WhatsApp Quality Rating Low? What It Means and How to Fix It

What the quality rating measures

From Meta's message quality documentation:

• The window is the past seven days, weighted by recency: what you sent yesterday counts more than last week.
• The signals are user feedback: blocks, reports, mutes, archives, and the reasons people choose when they block you.
• It moves fast on busy numbers. Meta notes that high-traffic numbers often see quality change within short intervals, even minutes.

What it doesn’t measure: how many messages you send. A business sending 50,000 wanted order updates can be High; a business sending 300 unwanted offers can be Low.

High, Medium, Low: the levels and where to see them

Your number’s rating is in WhatsApp Manager → Account tools → Phone numbers, alongside its status and messaging limit. Developers get it as quality_rating from the phone numbers API.

Templates have their own rating, using the same colours. Meta's template quality page lists Active – High quality (green), Active – Medium quality (yellow), Active – Low quality (red) and Active – Quality pending for new templates. Yellow and red templates can still be sent, but Meta warns they may be paused or disabled soon.

Number status: Connected, Flagged, Restricted

Older guides describe a ladder of statuses. Here’s what’s current, as of October 2026:

• Connected is the normal state. Meta says a number must be Connected to send and receive messages; check the Status column in the phone numbers panel (source).
• Flagged no longer exists. Before 7 October 2025, a number with Low quality could be flagged and, after seven days, dropped a messaging tier. Meta's messaging limits changes page says the Flagged state is no longer possible and a quality drop no longer downgrades the limit.
• Restricted: older guides used this for a number that had hit its messaging limit. Meta’s current developer pages don’t define a Restricted phone status. The restriction to worry about today is a policy enforcement restriction, shown as a banner in WhatsApp Manager and in Business Support Home, which blocks templates or all messages for 1 to 30 days. That is a different thing from a quality rating; see banned or restricted accounts.

What a Low rating does in 2026

The pause is the effect you’ll feel first. Meta's pausing page says a paused template can’t be sent; attempts are rejected, not billed and don’t count towards your limit; you get a WhatsApp Manager notification and an email; and once the pause ends the template becomes Active again with its rating reset from the latest feedback. A pause doesn’t hit your number at first, but repeated low-quality templates eventually can.

Related failure: error 131048, which Meta's error reference describes as a restriction on how many messages can be sent from this phone number, with the advice to check your quality status in WhatsApp Manager.

How to recover from a Low quality rating

1. Stop the send that caused it. Find the campaign or template that went out just before the drop and pause it. Meta recommends halting automated campaigns that use a paused template until it’s Active again.
2. Check who you’re sending to. Remove anyone who didn’t clearly opt in: imported lists, old enquiries, group members. See WhatsApp opt-in explained.
3. Read the template like a stranger would. Is it obviously from you? Is it useful today? A clear business name, a reason (“your order”, “your appointment”), and one action do better than a wall of offers.
4. Use the right category. Offers as Marketing, order and appointment updates as Utility. See template categories explained.
5. Add an easy way out. “Reply STOP” or a “Stop offers” button. Someone who opts out doesn’t count against you the way a block does.
6. Send less, to fewer, for a week. Meta’s quality guidelines suggest limiting daily volume and personalising content. Start with your most engaged customers: recent buyers, people who wrote to you this month.
7. Edit or replace a red template. Editing sends it back to review, so it can’t be sent until it’s approved again. Sometimes a new template with better wording is quicker.
8. Watch the next seven days. The score looks back seven days, so once the bad send ages out and new sends get a good reaction, the rating climbs back.

What NOT to do

• Don’t switch to a new number. Quality follows your behaviour; a new number with the same list goes red too, and Meta’s limit is shared across the business portfolio anyway.
• Don’t manually unpause a red template and send it to the same list. It will be paused again for longer, then disabled.
• Don’t retry failed marketing messages in a loop. Error 131049 means Meta is protecting the customer from too many marketing messages; retrying immediately won’t help.
• Don’t ignore Medium. Yellow is the time to fix things, before templates pause.

Related limits and errors

How WaBot handles this

• Quality where you work. The top of the inbox chat list shows your number’s tier (for example “Tier 2K”) and a coloured quality dot: High, Medium or Low. It’s the latest value WaBot received from Meta; WhatsApp Manager is the final word.
• Alerts in Updates. The bell in the header opens Updates. A number whose quality is yellow or red, and templates that are rejected, paused or disabled, show under Needs attention.
• Template quality in the list. Settings → Templates shows Meta’s quality rating on each template once it’s rated.
• Automatic retry for 131049. When Meta holds a template back with 131049, WaBot can retry it later, and skips the retry if the customer has replied or been blocked.
• Campaigns to the right people. Send to chosen groups or tags, with blocked contacts left out, and split a big list across days with Schedule for Later.

WaBot can’t change your rating; only your customers’ reactions do. Campaigns are on Starter (₹840/month + GST) and above. Meta bills its message charges directly, with no WaBot markup.

Frequently asked questions

What is a WhatsApp quality rating?

It’s Meta’s score for how recipients reacted to your business’s messages over the past seven days, based on blocks, reports, mutes, archives and block reasons. It shows as High (green), Medium (yellow) or Low (red) in WhatsApp Manager.

Does a Low quality rating reduce my messaging limit?

Not since 7 October 2025. Meta no longer lowers the limit when quality drops. But low quality stops automatic increases, and templates rated Low get paused.

How long does it take to improve WhatsApp quality rating?

Meta calculates it over a rolling seven days, weighted towards recent days, so it can improve within days once you stop the messages people complained about. Meta doesn’t publish a fixed recovery time.

What happens when a WhatsApp template is paused?

It can’t be sent. Meta pauses a Low-rated template for 3 hours the first time and 6 hours the second; the third time it’s disabled. Attempts during a pause are rejected and not charged.

Is a Low quality rating the same as a ban?

No. Your number keeps working. A ban or restriction is a separate policy enforcement action, shown in Business Support Home, though persistent negative feedback can lead to one.