Guides
WhatsApp Broadcast Limit: How Many Messages You Can Send Per Day (2026)
How many customers you can broadcast to in 24 hours on the WhatsApp Business API, how Meta raises that number, and why the Business app's broadcast lists work differently.
By the wbm.link teamUpdated 14 September 2026 5 min read
“How many WhatsApp messages can I send a day?” has two very different answers depending on which WhatsApp you use. On the free WhatsApp Business app, a broadcast list is capped at 256 contacts. On the WhatsApp Business API, there is no list size at all — instead Meta sets a messaging limit: how many different customers your business can start conversations with in 24 hours. It starts at 250 and can grow to unlimited.
This guide explains how that limit works in 2026, how to raise it, and what actually slows businesses down.
The WhatsApp Business API broadcast message limit
Meta defines the messaging limit as the maximum number of unique WhatsApp phone numbers your business can deliver messages to outside a customer service window, within a moving 24-hour period. Three parts of that sentence matter:
- Unique customers, not messages. Sending an order confirmation and then a shipping update to the same customer on the same day counts once.
- Outside the window only. Replies to customers who messaged you in the last 24 hours do not count. A busy support inbox does not use up your broadcast capacity.
- A moving 24 hours, not a calendar day. If you broadcast to 2,000 people at 11 a.m. on Monday, that capacity frees up from 11 a.m. on Tuesday, not at midnight.
WhatsApp broadcast limit per day: the messaging tiers
| Messaging limit | Unique customers per 24 hours | How you reach it |
|---|---|---|
| Starting | 250 | Every new business portfolio starts here |
| 2K | 2,000 | Verify your business, or deliver 2,000 messages outside the window to unique customers within 30 days using high-quality templates |
| 10K | 10,000 | Automatic, once you meet the scaling criteria below |
| 100K | 1,00,000 | Automatic, same criteria |
| Unlimited | No cap | Automatic, same criteria |
The limit is shared across your business portfolio
Since 7 October 2025, Meta sets messaging limits for the whole business portfolio, not for each phone number. All the WhatsApp numbers in one portfolio share one limit. A newly registered number gets the portfolio's limit straight away, instead of starting again at the bottom.
In practice, this means adding a second number does not double how many customers you can broadcast to. If your portfolio is at 2,000 and your sales number broadcasts to 1,500 customers, your support number has 500 left in that 24-hour period. Plan campaigns across numbers together.
How the messaging limit rises
From 250 to 2,000
Meta lists three ways to leave the starting limit:
- Verify your business in Meta Business Suite.
- Have your onboarding partner verify it, if a partner set up your account.
- Deliver 2,000 messages outside customer service windows to unique customers within a 30-day moving period, using templates with a high quality rating.
For most Indian businesses, business verification is the quicker route: it needs your registered business name and documents such as a GST certificate, and it also unlocks other things, such as more templates.
From 2,000 upwards: automatic scaling
Once you are at 2,000, Meta raises the limit by one level within 6 hours when both of these are true:
- You are sending high-quality messages across all your business phone numbers and templates.
- In the last 7 days, your business has used at least half of its current limit.
The second rule surprises people. A business at 2,000 that only ever broadcasts to 600 customers a day will stay at 2,000, because it has never used half. Growth follows real use: to reach 10,000, send to 1,000 or more unique customers on a day in the last week, with messages people want.
You can see your current limit in WhatsApp Manager → Account tools → Messaging limits.
Quality rating: what keeps your limit growing
Meta judges quality from how customers received your messages over the past seven days, with recent days counting more. The signals are blocks, reports, mutes and archives, and the reasons people give when they block you. Each template also gets its own rating — green, yellow or red — and a template with poor quality can be paused so it cannot be sent for a while.
One important change from October 2025: a phone number whose quality drops is no longer moved down to a lower limit. But poor quality still hurts. It stops automatic scaling, it can get individual templates paused, and repeated policy problems can lead to restrictions on the account.
- Message only people who opted in. Customers who never asked to hear from you are the ones who block. See our WhatsApp opt-in guide.
- Segment instead of blasting everyone. A label such as “enquired in the last 30 days” gets fewer blocks than your full list.
- Give an easy way out. A “Stop promotions” quick-reply button is better for you than a block.
- Watch frequency. Several marketing messages a week to the same people is how good lists turn into blocks.
- Keep utility messages clean. Order and appointment updates rarely get blocked — unless an offer has been added to them.
Broadcast to labels and CSV lists
wbm.link sends approved templates to a label or an uploaded CSV of contacts, and replies land in one shared team inbox — ₹999 per number a month with unlimited team members.
See broadcastsWhatsApp Business app broadcast lists vs API broadcasts
| WhatsApp Business app broadcast list | WhatsApp Business API broadcast | |
|---|---|---|
| Size | Up to 256 contacts per list | No list size; limited by your messaging limit (250 to unlimited per 24 hours) |
| Who receives it | Only contacts who have saved your number | Any opted-in customer, whether or not they saved your number |
| Message | Anything you type | An approved template outside the 24-hour window |
| Cost | No per-message charge | Charged per delivered template message by category |
| Replies | Arrive on the phone running the app | Can be shared across a team inbox |
| Personalisation | Same text for everyone | Variables such as name, order number or date |
The saved-contact rule is the one that quietly limits the app: a customer who has not saved your number simply does not receive the broadcast. WhatsApp has also been adding paid business broadcast options inside the app; check WhatsApp's Help Center for the current terms in your market. If you want the app on your phone and API broadcasts at the same time, Meta's coexistence lets one number do both. For a full comparison, read WhatsApp Business app vs API.
What a broadcast will cost
The limit decides how many customers you can reach; the category decides what it costs. In India, Meta charges ₹0.8631 per delivered marketing message and ₹0.115 per utility or authentication message (rates effective 1 July 2026, before GST). A marketing broadcast to 2,000 customers is about ₹1,726 at Meta's rate. Messages that fail to deliver are not charged. Estimate your own month with the pricing calculator, and see our guide to sending bulk WhatsApp messages safely.