Guide · Calls on WhatsApp · For the owner who wants a record of what was said

Can a business record its WhatsApp calls? Meta's call recording and transcription, for the owner

A business that takes calls on an ordinary phone line usually records them: for training, for disputes, for the day a customer says they were promised something. When the calls move to WhatsApp the owner's first question is whether that is still possible. Since late August 2026 Meta's answer is yes, with conditions it built in rather than left to the business. Both people on the call hear an announcement before anything is kept, the recording exists on Meta's side for one week only, and a written transcript is available separately with the speakers labelled. Here is what Meta's two pages say, and what an owner has to decide before switching either on.

Published 3 October 2026

What Meta records, and what it refuses to

Per call, never by default: Meta's pages say recording and transcription are chosen call by call, at the moment the business places a call or accepts one. There is no switch that records everything. A connected system has to decide for each call, which in practice means the business sets a rule for its provider: record all support calls, none of the sales calls, and so on.
Both parties are told first: Before anything is kept, Meta plays a spoken announcement to the customer and to the business: the audio of this call will be recorded, or transcribed, or both, for a stated purpose. The business writes the purpose, up to 250 characters, in the language it picks for the announcement. Recording starts only after the announcement finishes. A customer who objects simply hangs up before or during it.
No purpose, no call: The purpose text is mandatory. Meta's pages say a call submitted with recording or transcription switched on but no purpose is rejected outright. The announcement is not decoration; it is the consent mechanism, and Meta will not let a business skip it.

The announcement cannot yet speak Arabic or Urdu

Meta lists the languages the announcement can be spoken in: English, Dutch, French, German, Hindi, Italian, Kannada, Portuguese, Spanish, Telugu and Vietnamese. Arabic and Urdu are not among them. A business in the Gulf or Pakistan can still record, but its customers will hear the notice in English or Hindi, which is worth weighing before turning it on for a customer base that does not expect either. The transcript itself is a different matter, covered below.

The transcript

Transcription is a separate choice from recording. A business can have the written version without keeping any audio, which for many owners is the more useful of the two: it can be searched, it can be read in a minute, and it does not carry a customer's voice around.

Speakers are labelled. Meta's page says the transcript marks every passage as Business or Customer, because the two sides are kept on separate audio channels. That holds even when both talk at once, and it is what makes the transcript usable in a dispute.
The language is detected, not chosen. The business does not tell Meta what language the call will be in. Meta works it out from the audio and reports it. The list it can currently transcribe runs to around fifty languages and includes Arabic, Urdu, Hindi, Punjabi, Tamil, Bengali and English. A call in a language outside the list still produces a notice, but the transcript may come back empty.
Confidence is stated. The transcript carries an overall confidence score from 0 to 1, and one per passage and per word, so a system can flag the calls where the transcript is doubtful instead of presenting every line as fact.
Timings are included. Each passage has a start and end time counted from the beginning of the call, so a reader can jump to the moment that matters in the audio, if the audio was kept too.

Seven days, then gone

This is the condition an owner most needs to know. Meta's pages say the recording and the transcript arrive as a notice to the connected system, typically under a minute after the call ends. The download link in that notice is valid for five minutes, a fresh link can be fetched for seven days, and after seven days the file is deleted from Meta's side. Meta is not an archive. A business that wants its calls kept for a year has to have a system that collects each file inside the week and stores it in the business's own storage, the same storage question raised in the privacy guide. A provider who says calls are recorded, without saying where they go after seven days, has not answered the question.

What it costs today: Meta's pages say there is no separate charge for recording or transcription at present, that separate pricing is planned for each, and that the pages will carry the rates with advance notice before any charge begins. No date is given. The call itself is charged as the calling guide describes; recording it is not an extra line yet.
A known fault: Both pages carry the same warning: when a customer's phone switches networks during a call, from Wi-Fi to mobile data for instance, the recording or transcript can be cut short. Meta says a fix is rolling out. Until then a system should treat a transcript that ends early as possibly incomplete rather than as the end of the call.
What has to be in place: Calling has to be switched on for the number, the connected system has to be listening for call notices, and for a call the business places, the customer's call permission has to exist first. All three are explained in the calling guide.

Who can place and receive calls, the permission a customer grants, and what Meta charges for a call the business makes are in the calling guide. The access a provider's system holds, which now includes the ability to fetch these files, is the subject of the provider access guide.

Questions

Can we record without the customer knowing?

No. Meta plays the announcement to both sides before recording or transcription starts, and rejects any call set to record without a stated purpose. The customer can hang up during the announcement. There is no silent mode.

Can we get the written transcript without keeping the audio?

Yes. Meta's pages describe the two as independent: transcription alone, recording alone, both, or neither, chosen per call. When both are on, the customer hears one combined announcement.

Will the transcript handle Arabic and Urdu?

Meta's current list of transcribable languages includes both, detected automatically from the audio. The spoken announcement before the call, however, is not yet available in either, so customers hear it in English or another listed language.

Where are our recordings stored?

On Meta's side for seven days after the call, then deleted. Anything kept longer is kept by your own system or your provider's. Ask where, for how long, and who can open it; the answer should be as specific as it would be for any other customer record.

Sources

Meta's developer documentation: Call recording, read 3 October 2026.
Meta's developer documentation: Call transcription, read 3 October 2026.

More plain-language notes like this one are on the guides page.

Want your WhatsApp calls kept like your phone calls?

We set up a business's WhatsApp number on a proper system that records or transcribes the calls you choose, writes the announcement in your words, collects every file inside Meta's seven-day window into storage the business controls, and puts the labelled transcript beside the chat it belongs to. A short call is the easiest way to see whether it fits your business.

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