Meta One: Facebook now wants paying every time you link your customers to your website

Quick answers

• How many free links does a Facebook page get? Two posts or comments a month with links outside Meta, on pages where the limit has been switched on.
• When will my page get the limit? There's no set date, because Meta is rolling it out page by page, and you'll find out when a notice pops up as you go to post a link.
• What's the cheapest plan with more links? Advanced, at NZ$86.99 a month, which gives you 8 Facebook link posts and 4 Instagram link posts.
• Are ads affected? No, and links in ads don't count towards the limit.
• Are photos, videos and messages affected? Meta hasn't put any new limits or charges on those for Facebook and Instagram.

What's changed on Facebook?

If your Facebook page is mostly photos, videos and chatting with customers on Facebook and Instagram, you can relax, because Meta hasn't put any new limits or charges on those. The main thing that's changed is links. Every time you post or comment from your page with a link that sends people somewhere outside Meta, whether that's a new product, a case study, a blog post, your booking page, an event sign-up or a job ad, it now counts towards a monthly allowance, and without a paid plan that allowance is just two links per month.

So a café sharing its new menu, a builder linking to their latest project, a retailer pushing a weekend sale and a recruiter posting a new role would all use up their free links pretty quick, and after that Meta will invite them to pay to keep going.

When will my Facebook page get the link limit?

There's no set date because Meta is switching the limit page by page and hasn't published a timeline, so some pages have it now and others haven't seen it yet. Meta's own help centre says it may not apply to every page, and it can even differ between pages you manage, so one of your pages might hit the limit while another carries on as normal.

The way you'll find out is a notice that pops up when you go to publish a link. If your page hasn't shown the notice yet, keep posting as normal, but it's worth doing the homework further down now so you're not making a decision on the spot when the pop-up appears.

How much does Meta One cost in New Zealand?

Meta launched Meta One on 15 September as a subscription that adds paid features across Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Meta AI, with four plans for businesses. Here's how they stack up, using the prices listed in the Meta app in New Zealand:

If you post a link most weeks, you're probably looking at Advanced, and if you were hoping the $22.99 plan would sort it out, I'm sorry to report it doesn't add a single extra link.

Does Meta One change anything on Instagram?

Instagram posts have never had clickable links, so Meta One is adding something new there that you can choose to pay for, and your bio link carries on as it always has.

Why is Meta charging for links?

For years Facebook has worked a bit like a big Sunday flea market, where anyone could set up a stall for free, chat to whoever wandered past and point them towards their real shop down the road. Meta's still happy for you to have the stall, and sending people to other stalls in the same market (Instagram, WhatsApp and Threads) is still free, but there's now a charge every time you send someone out the gate to your own website. From Meta's side, this makes a lot of sense commercially. It earns its money by showing people ads while they're scrolling, so every time someone clicks a link to your website, they leave their income-generating platform and Meta loses the chance to show them anything else. Meta hasn't put it that way, of course, but charging for the exit means it either keeps more people inside its apps or gets paid when they go.

Will the Facebook link limit affect my business?

For a lot of businesses this will hurt less than the headlines suggest, because links were already a shrinking part of Facebook. In 2021, fewer than 13% of feed views in the United States were on posts with links, and by April to June 2025 that had dropped to 2.2%, so Meta has put a price tag on a format it had been quietly turning down for years. Meta's head of subscriptions has also said a plan doesn't give you extra reach on its own, so I'd assume paying won't put your posts in front of more people until your own numbers say otherwise.

The businesses that will feel it are the ones that post links to products, tickets or listings every few days, and if that's you, it's worth working through the steps further down sooner rather than later.

Which links don't count towards the limit?

Ads aren't affected, and links in ads don't count towards the limit, so anything that needs clicks at volume, like a sale, an event or a job listing, can run as an ad the way it always could. A few other kinds of links don't touch your allowance either:

• extra links in the comments of a post that already has a link
• links to Meta's own apps, like Instagram, WhatsApp and Threads
• Facebook affiliate links
• Instagram catalogue product links

A link you add in a comment from your page does count, though, which is a change from when Meta first trialled the limit in December 2025.

Is Meta One worth it for my business?

The rule of thumb is simple: if you post more than two links a month on Facebook, you'll need a paid plan to keep doing it, and because the Essential plan doesn't add any links, the real starting price is about $87 a month for Advanced. So the useful question for most businesses is whether those links are earning their keep.

1. Check what your links are worth in Google Analytics 4 (GA4) by looking at sessions and key events from the Organic Social channel. If Facebook sends you a steady stream of enquiries or sales, a plan will probably pay for itself, and if it barely registers, you can save your money.
2. Do a quick count of your link posts over the last three months to see which plan you'd land on. Three to eight a month is Advanced, nine to 20 is Expert, and more than 20 is Max at $869, which only makes sense if organic social is a serious source of leads for you. The Content Library in Facebook's Professional dashboard lists every post with its date, which makes this pretty quick.
3. Change how you post so you need fewer links, for example by doing one weekly roundup post with a link and popping the rest of the week's links in its comments, where they're free for now. Meta has already changed how comments count once since it started testing this, so treat it as a handy workaround rather than a long-term plan. A business that currently posts four or five links a month could get back down to two this way and stay on the free plan.
4. Tag every link post with UTM parameters so GA4 can show you whether the paid links are bringing in leads, then move up or down a plan after two or three months.

One small but important tip is to subscribe from the business account that owns the page, because that's where the allowance lives.

What don't we know yet?

Meta hasn't said whether links posted through scheduling tools count, what happens to a post once you've used up your allowance, or whether boosting a link post counts as an ad. We also don't know whether businesses on paid plans will get noticeably more visibility than those that don't, because Advanced and up include being featured in the Facebook feed, even though Meta says a plan doesn't add reach on its own. There's no New Zealand data yet on what any of this is doing to reach and website traffic, and we'll share what we see across our client accounts as it comes in.

What else is Meta starting to charge for?

Meta One is one of several recent changes that put a price on something that used to be free. WhatsApp has gone the same way, with Meta Business Agent replies on the WhatsApp Business Platform billed by token since 1 August, and replies sent by a person or a third-party chatbot billed per message since 1 October. It's a good reminder that your website, your email list and your customer relationship management (CRM) system are the places you can reach customers without paying Meta every time you do it.

So keep your stall at the market, because that's where plenty of your customers hang out, but make sure the shop down the road is somewhere they'll want to walk to. If you'd like a hand working out what Meta is worth to your business, and which plan (if any) makes sense, talk to your Mint account manager or get in touch.