District 5 Running Costs

Assumptions

assumedour best guess measuredfrom the bot's own records

Traffic

Messages a dayassumed 150

Shopper messages received. The bot replies once to each. Nobody has measured this yet — start at 150 for a mall of 190 tenants with signage at five gates, then replace it with your first real month.

Sent as voice notesassumed 25%

Voice is normal in Egyptian WhatsApp, so 25% is a fair opening bet — but it is a guess. The bot writes each note down, then answers it in text like a typed question, so this changes the AI bill only.

Voice note lengthassumed 15s

Audio bills at 32 tokens per second, at double the text rate, but only in the short call that writes the note down. The bot rejects anything over 45s — a 15s note is the realistic average.

WhatsApp numbers 1

Each number carries its own €49 fee and its own 1,000 free service messages. One is right until a second brand needs its own identity.

AI

Model

Per 1M tokens in / out, live OpenRouter list prices. Flash Lite is the pick: 73/73 on our held-out set, cheapest of the two that can hear audio at all.

Technical AI settings 4 · optional

Context tokens / replymeasured 7,600

System prompt, retrieved directory and the visit so far, on every answer, typed or spoken. Input is ~97% of the AI bill — trimming the prompt is the only lever that matters.

Website-tool callsmeasured 8%

These cost 18,000 tokens instead of 7,600 — 2.4× a normal reply. Logs show 28% under deliberate probing; 8% is realistic once the directory is complete.

Cache hit ratemeasured 0% 0%

Cached replies cost nothing, but only text is cached — voice answers never are. It sits at 0% today because almost every answer mentions opening hours. 20% is reachable if hours move out of the default reply.

Blocked off-topicmeasured 5%

Refused before the answer is written, so they are free when typed. A voice note is screened once it has been written down, so it costs only that short call.

WhatsApp channel

360dialog plan

Regular is the right pick. Premium only buys a faster support SLA; Scale buys throughput a mall will never need.

Service messages are billable

Free until 30 Sep 2026. From 1 Oct 2026 Meta charges Egypt's $0.0036 rate beyond 1,000 free per number. Voice and text bill the same — only the bot's reply counts. Untick to see today's bill.

Add 14% Egyptian VAT

Applies to Meta's message fees.

Hosting (AWS)

Server, web address and backups 4 · optional

Compute

Lightsail 2 GB is the pick. Bot, dashboard and the SQLite database run on one box — there is no separate database bill — and the bundle already includes 60 GB SSD and 3 TB of transfer, so there is nothing to forget. Move to EC2 with a savings plan only once the instance is permanent.

Route 53 hosted zone — $0.50/mo

DNS for the dashboard. Queries at this volume round to nothing.

Snapshots / backups $2

Daily snapshot of the instance at $0.05/GB-month. Do not set this to zero — the SQLite file is the whole directory.

Domain / year $14

A .com through Route 53. TLS is free via Let's Encrypt or ACM.

Exchange rates

EUR → USD 1.08

USD → EGP 48.0

Display only. Set today's rate — this one moves.

What one message costs

Text baseline

$0.0016 AI cost of one text message

How it's worked out

Context in: 8,432 tok
Reply out: 46 tok
Reaches the model: 95%

Voice note +17%

$0.0019 AI cost of one 15s voice note

How it's worked out

Audio in (2× rate): 480 tok
Writing it down: 127 in · 60 out
Context in: 8,432 tok
Reply out: 46 tok
Reaches the answer: 95%

Monthly cost as traffic grows

marker = your setting

Two fixed fees set the floor, and two variable ones climb from it. The kink in the Meta band is the 1,000 free service messages running out.

Where the money goes

Line	Basis	Monthly	Share	Per msg
Total

The 1 October 2026 change lands in 10 days

Service messages — every free-form reply the bot sends inside the 24-hour window — have been free since November 2024. From 1 Oct 2026 Meta charges them at each country's utility rate, with 1,000 free per number per month and no volume discount. Egypt's rate is $0.0036 per message.

At your current setting that adds $14.61 a month.

Inbound messages stay free and voice costs Meta nothing extra — only the bot's text reply is billed. The free grant is per number, so a second number brings another 1,000.

Measured here

Show the measurements

Answers: 7,600 in / 46 out, from 20 plain calls on 10 Oct (7,100–8,800; later turns carry the visit so far).
Writing a voice note down: ~127 tokens of instructions plus the audio, a few dozen out; then it is answered like text.
18,000 tokens when the website tool fires, on either kind.
0 cache hits — the hours-in-every-answer habit blocks it.

Why voice costs more

Show the reasons

Each note takes one extra short call to write it down; the audio in it bills at 32 tokens/second and double the text rate.
After that it is answered exactly like a typed question, and the off-topic guard screens it too.
Voice answers are never cached.
Only about +16% at 15s and +45% at the 45s cap. It is not the thing to worry about.

Deliberately excluded

No salaries, contractors or engineering time — infrastructure and usage only. Also outside: Meta marketing or utility templates (this bot sends none), phone number rental, paid monitoring, and AWS support plans. Downloading voice notes from WhatsApp is free. Business verification with Meta is free.

Prices checked 21 Sep 2026 · token counts measured 10 Oct 2026 · Meta, 360dialog and AWS rates from their published tables · model prices and audio rates live from the OpenRouter catalogue