WhatsApp messaging limits

If you run WhatsApp campaigns at scale, you need to understand messaging limits. Meta sets caps on how many new conversations you can start each day. If you hit your limit mid-campaign, messages get rejected and customers don't receive them. Learning about limits helps you plan sends, avoid failures, and grow responsibly.

What are messaging limits?

Messaging limits cap the number of unique customers you can start a new business conversation with in a rolling 24-hour window.

Unlike email or SMS, WhatsApp caps the number of unique conversations you start, not total message volume. Think of limits as "unique users per day" for new conversations you start with templates.

What counts against the limit

Sending a template that starts a new business conversation with a user you haven't addressed in the last 24 hours.

What doesn't count against the limit

• Sending further template messages to a user after you start a conversation, within the 24-hour window.
• Sending any number of free-form messages to a user who replied to you, within the 24 hour customer service window.
• Replying to customers who initiated contact with you.

When you run out of your limit

• Over-cap sends: Meta rejects business-initiated messages to new customers. Campaign event with status rejected will be tracked to recognize this situation.
• What still works: Messages to customers you've already addressed in the last 24 hours or who replied to you within 24 hours still work.
• Billing: Meta only charges for delivered messages - undelivered or rejected messages aren't billed.

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Important

WhatsApp doesn't automatically queue rejected messages. Check your delivery status and error codes to know what failed.

Portfolio-level limits

Starting October 7, 2025, limits are shared across your entire business portfolio, not per phone number. Your Meta Business Portfolio account (formerly Meta Business Manager)—all WhatsApp phone numbers under it draw from the same messaging limit.

What this means

• Existing business portfolios prior to this change will have their messaging limit set to the highest limit of any phone number within their portfolio. If your portfolio has a phone number with a limit of 100,000 and other numbers with lower limits, your portfolio's limit is set to 100,000.
• All phone numbers in your portfolio share one limit.
• Adding a new number inherits the portfolio's current limit.
• You can't increase total capacity just by spreading sends over more phone numbers. You need to plan pacing across your entire portfolio and coordinate campaigns between teams and numbers.

Tier levels

Your messaging limit depends on your tier. Meta determines your tier, not Bloomreach or your provider. Messaging limits are part of WhatsApp's platform policy. Bloomreach and other providers can only plan and pace your sends. We don't set or raise your limits.

Move between tiers

New business

Newly created business portfolios start with a messaging limit of 250. You can increase this to 2,000 by completing one of these steps:

• Verify your business.
• Have your solution provider verify your business if you were onboarded by one.
• Send 2,000 delivered messages to unique WhatsApp users in a 30-day moving period, using templates with a high quality rating. Send these messages outside of customer service windows.

Once you reach 2,000, you can move to higher tiers automatically.

Move up to higher tiers automatically

Once your business portfolio has a messaging limit of at least 2,000, Meta automatically increases your limit if you meet these conditions:

• You’re sending high-quality messages across all of your business phone numbers and templates.
• In the last 7 days, your business has used at least half of your current messaging limit each day.

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Note

If you meet these conditions, Meta increases your limit by one level within 6 hours.

Message quality

Meta's quality rating reflects recent feedback from customers (blocks, reports, complaints) and how customers interact with your messages. Check your quality score in WhatsApp Manager under Account tools (Phone numbers tab) and in the Message Templates area for individual template quality.

Your quality rating displays as:

• Green: High quality.
• Yellow: Medium quality.
• Red: Low quality.

Maintain high quality

• Get proper opt-in: Only send to people who explicitly agreed to receive messages from you. Get separate opt-ins for different message types (order updates, offers, product recommendations) and for calls. Make opt-in and opt-out flows clear and easy to use.
• Send relevant content: Personalize messages based on customer interests and behavior. Don't send generic mass messages.
• Avoid spam patterns: Don't send too many messages per day to the same person. Avoid open-ended welcome messages or promotional blasts to inactive users.
• Use approved templates: Make sure your templates follow WhatsApp's messaging policy. Don't use misleading or clickbait language.
• Honor opt-outs immediately: When someone asks to stop receiving messages, remove them from your list right away.
• Keep your business profile accurate: Include real customer support contact information. Don't impersonate other businesses.

