Photon iMessage API pricing

A real free tier, $25/mo Pro, $250/line Business — no setup fee, no per-message charge.

PublishedCompiled August 24, 2026Full review

The tiers

Free
$0no card required
- Unlimited daily iMessage messages
- RCS and SMS fallback
- Direct messaging API access
- iOS 26 features — polls, background customisation
- Up to 10 users
- Community support
Catch Shared number, so deliverability depends partly on other customers on the pool.
Pro
$25per month
- Everything in Free
- Up to 100 users
- Community support with fast-track ticketing
Catch Still a shared number, and still no group messaging or cold outreach.
Business
$250per line, per month
- Dedicated iMessage lines
- Direct **and group** messaging API
- Cold outreach — 50 new contacts daily
- Custom iMessage mini apps
- Unlimited users (with Auto Scale)
- Dedicated Slack and Discord support channel
Catch Cold outreach is capped at 50 new contacts a day — a real ceiling for a sales team.
Enterprise
Customquote
- Everything in Business
- Reduced message throttling
- Dedicated iMessage lines you own
- Custom WhatsApp and phone call configuration
- Priority support

Costs that are not on the pricing page

Dedicated lines, group messaging and cold outreach all sit on the $250 tier, not the $25 one — price the tier that matches your actual use case.
Cold outreach is capped at 50 new contacts per day on Business.
Unlimited users on Business requires Auto Scale.
A long-lived streaming connection is an operational cost rather than a billed one, but a real one if your infrastructure is serverless.

Photon has the most developer-friendly pricing structure in the category, largely because it is the only vendor with a genuinely usable free tier. You can build a complete integration, test it against your own Mac and Apple ID, and pay nothing until you need managed lines.

The gap between $25 and $250 is the important one

Pro at $25/mo is not the plan most businesses need. Dedicated lines, group messaging and cold outreach are all on Business at $250 per line, and Free and Pro both put you on a shared number. If your use case is outbound from a number you control, budget $250, not $25.

SOC 2 with a published price is unique here

Photon advertises SOC 2 Type II with HIPAA-compliant support available — the same compliance posture Linq markets as exclusive to it — while publishing every price below Enterprise. If you need to pass a security review without entering a sales cycle, this is currently the only route.

For a developer evaluating the category, this is the cheapest honest place to start — see can I test in a sandbox for what to actually check while you are there.

Where these numbers come from

Taken from Photon's published pricing page. Photon is one of the few vendors here that requires no sales conversation at any tier below Enterprise.

Best value for

Developers who want to build and test for free, then pay only when they go to production.