How blocks and reports affect WhatsApp quality rating
Message quality is judged on how recipients received a business's messages over the past seven days, weighted toward recent ones. The signals are blocks, reports, mutes, archives and the reasons people give when they block. Sustained low quality leads to rate limiting, error 131048 on sends, and paused templates.
The period over which message quality is assessed, weighted toward recent messages.
Send failure from limits on the number, possibly because too many messages were blocked or flagged as spam.
Template quality ratings: GREEN, YELLOW, RED and UNKNOWN for templates still awaiting feedback.
What feedback lowers a WhatsApp quality rating?
Meta names the signals directly: blocks, reports, mutes, archives, and the reasons users give when they block a business. Quality is based on how messages were received over the past seven days and is weighted by recency, so a bad send yesterday weighs more than one six days ago.
Two consequences follow. A single badly targeted campaign can move the rating quickly, and Meta notes that numbers with high traffic commonly see quality change within minutes. And because the assessment covers only the last seven days, feedback older than that stops counting toward it.
Templates carry their own rating, built from feedback and read rates, alongside the number's.
What happens when quality drops?
Several things, at different levels.
- Sends can fail with 131048, which Meta ties to too many messages being blocked or flagged as spam.
- Templates rated YELLOW or RED can still be sent but are at risk of pausing or being disabled.
- Quality factors into template pacing, which can slow delivery of a campaign.
- The policy allows WhatsApp to limit how many messages a business can send based on blocks and reports.
- Since 7 October 2025 a drop no longer lowers the portfolio's messaging limit, but it can stop the limit from growing.
How do I recover a low quality rating?
Stop the source of the negative feedback first, then let the seven day window move past it.
Meta's guidelines for high quality messages are the checklist. Send only to people who opted in to messages from the business. Make messages personalised and useful. Avoid open-ended welcome or introductory messages. Avoid sending too many messages per day. Keep content and length tight.
In practice that means pausing the campaign or template that is drawing blocks, checking which audience segment it went to, and checking the opt-in that audience gave. Meta's own opt-in guidance suggests collecting opt-in per message category, precisely because unexpected categories are what people block.
Where is the quality rating shown?
In WhatsApp Manager, under Account tools and Phone numbers, together with the number's status and messaging limit, and on the phone number object through the Graph API as quality_rating. Template ratings are on each template as quality_score, and in the Manage templates panel as High, Medium, Low or Quality pending.
Nothing about it appears in the WhatsApp Business app on the phone, which is why a Coexistence number can slide without anyone in the shop noticing. The rating is not delivered by the phone_number_quality_update webhook despite that field's name, which has its own page explaining what that webhook does carry.
Common mistakes
- Sending an open-ended welcome message to a newly imported list. Meta names it as something to avoid, and it draws blocks.
- Retrying sends that failed with 131048. The restriction is on the number, and more sends add to the feedback causing it.
- Watching only the number's rating. Templates have their own, and a RED template can be paused while the number looks fine.
EasyCoexistence polls quality rating and messaging limit on every connected number and records each change on the connection timeline, so a decline is visible before it shows up as failed sends.
Frequently asked questions
Does one block lower my rating?
Meta does not publish a threshold. Quality reflects the overall feedback on the last seven days of messages, weighted toward recent ones.
Can a low rating lower my messaging limit?
Not since 7 October 2025. It can still prevent the limit from scaling up and restrict sends.
How long does recovery take?
Meta does not publish a recovery time. The assessment covers the last seven days, so feedback older than that no longer counts.
Do muted chats count?
Yes. Meta lists mutes and archives alongside blocks and reports as quality signals.
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