What is a WhatsApp quality rating? Green, yellow and red explained
A WhatsApp quality rating is Meta's score for how customers have received messages from your business number in recent days. Green means high quality, yellow medium and red low. Blocks, spam reports and unwanted marketing pull it down. A low rating can hold back higher messaging tiers and get templates paused. Recover by pausing promotions, fixing opt-in and sending fewer, more relevant messages.
- The rating reflects recent customer reactions such as blocks and reports, not how many messages you send.
- Green is healthy, yellow is a warning to slow down, red means change your sending before Meta restricts you.
- Messaging customers who never opted in is the most common cause of a falling rating.
- Templates carry their own quality score, and a poorly received template can be paused or disabled by Meta.
- Recovery takes days of cleaner sending, since the rating follows a rolling window of recent feedback.
What is the WhatsApp quality rating?
Every phone number on the WhatsApp Business Platform carries a quality rating. It is Meta's summary of how customers have reacted to your messages recently. Meta describes it as based on roughly the last seven days of conversations, with newer feedback weighing more. You can read Meta's own description on its quality rating help page.
| Colour | Meta's label | What it tells you | What to do |
|---|---|---|---|
| Green | High | Customers are receiving your messages well | Carry on and grow volume gradually |
| Yellow | Medium | Negative feedback is rising | Slow down promotions and review your last campaign |
| Red | Low | Many customers are blocking or reporting you | Stop marketing sends and fix the cause first |
The rating does not judge your grammar or your brand. It measures one thing: whether the people you message wanted to hear from you.
What lowers your quality rating?
Meta does not publish a formula, but it is open about the signals. Each of these is a customer telling WhatsApp that your message was not welcome.
- Blocks. The customer blocks your number after a message. This is the strongest signal.
- Reports. The customer chooses Report and picks a reason such as spam or did not sign up.
- No opt-in. Numbers collected from a purchased database, an exhibition visitor sheet or an old billing system never agreed to hear from you on WhatsApp.
- Irrelevant messages. A bridal jewellery offer sent to someone who once bought a watch strap. The consent may exist, but the content misses.
- Too-frequent marketing. Three offers in a festive week from the same shop feels like spam even to loyal customers.
- Unclear identity. A message that does not say who you are or why the customer is receiving it gets blocked quickly.
Notice that low volume does not protect you. Two hundred messages to the wrong people can do more harm than twenty thousand to a well-kept list.
How does quality affect messaging tiers and templates?
The rating has consequences at two levels: the number and the individual template.
At the number level, quality decides how fast you grow. Meta raises your messaging tier only while your messages are well received, so a yellow or red rating holds upgrades back. Meta says a drop in the rating does not downgrade the messaging limit you already have, and the old Flagged status no longer exists, but it can rate limit a business whose quality stays low for a sustained period. How tiers work and how to plan sends inside them is covered in our guide to WhatsApp messaging limits and tiers.
At the template level, each approved template has its own quality score. When one template collects a lot of negative feedback, Meta can pause it for a short period. A repeat offence brings a longer pause, and a template that keeps performing badly can be disabled altogether. While a template is paused, any flow or campaign that uses it cannot send.
One bad promotional template can therefore hurt in two ways. It stops itself from sending, and it drags down the number that your order updates and appointment reminders also depend on.
How do you recover a yellow or red rating?
There is no appeal button that resets the rating. It improves when recent feedback improves, so recovery is about changing what you send for the next several days.
- Pause marketing broadcasts on the affected number straight away. Keep essential Utility messages such as order and payment updates running.
- Find the trigger. Look at what went out in the two or three days before the drop. It is usually one campaign, one list or one template.
- Remove risky contacts. Take out any segment you cannot show opt-in for, and anyone who has not engaged in months.
- Rewrite the template. Put your business name and the reason for the message in the first line, keep one clear offer, and add a simple way to stop receiving messages.
- Restart small. Send to your most engaged customers first, at a gentle speed, and watch the rating for a few days before widening the audience.
- Space out promotions. Set a house rule, for example no more than one marketing message per customer per week.
Avoid the tempting shortcut of moving the campaign to a fresh number. The same list and the same message will produce the same result, and a new number in the same business portfolio shares the same messaging limit anyway.
Which habits keep the rating green?
- Collect clear opt-in. Ask at the billing counter, on your website form and inside the chat itself, and say what the customer will receive.
- Segment before you send. A Surat saree retailer gets a better reaction sending wedding collection news to recent wedding shoppers than to the whole list.
- Use the right category. Order confirmations, fee reminders and delivery updates belong in Utility templates, which customers expect. Offers belong in Marketing. Our template approval guide explains the difference.
- Make opt-out easy. A customer who can reply STOP does not need to block you. An opt-out costs you one contact. A block costs you quality.
- Time it sensibly. A message at 10:30 pm earns more blocks than the same message at 11 am.
For a festive-season example that puts these habits together, see festive WhatsApp broadcasts for retail.
How does Convo360 help you protect the rating?
Convo360 cannot change how Meta scores you, but it removes the usual ways businesses get into trouble.
- See number health. Open WhatsApp, then Manage on your channel. The panel shows the number's quality rating and current messaging limit, so you can check before every large send. Setup details are in the WhatsApp documentation.
- Capture opt-in inside flows. In the Flow Builder, use a Buttons or Ask a Question block to ask for consent, then an Add to Group block to place the contact in an opted-in group. Broadcast only to that group.
- Honour opt-outs automatically. STOP keywords mark a contact as opted out, and campaigns skip suppressed numbers. See the compliance documentation.
- Pace every broadcast. Campaigns go out at a chosen speed inside a send window, so early reactions show up before the full list has been messaged.
- Auto-pause on Meta's signal. If Meta returns a spam or quality limit during a campaign, the broadcast pauses itself, keeps unsent contacts queued and resumes later by itself. The broadcast campaign guide walks through a full send.
Example conversation
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Frequently asked questions
What does a green, yellow or red WhatsApp quality rating mean?
Green means high quality, where customers are receiving your messages well. Yellow means medium quality, a warning that blocks or reports are increasing. Red means low quality, where many recipients are reacting negatively and Meta may pause your templates or rate limit the business unless your sending improves.
How long does it take for a WhatsApp quality rating to improve?
There is no fixed period. Meta bases the rating on a rolling window of recent conversations, so it usually improves over several days once the messages causing blocks and reports stop and better-received messages replace them. Pausing promotions speeds this up.
Why is my WhatsApp template paused?
Meta pauses a template when customers react badly to it, for example by blocking or reporting after receiving it. The first pause is short, repeat pauses are longer, and continued poor feedback can disable the template. Rewrite it, tighten the audience and submit a new version.
Does a low quality rating reduce my WhatsApp messaging limit?
No. Meta says that if a number's quality rating drops, its messaging limit will not be downgraded. A low rating still matters: Meta raises your limit only while messages are well received, poorly received templates get paused, and a business with sustained low quality can be rate limited.
Where can I check my WhatsApp quality rating?
Meta shows it in WhatsApp Manager under your phone numbers. On Convo360, open WhatsApp and then Manage on your channel to see the number's quality rating and messaging limit in one place, which is useful before starting a large broadcast.
Do Utility templates affect the quality rating?
Any message can be blocked or reported, so yes, but Utility templates rarely cause trouble because customers expect them. An order update or appointment reminder is tied to something the customer did. Problems mostly come from Marketing templates sent without clear opt-in or too often.
Related reading
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