Glossary
What is the quality rating of a WhatsApp number?
Meta's High, Medium or Low score for a business phone number, based on how recipients respond to its messages, and how it affects limit upgrades and throughput.
By Broadchat teamPublished 3 min read
Definition
Quality rating: Quality rating is Meta's score for a WhatsApp Business phone number, shown as High (green), Medium (yellow) or Low (red). It reflects how recipients have reacted to the messages the number sent recently, with signals such as blocks and reports. A high rating is needed for automatic messaging limit upgrades and higher throughput; a low one is a warning to change what, when and to whom you send.
Also called: Phone number quality, Number quality score, Green, yellow, red rating
How the WhatsApp number quality rating works
Meta watches how people respond to messages from each number. When many recipients block the number or report it as spam, the rating falls. When people read, reply and keep the chat, it stays high. Meta does not publish a formula, so treat the rating as a summary of customer feedback over recent days.
| Rating | Colour | What it tells you |
|---|---|---|
| High | Green | Customers are fine with what you send |
| Medium | Yellow | Some negative feedback; review recent campaigns |
| Low | Red | Strong negative feedback; stop and fix before sending more |
Why it matters
- Limit upgrades: the automatic move to the next messaging limit tier needs high quality plus enough recent usage.
- Throughput: the upgrade from 80 to up to 1,000 messages per second needs an Unlimited limit and quality of Medium or better.
- Number status: older Meta documentation described a "Flagged" state after low quality that could lower the tier. The current messaging-limits page does not spell out downgrades, so do not plan around exact rules; plan around staying green.
Worked example
Sunrise Clinic sends a marketing template about a skin-care package to 1,800 contacts imported from an old Excel sheet. Many of them visited the clinic years ago and never agreed to WhatsApp messages. Blocks pile up and the rating turns yellow within two days. Arjun, who runs the account, pauses marketing, sends only appointment reminders to recent patients who opted in, adds a clear "Reply STOP to unsubscribe" footer to marketing templates and splits future campaigns into smaller, better-targeted segments. Over the next week, with fewer blocks, the rating returns to green.
Common causes of a falling rating
- Messaging people without a clear opt-in.
- Sending the same promotion too often, or at odd hours.
- Templates that are vague about who is writing and why.
- No easy opt-out, so annoyed people block instead.
Quality rating in Broadchat
The quality rating of every connected number appears on its card under Channels → All Channels, read live from Meta. Use CRM → Segment to send campaigns only to subscribed, recently engaged contacts, and the campaign report's reply filter to spot "STOP" replies so you can mark those contacts unsubscribed in CRM → Contact. The quality rating and messaging limits article goes deeper into recovery.
Sources
- Messaging limits — Meta for Developers, checked 12 October 2026
- Throughput — Meta for Developers, checked 12 October 2026
- WhatsApp Business Messaging Policy — WhatsApp, checked 12 October 2026
Broadchat team · Product and partner success team
The people who build and support Broadchat, the white-label WhatsApp Business API platform. We write from what we see while onboarding partners and their clients on the official WhatsApp Cloud API, and we check every article against Meta's current documentation.
Last updated:
Frequently asked questions
How long does it take for a low quality rating to recover?
Meta does not publish a fixed time. The rating reflects recent feedback, so it usually improves after several days of sending only wanted messages to opted-in contacts with fewer blocks and reports.
Is the quality rating per number or per account?
It is shown per phone number. The messaging limit, by contrast, is now set for the whole business portfolio, so a poorly behaving number can hold back upgrades that the whole portfolio shares.
Do message templates have their own quality?
Yes. Meta also tracks the quality of individual templates and can pause a template that gets poor feedback. A paused template is a sign to rewrite it before it hurts the number's rating.