How much does WhatsApp ACTUALLY cost in South Africa?

WhatsApp is the most convenient way to communicate these days. Of the 25 million active social media users in South Africa, between the ages 16 to 64, 93.2% use the app. Besides sending text messages, WhatsApp can also be used for audio and video calls, photo and video sharing and group chats. 

The real question is, what are the costs?

THE REAL COSTS OF WHATSAPP

MyBroadband was on a mission to determine how much it costs to use the everyday WhatsApp functions in South Africa. 

For the tests, the Samsung Galaxy S20 and Galaxy A32 were used. The data used for every function was monitored through WhatsApp’s built-in network usage monitoring tool. 

To summarise some of the information from the tests, the cost of sending a text message was 0.5kB, while a 30-second voice note was 75kB. A 10-second video was 2.9MB and a 1-minute voice call was 357 kB. 

Sending an image from one Android device to another was 149 kB while a 1-minute video call with the data saver mode disabled was 4.4MB. 

THE BIGGER PICTURE

To understand the information in a broader sense, a comparison between South Africa’s five networks was done. 

The two most expensive networks to send a text message on are MTN and Telkom. A text message on these two networks costs R0.00005. Cell C and Rain are the cheapest with R0.00003. 

Looking at the comparison, a pattern is clear with MTN and Telkom being the two most expensive networks throughout. 

A 30-second voice note was R0.007 on both networks while it cost R0.004 on Cell C and Rain. Vodacom was placed right in the middle of the five networks with a 30-second voice note on their network costing R0.006. 

INTRIGUING FINDINGS

One intriguing finding from the tests was that the per-minute cost of a Whatsapp audio call was less than the cost of a normal phone call on all the networks.

Only three South African networks offer WhatsApp data bundles that can possibly also affect the costs of WhatsApp. 

Cell C, Vodacom and MTN have WhatsApp data bundles that range from 50MB to 1GB. In 2020, the cost of 1GB at Cell C was R29, Vodacom was R35 and MTN was R30. 

The difference between the three WhatsApp data bundles is that MTN’s would only be valid for 20 days while Cell C and Vodacom’s would be valid for 30 days. 

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