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Your LINE Plan Is Not Priced Wrong, You Read A Guide From Another Country
LINE Official Account pricing is set separately in every market where the product sells, and the three live markets share almost nothing. Japan runs a free tier at 200 messages, a ¥5,000 tier at 5,000 and a ¥15,000 tier at 30,000. Taiwan runs NT$0, NT$800 and NT$1,200 against 200, 3,000 and 6,000. Thailand runs ฿0, ฿1,280 and ฿1,780 against 300, 15,000 and 35,000. None of those is a currency conversion of another one. The guide you read was probably accurate for the country it was written in, which is the country nobody bothered to name in the headline.
This happens because each market’s agencies write for their own clients, in their own language, about their own price sheet. A Japanese article says 15,000円 and means it. A Thai article says 1,780 บาท and means it. An English reader finds one of them, or a summary of one of them, and assumes it describes the product rather than one national edition of it.
Table of Contents
The three markets, side by side
| Market | Tier | Monthly fee | Messages included | Extra messages |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Japan | Communication, コミュニケーション | ¥0 | 200 | Not available |
| Japan | Light, ライト | ¥5,000 | 5,000 | Not available |
| Japan | Standard, スタンダード | ¥15,000 | 30,000 | Up to ¥3 per message |
| Taiwan | 輕用量, light usage | NT$0 | 200 | Not available |
| Taiwan | 中用量, medium usage | NT$800 | 3,000 | Not available |
| Taiwan | 高用量, high usage | NT$1,200 | 6,000 | From NT$0.2 per message, stepping down with volume |
| Thailand | Free | ฿0 | 300 | Not available |
| Thailand | Basic | ฿1,280 | 15,000 | ฿0.10 per message |
| Thailand | Pro | ฿1,780 | 35,000 | ฿0.06 per message |
Every figure above is quoted before tax. Japanese fees are 税別 and consumption tax is added. Taiwanese fees are 未稅. Thai fees exclude 7 percent VAT. Resist the urge to convert any of these into a common currency for comparison, because the account is billed in the local currency and the exchange rate is not part of the decision.
One naming collision is worth flagging before it costs somebody a week. Japan’s Light plan is the ¥5,000 paid middle tier. Taiwan’s 輕用量, which translates as light usage, is the free one. A translation tool will render both as “light” and give you no hint that they sit at opposite ends of the price sheet.
The same campaign, priced in each market
Take an identical month of activity. Your list reaches 8,000 people, you send five broadcasts, and the counting rule gives you 5 sends multiplied by 8,000 recipients, so 40,000 counted messages. Here is what that costs, before tax, on the only tier in each market that can actually deliver it.
| Market | Tier required | Base fee | Messages over allowance | Overage cost | Month total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Japan | Standard | ¥15,000 | 10,000 | ¥30,000 | ¥45,000 |
| Taiwan | 高用量 | NT$1,200 | 34,000 | Up to NT$6,800 | Up to NT$8,000 |
| Thailand | Basic | ฿1,280 | 25,000 | ฿2,500 | ฿3,780 |
| Thailand | Pro | ฿1,780 | 5,000 | ฿300 | ฿2,080 |
The Taiwanese figure is an upper bound. Add on messages there are billed on a stepped scale that starts at NT$0.2 and falls as volume rises, so a large buyer pays less than the flat calculation suggests. The Japanese figure holds at the current top rate of ¥3.
Look at the two Thai rows for a moment. Pro costs ฿500 more per month than Basic and comes out ฿1,700 cheaper at this volume, purely because its overage rate is lower and its allowance is more than twice the size. The crossover sits at exactly 20,000 messages a month: below that Basic wins, above it Pro wins, and at 20,000 both cost ฿1,780. If your Thai account sends more than roughly 670 messages a day, Basic is costing you money for nothing.
So you take the middle tier, which is the obvious move
It is the sensible upgrade. Twice the room for a fraction of the top tier’s price, a clean step up from free, and you can always move again later when the list grows. You were expecting me to say all that, right?
