What is the difference between the WhatsApp Cloud-Hosted API and the On-Premises API?

NOTE: As of March 31, 2024, all new WhatsApp Business numbers are only hosted on the Cloud. Clickatell no longer offers the On-Premises hosting option for new numbers.

Meta launched the Cloud-hosted WhatsApp Business API in May 2022, providing features similar to the On-Premises version but hosted on Meta's servers. Cloud API is a more user-friendly version of the WhatsApp Business Platform than the On-Premises solution that is hosted and managed by Clickatell.

Having the service hosted by Meta also reduces maintenance and upgrade complexity. This means that the onboarding journey is quicker and the combination of features and benefits makes Cloud API the best option for a more cost-effective way to connect with customers on WhatsApp.

The table below compares On-Premises with the new Cloud-Hosted offering.

Key Differences	On-Premises API	Cloud-Hosted API
Hosting	Individual businesses and/or BSPs need to host the API software on their own servers and in data centers.	Meta hosts the API.
Maintenance	Individual businesses or BSPs need to perform API software upgrades periodically.	API software upgrades are performed by Meta and new features and security updates are available automatically on the Cloud API. Developers no longer need to do setup, maintenance, or scaling work. Minimal code changes are required to adapt to longer-term API changes.
Costs	Businesses or BSPs need to: Pay the costs of setting up and maintaining their servers. Pay per message sent or per conversation, following the rules described here.	Meta pays for the hosting costs. Businesses only pay per message sent or conversation, per the rules described here.
API Protocol	On-Premises REST API	Graph API
Message Throughput (per second)	Send up to 70 text messages per second for single-connect. Send up to 250 text messages per second for multi-connect. Sending media messages may reduce these numbers.	Up to 500 messages per second combined sending and receiving of text and media messages. In the event of high system loads, a business may experience reduced message throughput. See Throughput.
Certificate Management	You manage your Certificate Authority (CA) and Webhook CA certificates.	Meta manages the CA certificates. For a Webhook CA certificate, your Webhooks server needs to support HTTPS and have a valid CA-chained TLS/SSL certificate installed. Self-signed certificates are not supported.
Media Provider API	Supported	Deprecated. To upload media to the Cloud API, follow these steps.
Stickerpack Management API	Supported	Currently not supported
Disaster Recovery	Business/BSP needs to deploy in a “high availability” model.	No SLA.
Single-tenant vs. Multi-tenant	Single-tenant (single phone number per deployment).	Multi-tenant. Multiple phone numbers can be registered on CAPI.
Send Message Request Processing Latency	Dependent on business deployment location (i.e., latency from their infra to WhatsApp infra in North America).	Expect the latency between receiving a request and sending a response on Meta servers to be: 90th percentile: ~1s 99th percentile: ~2s There is a plan to eventually get to 99th percentile: ~500ms.
Server Location	Dependent on business	North America
Monitoring Metrics Available	Insights data available. Businesses are responsible for setting up monitoring of the on-premise solution themselves (monitoring containers included in packaging).	Insights data available. Meta monitors instance health.
SLA (Uptime)	Not specified because it depends on an end-to-end API solution, which includes the businesses or BSP’s infrastructure.	Ongoing efforts to meet our commercially reasonable goals of 99.9%.
Support	7x24 for critical issues on a best-effort basis.	7x24 for critical issues. Continuous work until the issue is resolved or mitigated.