WhatsApp Quality Rating Guide

TL;DR

Quality Rating is the score Meta gives your business number, based on how customers respond to your messages. The score affects your daily recipient limit, your delivery speed, and your risk of being blocked. This article covers the three score levels, where to see it in Mumble, what affects it, and what to do if it drops.

How Quality Rating works

What the score measures

Meta measures how customers respond to business messages. The score reflects three things in particular: how many customers blocked the business number, how many reported it as spam, and how many ignored the messages. Together these create a picture of “is this a business customers want to hear from?” Meta recalculates the score on a rolling window of recent activity, so it can change quickly.

The three score levels

Quality Rating levels and their meaning
Level	Meaning	Impact on the number
High — green	High quality; customers receive the messages positively.	No restrictions. The daily limits are fully active.
Medium — orange	Warning signs in customer response data.	Meta starts monitoring. No immediate downgrade, but if this state continues it leads to a tier downgrade.
Low — red	Most responses are negative (blocks, reports, ignoring).	Tier downgrade, fewer daily recipients, and in severe cases suspension or a block.

Meta’s official names are High / Medium / Low. In both Meta Business Manager and Mumble the levels are also shown by color: green, orange, red.

Where to see the score in Mumble

On the Mumble main page, in the WhatsApp Account Status section, four cards appear. One of them is Account Quality, and it shows the current score. When the score is fine, it reads “OK” with a green indicator; a Medium score is marked in orange, a Low score in red.

Two more cards in the same row are directly related to the score:

Meta Messaging Limit. The number of unique recipients you can reach in 24 hours. The higher your score and the higher your usage of the limit, the more Meta raises your tier.
Sending status. Active, paused, or blocked. If the score is low and goes unaddressed, the sending status may move to paused or blocked.

This is the first row worth checking every morning, and especially after a large campaign. A change in color is an early sign of Meta taking action on the number.

Why the score matters in practice

The score affects three practical things:

The daily tier. Meta assigns each business number a tier of unique recipients per 24 hours. The official tiers are 1,000, 10,000, 100,000, and unlimited. Numbers for businesses that haven’t yet completed business verification start at a lower limit, until verification is completed and they move up to the first tier. To advance through tiers you must meet two requirements at once: meaningful usage of the current limit, and a high quality rating. A low score doesn’t just halt progress — it can downgrade you a tier.
Delivery speed and odds. Meta prioritizes messages by quality. Messages from numbers with a high score are sent quickly and reliably. From numbers with a low score they are sent more slowly, and sometimes not delivered at all. Marketing messages from a number with red quality may not arrive even if your Meta budget and everything else are fine.
Long-term blocking risk. A persistent red score leads to a Flagged state. If the situation doesn’t improve within Meta’s review window, the number may move to Restricted, and in severe cases to a full block of the WhatsApp Business account. Recovering from such a state is long and sometimes impossible.

What affects the score

What harms the score

Customer blocks. When a customer blocks the business number, Meta records it. A high block rate is the strongest signal of problematic quality.
Spam reports. WhatsApp lets a customer mark a message as spam with one tap. Every such report is proof to Meta that the message was unwanted.
Low open rate. If customers don’t open the messages, Meta concludes they aren’t interested. Even without active blocking, being ignored harms the score.
Sending to customers without consent. A purchased list, importing numbers from an old file, or sending after a long period of silence — all of these lead to reports and blocks.
Marketing content in a Utility message template. A customer expecting a delivery confirmation who gets an ad will experience it as spam. See Message template rejected: a complete guide to fixing and appealing.
Too high a frequency. Sending several marketing messages in one day, or the same message to the same customer over several consecutive days, leads to reports and blocks.
Generic opening messages. “Hi, how are you?” as a first message to a customer who didn’t ask for it looks suspicious to both Meta and the customer.

