How many people you can reach in a day, what makes that number grow, and how to plan a send around it.
A messaging limit is how many different people your business can start conversations with in a rolling 24 hours. Every new business starts at 250. The limit grows in steps — 2,000, 10,000, 100,000, then unlimited — as you send good-quality messages, and it is shared by every phone number you own.
People, not messages — and only the conversations you start.
One step you earn, three that happen on their own.
| What it takes | How fast | |
|---|---|---|
| 250 → 2,000 | Business verification, or 2,000 delivered messages to different people within 30 days using high-quality templates. Meta then reviews the quality of your sending. | Verification takes days to weeks; at 250 a day, the sending route takes about nine sending days. |
| 2,000 → 10,000 | High-quality sending, and at least half of your current limit used in the last seven days. | Within six hours of meeting both. |
| 10,000 → 100,000 | The same. | Within six hours. |
| 100,000 → unlimited | The same. | Within six hours. |
These are Meta's rules () and the times are the shortest possible, not a promise.
Two routes, and a quality review at the end of either.
Verification is one of Meta's two routes to 2,000, but it isn't the last word. Once a route is complete, Meta reviews the quality of your messaging and then approves the increase, defers it, declines it, or asks for more information. If the increase isn't approved, the limit stays where it is — and the other route, 2,000 delivered messages within 30 days, remains open.
So the two routes work best together: apply for verification on day one, and start sending to 250 people a day without waiting for it. How to prepare your business.
A limit only grows when you use half of it.
| People who opted in | Realistic limit | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Under 1,000 | 2,000 | You can't reach 1,000 people in a day |
| 1,000 – 5,000 | 10,000 | You can't reach 5,000 |
| 5,000 – 50,000 | 100,000 | You can't reach 50,000 |
| Over 50,000 | Unlimited | — |
This isn't a problem. With 16,000 people on your list, a limit of 100,000 already means reaching all of them in a single day. Don't send in order to raise the limit — the limit you need arrives with the sending you need.
No — not since October 7, 2025.
Before that date, a low quality rating could drop a number to a lower tier. Meta removed that. Low quality still costs you: it stops the limit from growing, and it gets templates paused — three hours the first time, six the second, and disabled the third ().
Five more numbers, often confused with it.
When the list is bigger than the limit, the send takes more than one day.
A list of 60,000 and a limit of 250 means the first sends go to a slice of the list, day by day. Meta's rules allow the climb to be quick if the quality is high:
| Day | What happens | Limit |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | Account set up, verification requested | 250 |
| 3 | First send: 250 people, then 250 a day | 250 |
| About 10 | Verification approved; sending history passes review | 2,000 |
| 11 | 1,000 people reached in a day | 10,000 |
| 12 | 5,000 people reached in a day | 100,000 |
| 13 | 50,000 people reached in a day | Unlimited |
That is the shortest path the rules allow (). Real businesses don't message the same people every day, so the climb usually takes weeks.
WhatsApp Manager › Account tools › Messaging limits.
The page shows your current limit and the steps above it. Meta also emails the business when the limit goes up.
Rapio, built on the Cloud API, reads your limit from Meta and plans around it: when a list is bigger than what is left of today's allowance, the send is split across days instead of failing halfway. A separate number — your Rapio plan's monthly messages — is counted on its own, and the two never mix.
Meta bills the messages at its list price. We charge a fixed fee for the software.