A Paid Tier That Mostly Just Changes How the App Looks
So WhatsApp Plus is a thing now. Meta is rolling out a paid subscription tier to a limited number of iPhone users, and honestly? The features list reads more like a cosmetics counter than a genuine upgrade.
Here's what you actually get: 18 accent colors to swap out that iconic green, 14 alternative home-screen icons, premium animated sticker packs, 10 exclusive call ringtones, and the ability to pin up to 20 chats instead of the usual three. Subscribers can also apply unified themes and alert tones across their entire chat list.
That pinned chats bump is genuinely the only perk that feels even slightly useful in day-to-day life. Everything else? It's window dressing.
And to be clear — the core WhatsApp experience doesn't change at all. End-to-end encrypted messaging, calls, video, status updates — all of that stays exactly the same whether you pay or not.
How Much Does WhatsApp Plus Cost?
In European markets, the subscription runs about €2.49 per month. US pricing hasn't been officially confirmed yet, but it's expected to land somewhere between $2.49 and $2.99. There may also be a free trial — a week or a month depending on where you are — for eligible users.
For now, it's billed monthly through the App Store. And here's a quirky detail: WhatsApp Business accounts can't even access it yet, which is a bit odd, since business users are arguably the ones most likely to pay for premium features.
What Competitors Already Offer for Free
This is where things get uncomfortable for Meta.
Telegram has offered chat background customization and dark/light mode switching for years — no subscription required. Signal, which recently introduced a paid tier for cloud backups, still lets users set custom chat wallpapers at absolutely zero cost. And iMessage? Apple's built-in messaging app includes per-contact photo backgrounds as part of its free feature set.
In other words, what WhatsApp is charging for is already the baseline for its competition. That's a tough sell.
How WhatsApp Plus Compares to Telegram Premium
Telegram Premium, at $4.99/month in the US, gives you genuinely functional upgrades: file upload limits jump from 2GB to 4GB, you get voice message transcription, real-time chat translation, faster download speeds, and the ability to join up to 1,000 channels.
Those are changes that actually affect how you use the app. WhatsApp Plus, by contrast, mostly changes how the app looks. That's a meaningful distinction if you're deciding where to spend your money.