Free WhatsApp chatbot

Completely free and through the official route, no. The WhatsApp Business app is free and comes with automatic greeting and away messages and quick replies, but an AI chatbot needs Meta's official platform, which charges for certain types of messages, and almost always a provider and an AI that cost money too. What you will find are free trials to test before paying.

The free options doing the rounds tend to be of two kinds. Some are unofficial programs that connect to your WhatsApp as if you were using it from your computer: they break WhatsApp's terms and you risk getting the number blocked, which for a business is the last thing you want. Others are open-source tools you set up yourself: the software is free, but you pay for the server, the AI and, above all, your hours. And when an ad says "free", it often means "free for a few days".

I don't have an article on this yet, so my practical recommendation is to start with what really is free: set up WhatsApp Business's automatic and quick replies properly and watch which questions keep coming up. If that's not enough and the volume justifies it, then it is worth moving to an official AI solution, knowing from the start what you'll be paying each month.