.
Who on my team can answer?
That follows the answer rule set on the number. Left alone, one agent rings: the person who owns the number, or a free teammate assigned to it when the owner is mid-call. Switch the number to ring everyone and every signed-in agent with access to it rings, and whoever accepts first keeps the call.
What does an agent need to take a call?
A browser, a working connection, and some way to speak and listen, whether that is a headset or the machine's own mic and speakers. Calls run inside the WaliChat inbox, so there is no client to install and no extension number to remember.
My number is connected by QR code. Can I use calling?
Not while it stays paired that way. Voice is an API-only capability. Migrating the number onto the WhatsApp Business API costs nothing and leaves both the number and its archive of conversations intact.
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