Meta's New Pricing Forces Hebrew WhatsApp Transcription Bot Eliezer to Pivot
Israeli non-profit project ivrit.ai launched Eliezer, a popular Hebrew WhatsApp voice note transcriber, but Meta's new per-message fees forced an emergency pivot to Telegram and a custom app.
Yair Lifshitz, a resident of northern Israel, a married father of three, and a former senior manager at Cisco until the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, has spent recent years dedicating his time to public-benefit projects focused on developing Hebrew-language technological solutions. In May 2023, alongside three partners—Yanir Marmor, Kinneret Misgav, and Yoav Sapir—he founded the ivrit.ai initiative.
The project, which operates on a completely voluntary, non-profit basis, aims to ensure that artificial intelligence tools can understand, speak, and read Hebrew at the highest possible level. As part of the initiative, the team established the world's largest public, free Hebrew audio databases, transcribed numerous materials with the help of hundreds of volunteers, and developed an advanced transcription model currently used free of charge by numerous companies. The team is also currently working on an advanced handwriting recognition model.
In April 2025, Lifshitz and his partners launched Eliezer, a bot enabling automatic transcription of WhatsApp voice notes. The service quickly became a hit: at its peak, the bot processed 120 messages per minute, transcribed roughly 10,000 hours of audio per month, and served approximately 20,000 users daily, according to project data. Concurrently, the initiative operates a website designed for transcribing long recordings such as lectures and interviews.
Meta Ends Free Model, Crushing Eliezer's Infrastructure
Meta recently changed the rules of the game, directly impacting services like Eliezer. Until Wednesday, October 1, whenever a customer contacted a business on WhatsApp, a free 24-hour service window opened, allowing unlimited correspondence at no additional charge. However, starting October 1, Meta shuttered the free model and shifted all service messages to a per-message billing structure.
This change exclusively affects businesses and organizations utilizing the WhatsApp Business API—including CRM systems, digital switchboards, bots, and automations connected through Business Solution Providers (BSPs) such as Twilio, 360dialog, and Fullness—the exact infrastructure upon which Eliezer operates.
Following consultations, we decided to modify Eliezer, our WhatsApp bot that transcribes over a million messages monthly and serves tens of thousands of users. Due to Meta's pricing changes, its messages are no longer free for us. Instead of a monthly bill of $0.67—about two shekels—we were facing a projected monthly charge of around $5,000. With a heavy heart, we implemented an immediate change involving two alternative tracks: 1. Voice notes are sent to us via WhatsApp, and Eliezer responds via Telegram. 2. Voice notes are sent to us via WhatsApp, and Eliezer responds via Communicator, a new tool we rapidly developed.
Surviving the Blow and Shifting Channels
Following Meta's policy shift, user numbers dropped roughly eightfold, leaving approximately 2,500 active users, Lifshitz told mako. Without an immediate pivot, costs would have skyrocketed from roughly $1 per month to about $5,000.
Despite the friction, the service continues to operate for free, albeit under usage caps designed to prevent server overload: up to 10 messages per hour, a cumulative total of up to 20 minutes of transcription per hour, and a maximum recording length of 10 minutes.
Users continue sending or forwarding voice notes directly to Eliezer's WhatsApp number. The sole change lies in the delivery channel: instead of a direct response inside the WhatsApp chat—which now incurs Meta fees—the transcription pops up as a notification via the Communicator app or arrives via the service's Telegram bot (@BenYehudaBot), following a one-time account linking process.
Lifshitz noted that the team was flooded with moving responses after publishing the announcement, particularly from hearing-impaired individuals who relied on Eliezer for easier daily communication. Despite alternative solutions like Apple's built-in iPhone transcription—which Lifshitz argues is significantly less accurate and unavailable to the majority of Israeli Android users—thousands have taken the active steps required to reconnect.
At this stage, the initiative relies entirely on community donations through Patreon, bringing in about $500 monthly to cover server maintenance and data collection. Lifshitz concluded that paying Meta such exorbitant sums is out of the question, calling the policy an anti-competitive, monopolistic move.