Improving quality takes time. Focus on better content, accurate targeting, controlled frequency, and fast handling of opt-outs. Quality usually gets better as negative feedback drops. You'll get notifications in WhatsApp Manager when your quality or status changes.

Plan your ramp-up

To move to a desired tier as a new business or to prepare for a seasonal increase in volumes, follow this ramp-up plan:

• Start planning weeks in advance, depending on how many tiers you want to move up.
• Plan your campaigns over the next 7 days to use at least half of your current limit each day. For example, to move from 2,000 to 10,000 limit, send messages to at least 1,000 users each day for 7 consecutive days while keeping high quality.
• Use segmentations or customer limit nodes to split your sends over several days.
• Monitor your limits in WhatsApp Manager under Account tools > Messaging limits panel.
• Once you move to a higher tier, you can repeat this process to move to the next one.

Tier downgrade policy

Once you reach a tier, you stay in that tier. Your messaging limit won't decrease if your message quality drops. Your quality rating only affects your ability to move to a higher tier—it doesn't cause downgrades. This changed in October 2025. Before that, accounts with persistent low quality could be automatically downgraded, but that no longer happens.

What this means: Focus on maintaining quality to advance tiers, but don't worry about losing ground if you have a temporary quality dip.

Manage limits across your portfolio

Meta doesn't provide a way to reserve or allocate limits to specific teams or campaigns. The cap is a shared pool at the portfolio level. If one campaign uses all 10,000 conversations for the day, another campaign's new sends get rejected until capacity resets or your tier increases.

To manage this in practice:

• Set internal caps: Assign daily caps per campaign or team that add up to less than your portfolio limit (for example, 6,000 for campaign A, 3,000 for campaign B, 1,000 buffer).
• Monitor in real time: Use Meta's webhooks to track message delivery status. Set up alerts when you reach 70-80% of your daily limit. Track the messages webhook for status updates, including "sent," "delivered," and "failed" events.
• Share a tracking dashboard: Create a shared view where teams can see current daily usage.
  Coordinate send times: Stagger campaigns throughout the day rather than sending everything at once. This reduces the chance of hitting limits simultaneously.
• Plan campaigns over multiple days: If your audience surpasses your current limit, use scheduling, segmentations, and customer limit nodes to control message volumes per day.
• Keep a safety buffer: If you send transactional or critical messages, reserve 10-20% of your daily limit for urgent sends.

Example: Send 6,000 messages with a 2,000 limit

Your portfolio is at 250 per day. You try to send 1,000 template messages to 1,000 unique users at once.

What happens:

• First 2,000 conversations: These start and deliver
• Remaining 4,000 attempts: These are rejected by Meta because you hit the limit. Campaign event with status rejected will be tracked.

What you can do:

• Split sends over 3 days (about 2,000 per day).
• Warm up to higher tiers by meeting the 7-day usage requirements to reach 10,000 per day or more.
• Use Bloomreach segmentations or customer limit nodes to control message volumes per day.
• For rejected messages, schedule controlled retries after your 24-hour window resets. Don't repeatedly send right away, as this can hurt your quality score.
• For marketing blasts, pause and re-pace to protect quality.

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Tip

If some of your audience recently messaged you, those users are in a user-initiated window. Your replies to them don't use your limit.

FAQs

Are there separate throughput limits?

Yes. Throughput (messages per second) is different from tier quotas. Exceeding the throughput gives you different errors.

How do I know if I'm approaching my limit?

Meta provides insights in WhatsApp Manager (message and conversation metrics) and webhooks for delivery statuses and errors. Set up the messages webhook to track delivery status in real time. Use these events to monitor your delivered volumes per day and set up notifications before you hit the cap. Bloomreach doesn't currently show real-time limit usage in the platform, so use your campaign events to monitor your current spend and check your audience size against your known tier.

What happens if one campaign uses my entire limit?

If campaign A uses all 10,000 conversations for the day, campaign B's new sends get rejected until capacity resets or your tier increases. Replies inside already-open 24-hour windows can still go through.