A free AI WhatsApp chatbot for Indian businesses.
No Meta API key. Live in about a minute.

Search for a “free WhatsApp chatbot” in India and you’ll mostly find three things:

• A free plan without the AI. AiSensy’s Free Forever plan gets you onto the official API, but leaves out the AI agent, chatbot flows and broadcasts.
• A short trial. WATI offers 7 days, and Interakt also starts with a free trial. After that you pay for a plan.
• Fixed auto-replies. The WhatsApp Business app’s greeting and away messages are free, but they send everyone the same text. They can’t answer “what’s the price of this?”

Wapzen works differently. The AI is included, so you don’t need an OpenAI key or any other key. There’s no monthly reply quota, and because it doesn’t use the API, there are no Meta message charges either.

Quick replies matter here: Meta cites a 2025 Kantar study finding that 91% of online adults in India chat with a business every week.

Every API provider in India, including AiSensy, Interakt, WATI and Gupshup, still runs on Meta’s platform and passes its charges on to you. So the official API always involves Meta. Wapzen takes a different route: it connects the same way WhatsApp Web does.

It works on a personal or a WhatsApp Business number, and you keep your chats. The price of skipping the API is that you don’t get its official status. For the full comparison, read how to create a WhatsApp chatbot without the Business API.

1. Sign up free. No card and no API key. Your account already has a chat agent ready to set up.
2. Tell it about your business. Paste a few lines into its System Prompt: what you sell, your timings and how it should reply.
3. Link your number. On a computer, open WhatsApp on your phone, go to Linked devices, then Link a device, and scan the QR code. On a phone, enter your number and type the 8-character pairing code into WhatsApp. The agent goes live.
4. Test it. Send a message from a different number and ask what your customers usually ask.

Here’s a sample prompt for a made-up shop. Change the details to match yours:

You are the virtual assistant of Demo Saree House, a saree shop in Surat.
Reply in the customer's language: Hindi, Hinglish, Gujarati or English. Keep replies to two or three short sentences.
Say in your first message that you are a virtual assistant.
For prices and stock, use only the information given to you. If you don't have it, say so and offer a call from our team.
We ship across India in 3 to 6 days. Cash on delivery is available above ₹500. For UPI, share [your UPI ID].
Shop hours are Monday to Saturday, 10 am to 8 pm.
To take an order, ask for the product, name and full address with PIN code, repeat the order, and ask the customer to confirm.

A minute gets you live with the basics, but the agent can only answer from what you give it. Add your price list and policies to a knowledge base as text, PDF or Word files, then attach it to the agent. Scanned PDFs can’t be read, so use files with selectable text.

The dashboard is in English. The agent replies in whichever languages your prompt asks for.

Here are the entry plans of three platforms popular in India, from their own pricing pages, next to Wapzen:

A worked example

A shop with 40 chats a day and about 4 AI replies per chat sends around 4,800 replies a month:

• AiSensy: ₹1,500 plan + ₹1,350 AI add-on + 3,800 replies × ₹0.145 (₹551) = ₹3,401 + GST, about ₹4,013. The add-on covers only 1,000 of those AI messages, so the rest cost extra.
• Interakt: $55 plan + $74.99 AI add-on + 4,700 AI messages × $0.011 ($51.70) = about $182 + taxes, plus Meta’s message charges.
• Meta’s Cloud API directly: 3,800 × ₹0.115 = ₹437 + GST in message charges, but you still have to build and host the bot and pay for the AI.
• Wapzen: ₹0 right now.

API platforms give you things Wapzen doesn’t: approved templates, official status and larger broadcasts. See WhatsApp Business API pricing for Meta’s full rates, and AiSensy vs Interakt for those two in detail.

Prices come from each vendor’s page on the date of this post, and vendors change them. Meta’s rates change each quarter, so check them before you budget.

• Answers from your information. Upload FAQs, price lists and policies as text, PDF or Word. The agent searches them for each message, and you can tell it to say so when something isn’t there.
• Remembers the conversation. It keeps the last 20 exchanges word for word and a summary of anything earlier, so customers don’t have to repeat themselves.
• Takes orders. The Take Order tool collects the details, repeats the order, and saves it to your Orders page once the customer confirms.
• Handles voice notes and photos. Two switches, off by default, let it transcribe voice notes and read photos such as a product screenshot. It always replies in text.
• Sends bulk messages. Upload an Excel or CSV sheet and send a personalised message to up to 5,000 numbers, 30 seconds apart by default. Only use it for customers who expect to hear from you.
• Connects to your systems. API tools can check an order’s status or send a lead to your CRM during the chat.
• Lets you step in. Read every chat in the dashboard and reply yourself. Each conversation has its own switch to turn the AI off for that customer.
• Knows the date and time. It works in your number’s time zone, so “tomorrow” and “open now” come out right.

To bring customers to the chat, make a free WhatsApp link or QR code for your shop counter, Instagram bio and pamphlets.

Here’s how a chat could go for a shop using the prompt above:

Many Indian customers prefer voice notes to typing. Turn on Reply to voice messages and the agent transcribes each note and replies in text. Try it with real notes in your customers’ languages first, because accuracy can vary with accent and background noise.

Plenty of customers would rather call than type, especially for a quick question. The voice agent takes those calls for you:

• Answers incoming WhatsApp calls in Hindi, English (India), Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, Marathi, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Punjabi or Urdu.
• Calls back your leads. Add a lead to a campaign and the agent calls them on WhatsApp straight away.
• Has no per-minute bill. Phone-line AI platforms charge by the minute: Bolna lists ₹5.52 a minute pay-as-you-go. WhatsApp calls run over the app.

Two things to plan for: the agent pauses for a second or two before each answer, and it can’t transfer a live call to a person. It can send your team’s contact instead. Read more on AI calling for Indian businesses and AI voice agents for Indian sales teams.

If Meta’s agent already appears in your Tools tab, it’s worth trying: it’s official and free to start, and it says it covers all native Indian languages. Choose Wapzen if you don’t have it yet, you use a personal number, or you need calls, bulk messages or a link to your own systems. Details are in our guide to the WhatsApp Business AI agent.

Here’s where Wapzen fits and where it doesn’t:

If you’re weighing up the API platforms, start with WATI vs AiSensy vs Interakt. If you already know your industry, we have guides for real estate in India and coaching institutes.

• 100 AI replies an hour per agent. Past that, the agent stays quiet until the hour is up. Incoming messages are still saved, so you can answer them yourself.
• Groups stay untouched. The agent doesn’t reply in groups, broadcasts or channels.
• No payments in chat. It can share your UPI ID or payment link, but it can’t see whether the customer has paid.
• Check the sensitive answers. Like any AI, it can get things wrong. Read your chats in the first few days and tighten the prompt.

Wapzen is an independent product, not made by Meta or WhatsApp.

• Build consent in now. On your forms, say you’ll contact people on WhatsApp, who you are and why, and keep that record.
• Ask only for what you need. A delivery needs a name and an address, not an Aadhaar number.
• Don’t treat WhatsApp as a TRAI loophole. Call and message only people who asked to hear from you.
• Know where the data goes. Chats pass through AI providers and stay stored until you delete them. Our privacy policy has the details.

This is general information, not legal advice.