# Rate Limit
WhatsApp V2 has rate limits (from Facebook side). Please read the following information carefully so you can better prepare the code while building the solution for your customers.
# Daily rate limit rules
Every new phone number starts with a daily limit of 250 business-initiated conversations. This means you can start up to 250 new conversations with WhatsApp numbers in a 24-hour window. If a customer starts the conversation and not your business, you can reply to unlimited conversations. The 250 per 24 hours limit only applies when you start the conversation with your customers (in other words — 250 conversations per 24 hours that started with a template message).
# Tier progression
| Current tier | Next tier | Requirement to move up |
|---|---|---|
| 250 / 24 hours | 1,000 / 24 hours | Verify your business on Facebook, or open 1,000 business-initiated conversations over 30 consecutive days while keeping templates at high quality with no spam reports. |
| 1,000 / 24 hours | 10,000 / 24 hours | Open at least 500 new business-initiated conversations in 7 consecutive days. After reaching this, wait 24 hours and 10,000 will be opened for you (assuming you keep high quality and no spam reports). |
| 10,000 / 24 hours | 100,000 / 24 hours | Open at least 5,000 new business-initiated conversations in 7 consecutive days. After reaching this, wait 24 hours and 100,000 will be opened for you (assuming you keep high quality and no spam reports). |
| 100,000 / 24 hours | UNLIMITED / 24 hours | Open at least 50,000 new business-initiated conversations in 7 consecutive days. After reaching this, wait 24 hours and unlimited will be opened for you (assuming you keep high quality and no spam reports). |
Business verification
If your business is already verified on Facebook, you will move to 1,000 / 24 hours automatically. You can send the link for business verification (opens new window) to your client if you wish to help them verify, but this process must be done by the business side.
Note
There are some undocumented cases where businesses get 1,000 / day right from the start without verifying the business. From our experience, this usually happens when the business is considered very reliable and very active for a long time on Facebook. We have no control over this, and no way to anticipate this decision.
Moving forward in the daily rate limit is done automatically by Facebook.
# Messaging rate limit rules
Every WhatsApp API number has a default rate limit of 80 messages per second (of any kind — templates, messages, or files). This means every WhatsApp number can send up to 80 messages per second in total.
Coexistence mode
When using Coexistence, the outgoing rate limit is 20 messages per second, not 80 messages per second.
# Moving from 80 to 1,000 messages per second
You can move from 80 messages per second to 1,000 messages per second if all of the following happen:
- You reach the UNLIMITED daily rate limit (as explained in the Daily rate limit rules above).
- You did not receive any spam reports for the last 7 days.
You will get 1,000 messages per second automatically when both of the above happen.
# Per-recipient rate limit
You can send up to 10 messages per minute to the same phone number (of any kind — templates, messages, or files). There is a small exception: you can "borrow" capacity from the next minutes for up to 45 messages.
For example, on a normal scenario you can send 10 messages in 1 minute. If you want to send 45 messages right now, you will be able to do that, but after those 45 messages you will have to wait 4.5 minutes before sending the next message.
For easy calculations, you can consider the rate limit as 0.17 messages per second to the same phone number.
Note
The rate limit error is returned when sending the message, and not as a webhook later on.
# Marketing templates per-recipient limit
You can send up to 2 marketing templates to the same phone number in a 24 hours window.