WhatsApp Quality Rating: Quality Score, How to Check It, and How to Fix a Low Rating
Meta scores every WhatsApp Business number green, yellow, or red from the last seven days of customer feedback. That score decides whether your messaging limit grows or stalls. Check your block rate before Meta does.
Meta does not publish the exact block rate cutoff for each color. The bands below are a practical read on your own numbers, not Meta's internal threshold.
The short answer
A WhatsApp quality rating is a score Meta assigns to each business phone number based on how customers received your messages over the past seven days, with recent messages weighted most heavily. It appears in WhatsApp Manager as green for high quality, yellow for medium, and red for low. The inputs are customer feedback signals: blocks, reports, and the reason a person picks when they block your business.
The rating matters because it gates your messaging limit. Meta raises your limit one level at a time, and it will not promote a number whose templates are not rated highly. So quality rating is the throttle on how many unique people your business can reach per day, which makes it a growth number rather than a compliance footnote.
How Meta calculates your WhatsApp quality rating
There is no engagement bonus and no reply-rate credit in the formula. The score is built almost entirely from negative signals, which is why a single badly targeted campaign moves it so fast.
"Your messaging quality score is based on how your messages have been received by customers over the past seven days, with more recent messages weighted more heavily."
Meta's quality rating specification, as documented by AWS End User Messaging Social.
When a person blocks a business on WhatsApp they are asked why, and that reason is part of the signal. If your rating is medium or low you can hover over it in WhatsApp Manager to see the block reasons behind it, which is the most useful diagnostic Meta gives you. The reasons tell you whether you have a targeting problem or a content problem, and those need different fixes.
| Block reason the customer picks | What it usually means | The fix that works |
|---|---|---|
| Didn't sign up | Your opt-in record is weak or the consent did not name your business | Re-collect consent at checkout with the business name in the wording |
| Spam | Promotional content going to people who expected transactional updates | Split marketing and utility audiences and stop mixing them |
| No longer needed | The relationship went stale, often an old list messaged after months of silence | Segment by recency and send a re-permission message first |
| Offensive messages | Tone, imagery, or an aggressive offer landed badly | Rewrite the template and keep the first line plainly informative |
| No reason | Usually frequency fatigue rather than a single bad message | Cut send frequency and cap campaigns per contact per month |
Green, yellow, and red: what each rating actually changes
The color itself does not stop you sending. What it changes is whether Meta will let your number grow, and how much scrutiny your templates get.
Block and report rates are low. Your number is eligible for automatic messaging limit increases once your volume justifies one, and templates clear review normally.
A warning state. You keep sending, but tier progression stalls. Because the score only looks back seven days, a clean week of well targeted sending usually restores it.
Negative feedback has persisted. Upgrades are off the table, templates draw harder scrutiny, and continuing to push volume through a red number is how numbers get restricted.
Quality rating is not the same as phone number status
People mix these up constantly. The rating is the color. The status is what your number is currently allowed to do, and it is shown separately in WhatsApp Manager.
| Status | What it means | What you can still do |
|---|---|---|
| Connected | Normal operating state for a healthy number | Send anything within your current messaging limit |
| Flagged | Quality has dropped low enough that Meta is watching the number | Keep sending, but treat it as a seven day clock to fix the cause |
| Restricted | You have hit your messaging limit for the current 24 hour period | Still reply to people who message you first, and resume when the period resets |
One thing the guides disagree on, stated honestly
A lot of published material, including help docs from major cloud and BSP vendors, says that a number left at low quality for seven days automatically drops one messaging tier, so 100,000 becomes 10,000. Meta's current messaging limits documentation describes only how limits increase. It does not document a Flagged status or an automatic decrease.
We are not going to tell you the downgrade definitely still happens, and we are not going to tell you it definitely does not. What is not in dispute is the part that matters operationally: a low rating stops your number moving up, and Meta acts on numbers that keep collecting blocks. Plan around keeping the rating green rather than around how bad the penalty is.
How quality rating controls your messaging limit
Your messaging limit is the number of unique customers you can start conversations with in a rolling 24 hour period. Replies to people who messaged you first do not count against it.
| Messaging limit | Unique customers per 24 hours | How you reach it |
|---|---|---|
| Starting tier | 250 | Every new business portfolio starts here |
| Second tier | 2,000 | Business verification, partner led verification, or 2,000 delivered messages to unique numbers in a 30 day window using high quality templates |
| Third tier | 10,000 | Automatic once you use enough of the 2,000 limit with quality holding up |
| Fourth tier | 100,000 | Automatic, same criteria applied again |
| Top tier | Unlimited | Automatic, the ceiling for business initiated conversations |
Two details are worth knowing because they are commonly reported wrong. There is no 1,000 message tier: the sequence is 250, 2,000, 10,000, 100,000, unlimited. And once you are past 2,000 the increases are automatic, evaluated frequently rather than on a monthly review. Meta's documentation states that when the criteria are met, your portfolio's limit increases by one level within six hours.
The practical consequence is that quality rating and volume work together. You cannot climb tiers without sending enough to prove the number, and you cannot send enough if the sending itself generates blocks. That is why list quality is the whole game. Our guide to WhatsApp Business API messaging limits goes deeper into the tier mechanics, and the WhatsApp bulk messaging rules cover what the terms of service allow before you scale.
