Can the WhatsApp Business API send documents and PDFs?

Sending a PDF proactively vs replying with one

How you send a document depends on whether you are starting the conversation or continuing it. To reach a customer proactively — an invoice after checkout, a boarding pass, a monthly statement — you send an approved template, and you can attach the PDF to the template's document header so the file and the message text arrive together. If the customer has messaged you in the last 24 hours, you are inside the free service window and can reply free-form with any allowed file, no template needed, which is ideal for support agents sending a warranty card, a quote or a corrected invoice on request. This split — templates to open a conversation, free-form files inside the window — is the core of getting documents delivered reliably.

• Proactive (no recent reply): use a template with a document header
• Reactive (customer messaged in 24h): reply free-form with the file
• Utility templates suit transactional docs — invoices, tickets, statements
• Marketing templates can carry brochures or catalogues to opted-in contacts

Perfect fits: invoices, tickets and statements

Documents are where WhatsApp quietly outperforms email for transactional messaging. A GST invoice attached to an order-confirmation utility template lands in seconds, is read far more often than an emailed PDF, and lives in a thread the customer already trusts. E-tickets, booking confirmations, insurance policy copies, loan sanction letters, salary slips, delivery challans and account statements all work the same way — an approved utility template plus the file. Because the document sits inside an ongoing chat, the customer can reply immediately with a question, and your agent can answer inside the same free 24-hour window. That turns a one-way document delivery into a two-way service moment.

• Order confirmations with the tax invoice attached
• Travel and event e-tickets or boarding passes
• Bank and card statements, loan and KYC documents
• Insurance policy copies and renewal notices
• Delivery challans, receipts and warranty cards

Policy, opt-in and quality — the guardrails

Sending files does not exempt you from WhatsApp's rules. The document itself must match the template's category and content: don't smuggle a promotional catalogue into a utility template, and don't attach anything you couldn't send as text. Recipients must be opted in, especially for any marketing document, and every send should be relevant to why they gave you their number — irrelevant or unsolicited files hurt your quality rating and can throttle how many messages you're allowed to send. Keep documents accurate and current (an old invoice or a broken PDF generates complaints), name files clearly, and avoid sensitive data you are not authorised to share over the channel. Handled well, document messaging is one of the highest-trust things you can do on WhatsApp.

• Opt-in first — required for marketing, expected for everything
• Match the file to the template category and stated purpose
• Broken, outdated or irrelevant files damage your quality rating
• Only send documents you are authorised to share over WhatsApp

What it costs to send a document

A media message is billed exactly like a text message — the file adds nothing extra. Since Meta moved off per-conversation billing on 1 July 2025, WhatsApp charges per delivered message by category: marketing, utility or authentication. So an invoice sent inside a utility template is billed at the utility rate for that one delivered message, whether it carries a paragraph of text or a 40-page PDF. Replies you send to a customer inside the 24-hour service window are free service messages and carry no per-message charge at all — which makes sending files on request genuinely cost-free. InfiQ shows these as transparent ₹ pricing (ex-GST), so you can see the utility, marketing and authentication rates before you send at scale.