Guide · Delivery · For the owner deciding how late is too late
How long WhatsApp keeps trying to deliver a template: Meta's validity periods for codes, updates and offers, and when a message counts as dropped
When a customer's phone is off, WhatsApp does not fail your message; it keeps trying. For how long is a setting on each template, and Meta's defaults are not what most owners would choose: a one-time code is dropped after ten minutes, while a flash-sale message is still being delivered a month later. Meta's page gives the defaults, the ranges you may set, and the rule that makes a message count as dropped. Here it is for the owner deciding how late is too late.
Published 1 October 2026
What the validity period is
Meta calls it time-to-live, or the message validity period: if a message cannot be delivered, WhatsApp retries delivery for that long and then drops it. It applies to templates, the messages sent outside a 24-hour window, and it can be set per template when the template is created or changed later, in steps of one second. A business sets it once; every send of that template then carries it.
Meta's defaults and the ranges you may choose
- Authentication: 10 minutes by default
- Range 30 seconds to 15 minutes. Meta's own advice is to set it no longer than the code's expiry, so nobody receives a code that has already stopped working. Authentication templates created before 23 October 2024 still default to 30 days unless changed.
- Utility: 30 days by default
- Range 30 seconds to 12 hours when customised. A delivery-arriving-today message that lands next week is worse than no message; a short validity is the fix.
- Marketing: 30 days by default
- Range 12 hours to 30 days, and only for marketing sent through Meta's Marketing Messages API. A weekend offer sent on Friday with the default validity can still arrive the following month, after the offer has ended.
When a template's category changes
How you know a message was dropped
Meta's rule is simple: if no delivered notice has arrived by the time the validity period ends, assume the message was dropped. Meta adds that the failure notice itself can lag a little, so a system should allow a small buffer before declaring it. The statuses themselves are explained in the message status guide. For a message that matters, the practical consequence is that the system should do something when the period lapses: send the code by another route, call the customer, or mark the reminder as not received.
Validity is one of the few template settings Meta lets a business change on an approved template without a fresh review, as the template mechanics guide notes.
Questions
A customer got our login code twenty minutes after asking and it had expired. Why?
Their phone was unreachable when the code was sent, and the template's validity was longer than the code's life. Meta's default for authentication templates is 10 minutes, but older ones default to 30 days. Set the validity no longer than the code's expiry, as Meta advises, and the late code is dropped instead of delivered.
Can a Friday promotion arrive after the weekend?
With the default 30-day validity, yes. For marketing sent through Meta's Marketing Messages API the validity can be shortened to as little as 12 hours, so the message is dropped when the offer is over.
The message shows sent but never delivered. When do we give up?
When the template's validity period has passed without a delivered notice, plus a small buffer for the failure notice to arrive. Meta says to treat the message as dropped at that point.
We shortened the validity on a utility template and it reset by itself.
Meta clears a custom validity when it reclassifies a template's category automatically. Check the template's category, then set the validity again within the range for its new category.
Sources
- Meta's developer documentation: Time-to-live, read 1 October 2026.
More plain-language notes like this one are on the guides page.
Want codes that die with the code and offers that die with the offer?
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