Template quality rating is a separate score
Individual message templates carry their own quality rating on top of the number level one. A single bad template can be paused while the rest of your account keeps running, which is usually the first warning you get.
| Event | What happens to the template | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| First time quality drops low | Paused for 3 hours | Stop the campaign. Do not just wait it out and resend the same wording |
| Second time | Paused for 6 hours | Rewrite the template before it unpauses, or you are heading for the third strike |
| Third time | Disabled | Edit the content and appeal. A disabled template is not automatically recoverable |
| New or recently unpaused template | Paced, meaning delivery is throttled while Meta samples feedback | Send to your most engaged segment first so the early signal is positive |
Pacing is the part people miss. When a template is new or has just come back from a pause, Meta does not blast it to your whole audience straight away. It releases messages gradually and watches how they land, and if the early feedback is negative the rest can be dropped rather than delivered. Sending a fresh template to your coldest segment first is therefore the worst possible sequencing. Start with recent buyers. If your template was rejected outright rather than paused, that is a different problem covered in our guide to why WhatsApp templates get rejected.
How to check your WhatsApp quality rating
Open WhatsApp Manager
Go to WhatsApp Manager inside Meta Business Suite for the business portfolio that owns the number.
Go to the Phone numbers tab
Each row lists a number with its display name, its current messaging limit, and a colored quality badge.
Read the badge
Green, yellow, or red. The badge reflects the trailing seven days, so it moves without you doing anything.
Hover for block reasons
If the rating is medium or low, hovering shows the reasons people gave when they blocked you. That is your diagnosis.
How to fix a low WhatsApp quality rating
The seven day window is the good news. Nothing you did last month is still being counted, so a rating can recover in about a week if you actually change the sending behavior rather than waiting.
Stop the campaign that caused it
Sending through a falling rating is the most common way businesses turn yellow into red. Pause first, diagnose second.
Cut the audience to people who engaged
Message recent buyers and people who replied. A smaller, warmer send rebuilds the score faster than a large careful one.
Name your business in the first line
A large share of blocks come from people who do not recognize the sender. Putting the business name up front removes that.
Separate marketing from utility
Order updates going to a list that wanted offers, or the reverse, produces spam reports from people who did opt in.
Cut frequency before content
When the block reason is mostly no reason given, the problem is usually how often you send, not what you wrote.
Make opting out obvious
An easy exit produces an opt out instead of a block. One costs you a contact, the other costs you rating points.
Almost every one of those fixes traces back to how the list was built. A number sending to contacts who gave clear, dated permission does not usually develop a quality problem in the first place, which is why the WhatsApp opt-in requirements are worth getting right before volume becomes a concern.
Frequently asked questions
What is quality rating on WhatsApp?
Quality rating is a score Meta assigns to each WhatsApp Business phone number based on how customers received your messages over the past seven days. It is shown as green for high, yellow for medium, and red for low. The score is built from customer feedback signals, mainly blocks, reports, and the reason a person selects when blocking your business.
How do I check my WhatsApp quality rating?
Open WhatsApp Manager in Meta Business Suite and go to the Phone numbers tab. Each number shows its display name, current messaging limit, and a colored quality badge. If the rating is medium or low, hover over the badge to see the block reasons behind it, which tells you whether you have a targeting or a content problem.
What is a good WhatsApp quality rating?
Green, meaning high quality, is the only rating you should be comfortable with. It signals that blocks and reports are rare relative to volume, keeps your number eligible for automatic messaging limit increases, and lets templates clear review normally. Yellow is a warning rather than a penalty, but it stops tier progression.
How long does it take to improve a WhatsApp quality rating?
Usually about seven days, because the score only looks at the trailing seven days of feedback with recent messages weighted most heavily. That means older negative signals age out on their own. A rating will not recover if you keep running the campaign that caused the drop, since fresh blocks replace the ones expiring.
Does a low quality rating lower my messaging limit?
It definitely stops your limit from increasing. Whether it automatically drops you a tier is genuinely disputed: many vendor help docs describe a seven day Flagged period followed by a one level decrease, while Meta current messaging limits documentation describes only increases and does not mention that behavior. Treat a low rating as a hard block on growth.
Why did my WhatsApp template get paused?
A template is paused when its own quality rating drops to low, which is driven by negative feedback from recipients of that specific template. The first pause lasts 3 hours and the second lasts 6 hours. A third occurrence disables the template, at which point you need to edit the content and appeal rather than simply wait.
What is the difference between quality rating and phone number status?
The rating is the color that describes message quality. The status describes what the number can currently do. Connected means normal sending, Flagged means quality dropped low enough for Meta to watch the number, and Restricted means you hit your messaging limit for the current 24 hour period and can only reply to inbound messages.
Do replies to customers affect my quality rating?
Replies inside a conversation the customer started are far less likely to generate blocks, because the person chose to contact you. The rating is driven overwhelmingly by business initiated messages sent to people who did not ask for them at that moment. Shifting volume toward customer initiated conversations is a reliable way to protect the score.
Protect the rating while you scale
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Related guides
WhatsApp Bulk Messaging Rules
What the terms allow before you scale volume.
WhatsApp Opt-In Requirements
The consent wording that keeps block rates low.
WhatsApp Error Codes
What each send failure code actually means.
WhatsApp Message Templates
Categories, approval, and wording that passes review.
Messaging Limits and Tiers
The five tiers and how to move up them.
WhatsApp Messages Not Delivered
Why bulk sends fail and how to fix them.