Apple has not announced plans to charge FaceTime users, despite social media claim

Apple’s FaceTime feature on its iPhones, Macs and tablet computers allows users to stay in touch with long-distance friends and family without racking up long-distance phone charges.

But some social users are claiming that Apple users may soon have to pay to use the popular video call feature.

"Apple is really about to start charging us to use the FaceTime feature, wild," a June 16 Threads post said. 

The post provided no details or a link to an article to back the claim. We found another Threads post using the same language.

The post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)

Apple’s FaceTime feature lets users chat face-to-face using an internet or cellular data connection. There is no cost to users to use the app, although people who make calls using cellular data instead of Wi-Fi may incur additional data charges from their carriers if they run over their data limit, Apple said in an iPhone user guide. 

That has always been true. The ability to use a cellular data connection for FaceTime can be turned off in settings, the guide said.

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But there’s no evidence that Apple has instituted or is planning to charge for the FaceTime app.

We searched Google News and the LexisNexis news database and found no news coverage or announcements about a current or planned FaceTime fee. Apple didn’t immediately respond to our request for comment, but we found nothing about a fee on Apple’s newsroom website or its pages about FaceTime.

The claim that Apple is planning to charge users for its FaceTime feature is False.