Meta AI: what it is, what it can do and what it costs

Meta AI is a general-purpose assistant. What you can do with it depends less on the plan than on where you open it.

• Answer questions and hold a chat. You type a question in a WhatsApp or Messenger chat, in the Meta AI app or at meta.ai, and get a reply in the same thread. Quick questions inside WhatsApp and Messenger are what it suits best.
• Talk by voice. Meta AI holds spoken conversations, and on Ray-Ban Meta glasses it gives help hands-free.
• Create and edit images. Image generation and photo editing are free. Meta One plans add more image and video generation for people who make a lot of social content.
• Personalise its answers. Meta AI can draw on information you have shared on Meta products to tailor a reply. Some people want that and others will not, so check the privacy settings in each app before you rely on it.
• Handle tasks across a day. Reports from July 2026 describe a productivity update that added calendar access, daily briefings and multi-step tasks. Meta's own pages that we read in September did not list these features, so check them in your app before you count on them.

Meta AI no longer runs on Meta's open Llama models. Since April 2026 it has run on Muse Spark, a proprietary model Meta built to power the assistant across WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook and Messenger. Muse Spark shares part of its name with Muse, Meta's separate AI agent app, which is covered in the automation section below.

Meta AI is the same assistant on every surface, but each one suits a different job. You do not need the standalone app to use it online: the website works in a web browser.

Where	How you reach it	What it suits
meta.ai	The website, in a browser	Longer chats and image work on a computer
Meta AI app	iOS and Android	Chat and voice conversations on your phone
WhatsApp and Messenger	Inside the chat apps	Quick questions without leaving a conversation
Instagram and Facebook	Inside the social apps	Images and edits for posts
Ray-Ban Meta glasses	Voice, hands-free	Help while your hands are busy

Meta AI does not charge a fee for everyday use. The free tier has a daily usage limit, and Meta does not publish the number. When you reach it, the limit refreshes over time, and Meta's help page points to an upgrade if you need more.

The upgrade is not a Meta AI subscription. Meta announced Meta One on 15 September 2026. It is a bundle across Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp, and its two plans raise how much you can use Meta AI:

• Meta One Core, $7.99 a month: more Meta AI image and video generation, plus extra creative tools across Meta's apps.
• Meta One Premium, $19.99 a month: everything in Core, with the most room to create with Meta AI.

We saw no annual prices, and we found no business or enterprise plan for Meta AI. If chat is all you need, the free tier is the place to start. Pay for Meta One only when the daily limit gets in the way of image or video work.

Meta AI is an assistant you chat with. For an agent that works in other apps on your behalf, or one that answers your customers, Meta has two separate products.

Muse, the personal agent. Meta launched Muse on 8 September 2026 as a separate AI agent app with its own subscriptions. It acts on your behalf rather than only answering. In late September Meta extended it to small businesses, with connections to tools such as Shopify, Slack, Notion, Stripe and QuickBooks, as well as to a business's Facebook Pages, ad accounts and professional Instagram analytics. Muse for Small Business has a free option with usage limits and a paid subscription for more use. The reports we read gave no price. By default, Meta can use what you give Muse to train its models, though you can opt out, and a researcher has reported a vulnerability that could hand control of an agent to an attacker. Our report on Meta's Muse launch and its security questions covers both, and the Muse for small businesses piece lists every integration reported.

The WhatsApp Business agent, for customer chats. In June 2026 WhatsApp Business added an AI agent that answers customers around the clock and can handle several conversations at once. The business picks one of three modes: reply manually, have the AI draft suggestions that a person approves, or let the agent reply directly. It also decides when a person takes over. Reports say it works on Instagram and Messenger too. We have not checked its pricing or the countries it covers.

If you want to send WhatsApp messages through a workflow you control, with your own rules for what gets a reply, our guide to auto-replying to WhatsApp messages with AI builds one with Make and OpenAI. It hands sensitive messages to a person. To learn automation from the start, our step-by-step guides are written for people who are not engineers.

All six assistants below have a free plan, so the difference is what the first paid plan buys. Meta AI's is the only one sold as a bundle across social apps. The others buy more of the assistant itself and, for Gemini and Copilot, the maker's office apps, with extra storage on Gemini's plan.

Assistant	Free plan	First paid plan	What it adds
Meta AI	Yes, with a daily limit	Meta One Core, $7.99/month	More image and video generation, creative tools across Meta's apps
ChatGPT	Yes	Go, $8/month	More messages with tools, uploads, image creation and memory; may include ads
Google Gemini	Yes	Google AI Plus, $4.99/month	Flash model, twice Free's usage, video generation, Gemini in Gmail and Vids, 400 GB storage
Microsoft Copilot	Yes	Microsoft 365 Personal, $9.99/month	Higher Copilot usage, Copilot in Microsoft 365 apps
Claude	Yes	Pro, $20/month ($17/month billed annually)	More usage, projects, task scheduling, Claude Code
Grok	Yes	SuperGrok Lite (price not shown); SuperGrok $30/month	Longer chats, Expert mode, image and video creation

Prices are in US dollars, as each record on this site gives them. Each tool's page shows the date its prices were checked.