WhatsApp broadcast limits: how many people, how fast, and what it costs

“How many people can I send to?” has three answers, and they are three different limits. Most failed first broadcasts hit the one nobody mentioned.

Limit one: the app’s broadcast list

The WhatsApp Business app lets a broadcast list hold 256 people, and delivers only to the ones who have saved your number in their phone. The second rule is the one that hurts: a list of 256 can reach forty.

Neither can be raised. Past that point you are on the WhatsApp Business Platform, which has no broadcast list at all — a broadcast there is a template message sent to each person, one at a time, as fast as your number allows.

Limit two: how many people a day

The platform limits how many different people you can message outside a 24-hour customer service window, in any rolling 24 hours. Meta calls it the messaging limit. The steps are:

• 250 — where every new business portfolio starts
• 2,000
• 10,000
• 100,000
• Unlimited

Three things about it surprise people.

It counts people, not messages. Two templates to the same person in a day count once. Replying to somebody who wrote to you in the last 24 hours does not count at all, because their message opened a window.

It belongs to the business, not the number. The limit is set for the whole business portfolio and shared by every number in it. A second number does not double it.

The first step is yours to take. From 250 to 2,000 happens when you verify your business with Meta, when the provider who connected you verifies it, or after 2,000 delivered template messages to different people in 30 days, with good quality. After that it rises one step at a time, within six hours, once you have used at least half your limit in the last seven days and your messages are being received well. How quality decides it.

So a business with 5,000 customers and a new account cannot send to all of them on day one. Plan the first week around 250 people a day, and verify the business before the launch, not after it.

Limit three: how fast

Throughput is per phone number. A coexistence number — one you still use in the WhatsApp Business app — is fixed at 20 messages a second. That is 1,200 a minute, so a list of 10,000 takes a little over eight minutes at full speed.

Speed is rarely the constraint that matters. The daily limit is.

What it costs

Meta charges for each template message that is delivered. The rate depends on the template’s category — marketing, utility or authentication — and on the country of the person receiving it. A broadcast is nearly always marketing, the most expensive category.

Meta bills you, not your provider, if you connected your own account through a Tech Provider like talkv. Your card is on your own WhatsApp account, and the invoice comes from Meta. Rates change on fixed dates during the year, so look them up when you plan a send rather than trusting a number from last quarter. Meta’s rates, by country.

Your provider charges separately, in one of a few ways: a monthly plan, a fee per message, or a markup folded into the message price. Ask which, because it decides what a large send costs. How talkv charges.

An undelivered message costs nothing. Meta charges on delivery. A number that no longer exists, a phone that never comes back online and somebody who has blocked you all produce no charge.

What gets subtracted before you send

A list is not an audience. Before a broadcast, take out:

• people who unsubscribed, or never agreed to hear from you
• numbers that cannot be read as a phone number with a country code
• the same person twice
• anybody a variable cannot be filled for — “Hi ,” is refused by Meta and worse if it is not

What is left is the number to plan the day around, and the most it could cost. A good tool shows you both before you press send. The full checklist for a large send.