If chats from your property ads sit until morning, this is for you. Here, "WhatsApp ads" means ads on Facebook and Instagram that open a WhatsApp chat when someone taps them, not ads shown inside WhatsApp.
Which clock runs when an ad chat opens?
Two, and they disagree. Meta's clock decides the fee. The buyer's clock decides whether you still have a lead.
Meta's side is generous. If a buyer taps your ad at 10 pm and you reply within 24 hours, Meta opens a free window that starts at your reply and may stay open for up to 7 days. Inside it, Meta does not charge for marketing, utility, authentication or service messages. So a reply at 9 am, eleven hours later, still keeps the fee at zero.
Our own pricing post from 29 September says the window lasts 72 hours. Meta moved it to up to 7 days on 28 September 2026, so use this post for the window and that one for the reply fees.
One condition catches teams out. Reply after 24 hours and that chat never gets a free window. Every message you send it afterwards is billed at the normal rate. Chats that start from a website button, a QR code or a wa.me link never qualified in the first place.
What does the free window save you?
Cents. At the rates on our WhatsApp page, checked 10 October 2026, a reply to a UAE number costs USD 0.0157 (AED 0.0576) once a number has used its 1,000 free replies a month. A chat of six replies costs under USD 0.10 even then, and a number that stays under 1,000 replies a month pays nothing for replies.
The window is worth more on follow-ups. A marketing template to a UAE number costs USD 0.0576 (AED 0.2115). Three of them on days two to five cost about USD 0.17, or AED 0.63, outside the window and nothing inside it. That is a fair reason to reply inside 24 hours. It is not a reason to answer slowly.
Nor is it a reason to switch off the night. Meta's 24 hours are long enough to hide what waiting costs. The fee looks fine at 9 am. The lead is the thing you cannot see on the invoice.
What does the lead clock say?
Nobody times your ad chats except the buyer, so use the clocks that already exist in your market. Property Finder's SuperAgent badge asks for WhatsApp replies within 2 hours, with an overall response rate above 80 percent. Bayut's Responsive Broker badge asks for a reply within 4 hours and a 70 percent response rate.
Read Bayut's rule closely. It counts weekday messages between 9 AM and 9 PM toward your rate. Messages outside those hours that you answer still count for you, and ones you miss do not count against you. So neither badge asks anyone to be awake at 10 pm on a weekday. They are not your night rule. They only tell you what a fast reply looks like.
The research on speed is old and from the US, so take it as direction, not a Dubai benchmark. WIYO, a lead-alert vendor, quotes a 2011 Harvard Business Review study of online sales leads. Firms that tried to contact a lead within an hour were nearly seven times as likely to qualify it as firms that waited a further hour. They were more than sixty times as likely as firms that waited 24 hours or longer. WIYO adds that "many Dubai enquiries arrive after 8pm or on weekends". We found no benchmark for property ad chats in particular, and we do not make one up.
Who answers the chat at 10 pm?
Decide it now, in writing, because the fee will not make you. There are three honest answers.
Whichever you pick, write down who is next when the first person has not answered inside your first-reply target. A rota with no second name is the same gap on a different day.
An automatic "we will reply by 9 am" is a fourth option, and it is only worth sending if someone keeps that promise. Meta's page does not say whether an automatic reply opens the free window, so ask your provider before you count on it.
Pick by what you lose, not by what Meta bills. If last month's count shows most late replies fall after hours, you need a night owner. If they are spread across the day, the problem is routing, and a night rota will not fix it. The rules on what you may send inside and outside the 24 hours are on our WhatsApp rules page.
How do you check your own numbers?
In an afternoon, with last month's chats from your CRM or your WhatsApp provider.
- 01List every chat that started from a click to WhatsApp ad, with the time of the customer's first message and the time of your first reply.
- 02Count the chats whose first reply came after 4 hours. The 4 hours is our line, borrowed from Bayut's own badge, not a benchmark.
- 03Count the chats that got no reply within 24 hours. Those never had a free window.
- 04Count the chats that arrived after 7 pm, or after your office closes.
- 05Name an owner for those hours, and write the first-reply time you expect from them.
If you do not know who answered a chat, that is the finding. A reply that lives on a broker's own phone does not show up in any count, and it leaves with the broker.
When are we the wrong answer?
This is not for teams with no one who owns the lead after the first reply. Name that person first: a night reply that goes nowhere only moves the wait to the morning. We are also the wrong partner when your ad chats are few enough that one person already sees them all.
If you want the count done for you, tell us the number the ads send chats to and where the lead should land. We set up the first week the way we call it, "Answer, book and write it down": an agent that answers, books and writes to Salesforce or your system, with a person one tap away. We reply in writing within 24 hours: tell us the job and the number. For where chats should live when brokers leave, read the WATI alternative for Dubai brokerages.
