A billable DM is each individual message an automation sends on your behalf, not each person it reaches. That distinction is what makes a bill surprising: because Instagram won't let a tool send a link cold, one delivered link is a two-message sequence, so a converted comment usually costs two billable DMs rather than one.
Every tool in this category meters something, and almost none of them define the unit on the pricing page. Here is ours, in full, with the two cases that count as zero.
What inDM counts as a billable message
Each outbound message inDM sends on your behalf is one billable message. Which flow you're running decides how many that is:
| The flow | What actually gets sent | Billed |
|---|---|---|
| Comment → link (gated or not) | The opener with a button, then the link card after the tap | 2 |
| Comment → no link | One text private reply | 1 |
| Keyword DM or story reply | The reply | 1 |
| Follow-gate prompt | "Give me a follow and I'll send it over" | 0 |
| Any automation carrying the Powered by inDM button | Every message it sends | 0 |
Every flow bills one or two, predictably. There is no path through inDM that bills three or four for a single conversation.
Why a delivered link costs two messages
Instagram does not allow a business account to send a promotional link to someone who hasn't interacted with it first. That's a platform rule, not a product decision, and every tool in the category works around it the same way.
So the sequence is: someone comments your keyword, and inDM sends a private reply — a short message with a button. That's message one, and it exists only to earn a tap. When they tap it, Instagram treats that as the interaction it was waiting for, and inDM sends the link as a card. That's message two, and it's the one carrying what the person actually asked for.
One conversation is therefore routinely two messages, and the consequence is worth doing the arithmetic on before you pick a plan anywhere: a 10,000-message allowance is roughly 5,000 delivered links, not 10,000. That is true of every message-metered tool, ours included, and it's the single most common reason a bill comes in higher than expected.
What isn't counted, and why
Two things send real messages and bill nothing.
Follow-gate prompts are free. If you gate a link behind a follow, the person who doesn't follow yet gets a prompt asking them to. That prompt used to be billable, which meant a follow-gated fire cost up to four messages while the identical ungated outcome cost two — a charge on the one feature whose purpose is to grow the following. We stopped billing it on 2026-08-12. The principle behind it is simple enough to state in one line: a gate isn't a delivery. We count the DMs we send for you, not the times we ask someone to follow you.
Attributed automations are free, entirely. Turn the Powered by inDM button on for an automation and nothing it sends is counted — not the link card, not the opener, not the gate prompts. It's opt-in, off by default, and set per automation rather than per account. The trade is honest and worth stating plainly: the button puts our name in a DM going out under yours. It rides a spare button slot, so it never touches a word of your own copy, and your link stays the card's main action.
The number you're charged is not the number you sent
inDM tracks two counts, and they're supposed to differ.
- Messages sent — every outbound message, gate prompts and attributed sends included. It answers what went out.
- Billable messages — what the plan allowance actually draws down.
Your usage meter reads the billable count, so an attributed automation running at volume doesn't move it. If you're comparing the meter against your analytics and the two disagree, that gap is the gate prompts and the attributed sends, and it's the feature working.
Everyone meters something different
This is why two prices in this category can't be compared directly. Read off each vendor's pricing page between 2026-08-04 and 2026-08-12:
| The unit being metered | Who charges on it |
|---|---|
| Messages sent | inDM, CreatorFlow, LinkDM, ReplyRush |
| Contacts per month | ManyChat, Inro |
| AI credits | Zorcha |
| Leads captured | SuperProfile |
| Follower count | GRO.co |
| Messages across every channel | BotPenguin |
There is no honest conversion between a message allowance and a contact allowance, because how many contacts sit behind 10,000 messages depends entirely on how many messages each person receives. A contact plan charges once for someone you message forty times; a message plan charges forty times. Neither is dishonest — they're just different questions, and a comparison that converts one into the other is inventing a number.
We chose messages for a specific reason: it's the unit everyone quotes, so it's the only one that makes a price comparison settle with arithmetic. The fuller survey is in what Instagram DM automation costs.
What this means for your bill
Say a reel does well and 2,000 people comment your keyword. Every one of them taps through and gets the link.
- Billable messages: 2,000 openers + 2,000 link cards = 4,000.
- On the free plan (1,000 a month): you'd cover the first 500 conversions.
- On Growth at $9.99 (10,000 a month): comfortable, with 6,000 left.
- With the badge on for that one automation: 0, at any volume.
Add a follow gate and the arithmetic doesn't move, because the prompts are free. That's the point of the change.
If you go past 10,000, there's no overage on the entry plan — you move to $19.99 for 30,000, a number already printed on the pricing page. Above 30,000 it's $1 per extra 1,000. That's the whole meter; there is nothing else to forecast.
Where this stops
Four honest limits, because a billing page that only lists what works isn't worth citing.
These rules are recent, and dated on purpose. The follow-gate change above is from 2026-08-12 — recent enough that a guide written a month ago would describe our billing wrongly, and recent enough that this one will date too. Billing rules move across this whole category. Treat every figure here, and on any competitor's page, as read on the date attached to it rather than as permanent.
We can't tell you a cost per click. inDM doesn't track taps on your link yet, so the journey we can report ends at delivery. Any tool quoting you a cost-per-click is measuring something we currently can't.
Email capture isn't a path yet. The email gate isn't built, so there's no email-gated flow to bill for — and no lead-capture meter of the kind SuperProfile runs. When it ships, it lands as a feature first and we'll say what it counts as then.
A contact-metered plan may genuinely be cheaper for you. If you send many messages to a small, repeat audience — a community account answering the same forty people all month — ManyChat's or Inro's per-contact model can work out lower than any message allowance, ours included. The message meter favours accounts reaching a lot of people once each, which is what a comment-to-DM automation on a reel actually is. Run your own numbers before you take our word for it.
The short version
Count messages, not people, and remember a delivered link is two of them. Everything else on your bill is arithmetic you can do in your head — which is the only real test of whether a pricing page is honest.