In two of these three markets the middle tier is a dead end. Japan’s Light plan at ¥5,000 cannot buy a single additional message. Taiwan’s 中用量 at NT$800 cannot either. When you reach 5,000 messages in Japan or 3,000 in Taiwan, broadcasting stops for the rest of the calendar month, there is no emergency purchase button anywhere in the console, and your only route back is a plan upgrade. Thailand is the odd one out here, because Basic can keep sending at ฿0.10 per message indefinitely.
That changes what the middle tier is for. In Thailand it is a genuine volume tier you can grow inside. In Japan and Taiwan it is a fixed box, and the right question is whether your worst month fits inside it rather than whether your average month does. An account averaging 4,000 messages in Japan on the Light plan is one busy December away from a silent stop.
The paid extras are priced per market too
| Market | Add on | Price | What it does |
|---|---|---|---|
| Japan | Chat Pro option, チャットProオプション | ¥3,000 per month, tax excluded | Longer chat history retention, higher limits on tags and notes |
| Japan | Premium ID | ¥100 per month or ¥1,200 per year, tax excluded | A chosen account ID string instead of a random one |
| Taiwan | 聊天進階方案, advanced chat plan | NT$100 per month | Chat history kept up to five years with backup, 1,000 notes, 30 tags per chat room and 300 in total, custom filters |
| Thailand | MyCustomer CRM | ฿369 per month, included free with Pro | Customer relationship tooling on top of the account |
The Thai bundling detail is easy to miss when you compare package prices. Pro includes MyCustomer at no extra cost, while Free and Basic pay ฿369 a month for the same tool. If you were going to buy it anyway, the real gap between Basic and Pro is ฿131 a month rather than ฿500, and the volume crossover calculated earlier moves in Pro’s favour again.
Taiwan’s advanced chat plan, launched on 4 March 2025, is worth understanding before you assume the free tier is genuinely free. Without it, chat history is retained for six months with no backup, each chat room allows one note, and you get five tags. At NT$100 a month that is a small line item, but it is a line item nobody’s plan comparison table mentions.
One rule that is identical in all three markets
The counting method does not vary by country, whatever you may have read. Messages are counted as sends multiplied by recipients, and the bubbles inside a send are free. Taiwanese guides say it as clearly as Japanese ones do: a broadcast may carry up to three message bubbles, and three bubbles going to one person still count as one message.
This matters when you are reading a price comparison written in a language you do not have. If a source implies that a richer message costs more, the source is wrong, in every market. Your bill responds to list size and send frequency. It has never responded to what you put in the message.
Japan changes its overage price on 1 October 2026
Anyone budgeting a Japanese account past the autumn needs this in the model. From 1 October 2026 the additional message rate moves to a two step structure: ¥3 per message up to 200,000, then ¥2.5 per message above that. It replaces a more gradual declining table that stepped down earlier in the volume curve.
The effect depends entirely on how much you buy. Accounts purchasing under 50,000 additional messages a month see no difference, since they were paying ¥3 already. Accounts well above that will pay more for the identical send than they did in September, because the discounts that used to begin around 50,000 now begin at 200,000. If your Japanese forecast for Q4 was built on rates from a 2025 article, rebuild it.
Choosing which market’s price sheet applies to you
- Identify the market your account is registered in first, then read only that market’s row, because mixing rows is how budgets end up wrong by an order of magnitude.
- Model your worst month rather than your average, since Japan and Taiwan give the middle tier no way to absorb a spike.
- In Thailand, compare Basic and Pro at your actual monthly volume, and remember the ฿369 MyCustomer bundle when you do.
- Add the local extras to the comparison before signing off, because Chat Pro, Premium ID and the Taiwanese advanced chat plan are all outside the headline plan fee.
- Quote every internal figure in the currency the account is billed in, and add local tax, so nobody downstream tries to reconcile a converted number against a real invoice.
The plan you were reading about probably does exist. It just belongs to somebody in a different country, running a different price sheet, under a tier name that happens to translate into the same English word as yours.
