Is WhatsApp going to be paid? To remove ads, like on Facebook and Instagram

Free services have a strange tendency to transform into subscriptions once they become “vital”: the time to monetize seriously arrives for everyone, and this also applies to WhatsApp. In Meta’s messaging app’s future there are ads and it’s a given.

Latest news come from some code strings and seem to leave little room for doubt: alongside the advertising insertions there should also come a paid service, a monthly subscription in the style of Facebook and Instagram.

WhatsApp introdurrà la pubblicità e potrebbe lanciare anche un abbonamento, come già avviene per gli altri social di Meta

Coming soon WhatsApp will introduce ads in states and channels: this is what emerged from the app’s beta, and for the moment it seems the chat windows will be safe. Clearly this is an initial phase, and we can expect future deteriorations without beating around the bush.

The advertising service should debut in Europe and Italy in 2026, and clearly the barrier so far has been European privacy legislation. Nevertheless, during the year no one will escape it, but fortunately the solution would come directly from Meta.

Analyzing the code of WhatsApp’s new version 2.26.3.9, colleagues at Android Authority have identified some clues about a paid ad-free subscription. Paying will remove ads from Status and Channels: there is also an image referencing this future feature, but for now prices and other details remain unclear.

Meta’s choice doesn’t surprise since the same thing happened for Facebook and Instagram: in countries that question mysteries such as user data management, an ad-free subscription has been introduced, defined unequivocally as a privacy tax.