WhatsApp messaging limits: the current portfolio tiers

What does the messaging limit actually count?

Unique WhatsApp user phone numbers your business delivers messages to outside a customer service window, within a moving 24 hours. Three consequences follow from that wording.

Replies inside an open customer service window do not count, so a number that only answers people who wrote in can operate far above its limit without touching it. Sending several templates to the same person counts that person once. And the window is moving rather than a calendar day, so capacity frees up gradually as the oldest sends age out.

The limit is about how many people you reach first, not how fast or how much you send.

What changed in October 2025?

Before 7 October 2025 each phone number had its own limit, and a new number started at 250 regardless of what its siblings had earned. Since then the limit belongs to the business portfolio and every number in it shares it.

• A newly registered number immediately shares the portfolio's limit.
• The first step after 250 is 2,000, where it used to be 1,000.
• Increases arrive 6 hours after the criteria are met, down from 24.
• A drop in a number's quality rating no longer downgrades the limit.
• The field to read is whatsapp_business_manager_messaging_limit; messaging_limit_tier is deprecated.

How does the limit go up?

In two stages. To leave 250, a portfolio completes one scaling path: verify the business, have the onboarding partner verify it, or deliver 2,000 messages outside customer service windows to unique recipients within 30 days using templates with a high quality rating. Meta then reviews message quality and approves or denies, and a denial arrives as an account_alerts webhook naming the alternative to pursue.

From 2,000 onwards scaling is automatic. Meta raises the portfolio one level when it is sending high quality messages across all its numbers and templates, and has used at least half of its current limit in the last 7 days. There is nothing to buy and no request to file.

How is the messaging limit different from throughput?

The limit counts people per day; throughput counts messages per second. They are set separately and fail separately.

On a Coexistence number the difference is sharp. Meta fixes throughput at 20 messages per second for any number in use with both the WhatsApp Business app and Cloud API, to keep it compatible with the app. That figure does not move with the portfolio's tier, so a portfolio on an unlimited messaging limit still sends at 20 per second from a Coexistence number.

The per-second limit, the per-recipient limit and the management call limit each have their own page and their own error codes.

Common mistakes

• Reading messaging_limit_tier. It is deprecated; the current field is whatsapp_business_manager_messaging_limit.
• Assuming each new number starts at 250. Since October 2025 it inherits the portfolio's limit at once.
• Counting replies against the limit. Messages inside an open customer service window are not part of it.
• Letting one number's campaign starve the others. The whole portfolio draws on the same limit.

Frequently asked questions

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