What preserves and improves the score

Sending only to those who opted in. This is a Meta requirement, not a recommendation. Every customer who receives a message must have approved it through a proper opt-in mechanism. See Message templates: the complete guide for the details of Meta’s opt-in requirements.
Relevant, personalized content. A message that refers to a specific action by the customer (an order they placed, a meeting they booked) gets opened more than a generic one. Upgrade from “Hi, we have deals” to “Hi Dana, order number 12345 is on its way.”
A clear opt-out path. In marketing message templates, use Quick Reply buttons with words from Meta’s approved opt-out list. A customer who can remove themselves with one tap won’t escalate to a full block.
Moderate frequency. Keep a low frequency of marketing messages to the same customer. Utility messages (confirmations, status updates) are less problematic, but they too need restraint.
Proper timing. Sending at unusual hours increases the risk of reports. Use Mumble’s campaign scheduling to ensure campaigns go out at the right times.
List maintenance. Someone who hasn’t responded over a long period probably won’t respond this time either. Remove inactive numbers from the list before a large campaign. A small, active list is better than a large, silent one.
Testing before a large send. Before sending a campaign to the whole list, send it to a small test group and examine the open rate, blocks, and reports. If the metrics aren’t good in the small group, they won’t be better in the large one.

What to do if the score drops

If the score went from green to orange

This is an early warning. There’s still time to fix it without cumulative damage. The immediate steps:

Pause planned marketing campaigns. Any message you send now will risk the score further.
Review your last campaign. Who was the audience, what was the content, what were the opt-out and block rates. Most score drops trace back to a specific, identifiable campaign.
Clean your distribution list. Remove numbers that haven’t responded over a long period, numbers that reported or blocked, and numbers without documented consent.
Reduce frequency. Return to a significantly lower campaign pace, and set a cleanup period before returning to a normal pace.

If the score went red

This is a serious warning. A tier downgrade has likely already occurred. The steps:

Stop all marketing sends immediately. Continue only with essential service messages.
Don’t create new message templates during this period. Meta reviews new message templates with greater scrutiny when a number is in a red state.
Document the source of the drop. If it isn’t clear, review recent campaigns and compare performance.
Let Meta’s review window pass. Meta calculates the score on a rolling window. A period of quality traffic only (service messages, no reports) can return the number to a Medium score.
Consider reaching out to Meta through Business Support Home. If the drop looks incorrect (for example, suspicious activity from an external source), you can file a request for review.

If the number moved to Flagged or Restricted

This is the edge case. It may already be impossible to send at all. See the article Meta Business Verification: the complete guide and read about the appeal process.

Common issues

The score dropped but I didn’t send any campaign this week

This may be cumulative blocks from earlier campaigns. Meta looks at a window of several days, so the effects of campaigns can carry over. Another cause: a single customer who taps “report spam” across several different conversations can lower the score significantly, even without a new campaign.

The score dropped even though I only send Utility messages

Even service messages can lower the score if:

They reach customers who never approved business messaging at all.
They contain marketing content disguised as an update.
The frequency is too high (order confirmation, packaging update, delivery confirmation, satisfaction survey — all in one week).

Even pure Utility messages that reach a wrong number or a number without WhatsApp will come back as Undeliverable and affect the score.

I sent a great campaign and the score still dropped

A “great campaign” from your point of view isn’t necessarily great from the customer’s. Check the data: what was the open rate, how many opt-outs by tap, how many blocks. A high block rate is the strongest signal of problematic quality — even when most recipients didn’t respond at all.

How do I know a customer blocked me?

Meta doesn’t share the identity of who blocked you. You’ll see the result in the statistics (a high block rate), but you won’t know exactly who. An indirect sign: customers who blocked you won’t receive any new messages, including service messages. If a message that went out didn’t arrive, one of the reasons could be a block.

The score is red, but I have to send an urgent campaign

In practice it’s the opposite: if the score is red, the campaign likely won’t reach its targets at all. Sending in this state only makes the problem worse. It’s better to postpone the campaign, address the quality, and return to it later with a healthy score and a full delivery rate.

Bottom line

Quality Rating changes fast and directly affects your delivery rate and your daily tier. A short daily check of the Account Quality card on the main page lets you spot changes early and act before the score drops to a level that limits your activity.

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Mumble Team