Capacity, Quality Rating, and Messaging Limits

This document covers: Capacity Rate Limits, Quality Rating, Messaging Limits

Capacity Rate Limits

Capacity rate limiting is imposed on each available API endpoint and will return the appropriate HTTPS error codes (e.g., 429, 503, etc.) depending on the state of the system.

Two forms of capacity rate limiting are currently supported:

• Request rate limiting — Request rate limiting is the throttling of incoming requests on an API endpoint. When the number of requests per second limit is reached, the endpoint will start returning a 429 error code.

  • Beginning with v2.25.3, the request rate limit for the messages endpoint is 50 requests per second with bursts allowed up to 150 requests per second.

  • For versions prior to v2.25.3 and all other endpoints, the request rate limit is 20 requests per second with bursts allowed up to 60 requests per second.

• Concurrent rate limiting — Concurrent rate limiting is the throttling of incoming requests when the Coreapp itself is under heavy load (e.g., job queue size grew too large). At this point, the endpoint will start returning a 503 error.

When you hit either of these capacity rate limiting scenarios, you should halt any further requests and slow the pace of your API requests. If you start seeing many capacity rate limit errors, it would be advisable to build a queue on your end to throttle the requests.

Quality Rating

Your quality rating is based on how messages have been received by recipients in recent days. It is determined by a combination of quality signals from conversations between businesses and users. Examples include user feedback signals like blocks, reports and the reasons users provide when they block a business.

Messaging Limits

Messaging limits determine how many unique users your business can send messages to on a daily basis.

This includes new conversations as well as existing conversations with users.

The messaging limit does NOT limit the number of messages your business can send, just the number of users you are trying to message.

It also does NOT apply to messages sent in response to a user-initiated message within a 24-hour period.

• Limited Access Tier: Allows your business to send messages to 50 unique customers in a rolling 24-hour period.

• Tier 1: Allows your business to send messages to 1K unique customers in a rolling 24-hour period.

• Tier 2: Allows your business to send messages to 10K unique customers in a rolling 24-hour period.

• Tier 3: Allows your business to send messages to 100K unique customers in a rolling 24-hour period.

The phone number status, quality rating, and messaging limits for your WhatsApp business account are listed in the Phone Numbers tab in WhatsApp Manager. You can also check this information on the card view of the telephone as well as on the details page.

See About WhatsApp Business Account Message Quality Rating for information.

Moving Tiers

You are automatically upgraded to a higher tier based on the volume and quality of the messages you send. Conversely, you can be downgraded if more of your messages are reported by users.

Upgrades

A business’s phone number is upgraded to the next tier if:

• Its quality rating is not low, and

• The cumulative amount of users it sends notifications to adds up to twice its current messaging limit within a 7-day period.

Once the business reaches this threshold, it is moved to the next tier. The minimum amount of time that this upgrade can occur is after 48 hours, when the business is sending messages up to their current limit every day.

Flagged Status

If a business has a Flagged status, it cannot upgrade tiers. After a business is Flagged, it must return to the Connected status and then restart the process to upgrade to the next tier.

Examples

See the charts below for examples of how a business might move to the next tier:

Example 1: A business is upgraded from Tier 1 to Tier 2 when it messages a total of 2,000 users within a 7-day period.

Example 2: The chart explains the concept of messaging limit in a rolling 24-hour window.

Before Deploying a New Number

Messaging limits determine how many unique users your business can send messages to, on a daily basis, and it takes at least 5 days for the new number to reach the last tier.

You should always analyze phone number quality before sending notifications to twice the current tier reach, so you guarantee you can move to the next tier in a healthy way. This is an opportunity for business to test with a smaller database to see how customers see this new communication channel you are creating.

Good Practices

To maintain high quality:

• Make sure messages follow the WhatsApp Business Policy.

• Only send messages to users who have opted into receiving messages from your business.

• Make the messages highly personalized and useful to users. Avoid sending open-ended welcome or introductory messages.

• Be mindful of messaging frequency; avoid sending customers too many messages a day. Be thoughtful of informational messages, optimizing for content and length.