Guide · Your business number · For the owner whose number turned yellow
Your WhatsApp number's quality rating: what green, yellow and red mean and the five block reasons behind them
Every business phone number on the WhatsApp Business Platform carries a quality rating that Meta sets from how customers reacted to its messages over the last seven days, above all from the reasons they gave when they blocked it. Green is high, yellow is medium, red is low. The colour decides whether the number is eligible for more features and whether your messaging limit can rise, and the block reasons behind a yellow or red are visible in WhatsApp Manager if you know where to hover.
Published 1 October 2026
What the rating is
Meta's article defines it in one sentence: a rating based on the recent messages your customers received over the past seven days, determined by feedback from those customers, such as the reason they blocked your number and other reporting. It is a rolling window. A bad week shows up; a good week afterwards clears it.
- Green
- High quality. The state Meta wants to see, and the one that unlocks more features.
- Yellow
- Medium quality. Customers have been blocking or reporting. Hover over the rating in WhatsApp Manager and Meta shows the block reasons, when it has them.
- Red
- Low quality. The same signals, worse. The messaging limit will not rise from here, and the templates and audiences behind the blocks need fixing now.
Two ratings, two guides
Where to find it
- The colour today. In WhatsApp Manager, under the Phone numbers tab, the Quality rating column shows green, yellow or red for each number.
- The reasons. On a yellow or red number, hover over the rating. Meta shows the block reasons it has collected.
- The last 30 days. Click the icon in the Settings column of the same row. Meta shows the lowest rating the number held on each day, so you can line a dip up against the campaign that caused it.
Meta's article adds that the older phone number statuses Flagged and Restricted were discontinued on 7 October 2025. Since then the colour is the whole story.
The five block reasons, and what each one is telling you
When a customer blocks a business, WhatsApp asks them why. Meta's article lists the five choices and says they indicate what to do about low quality templates. Read them as a diagnosis.
- No longer needed
- The customer wanted something from you once and the messages kept coming. A delivery is done; stop the updates. A quote was declined; stop the follow-ups. The fix is a system that stops sending when the reason to send has ended.
- Didn't sign up
- The customer never agreed to hear from you. This is the opt-in failure in its purest form: a bought list, a scraped list, numbers taken from invoices. The opt-in guide below is the fix, and it has to happen before the next campaign, not after.
- Spam
- Too often, too generic, or offers to people who wanted service. Cut the frequency, split marketing opt-in from service opt-in, and make the offer specific to what the customer bought.
- Offensive messages
- Content a customer found inappropriate. Rare for an honest business, but a template written for one culture and sent to another, or humour that does not travel, lands here.
- No reason
- The customer declined to say. Nothing to act on in the reason itself, but a rise in these alongside any of the others points at the same campaign.
Blocks are the loudest signal, not the only one. The opt-in guide covers permission, and Meta's own advice there is to watch this rating closely in the weeks after any new way of collecting numbers goes live.
What the colour decides
- More features
- Meta's article says a business becomes eligible for more features when it maintains a green rating. It does not list them; in practice the rating is one of the things Meta reads whenever it decides what to let a number do.
- Your messaging limit
- The limit is shared across every number in your business portfolio and rises to the next level only when more than half of the current limit was used in the last seven days and the messages were high quality across all your numbers and templates. Meta's article says the increase comes within six hours once both are true. A yellow or red number holds the whole portfolio back.
The levels, the scaling paths and what counts as a new conversation are in the messaging limits guide. The short version for this page: quality is the gate, volume is only the key.
Questions
Our number went yellow overnight. What happened?
A campaign in the last seven days drew blocks or reports. Hover over the rating in WhatsApp Manager for the block reasons, then open the 30-day view from the Settings column to see which day it dipped. Match that day to what was sent. The fix is almost always the audience of one template, not the number.
How long does a bad rating last?
The rating is based on the past seven days of customer feedback, so it moves as those days roll off, provided the messages that follow do not draw the same blocks. Meta's article gives no fixed recovery period beyond that window.
Will a red number stop our messages?
The article does not say red stops delivery by itself. It says the messaging limit rises only with high quality across all numbers and templates, and that green unlocks more features, so red freezes growth and signals that templates behind the blocks are at risk of being paused. Treat it as urgent, not as a shutdown.
Is the quality rating per number or per business?
The rating is per phone number. The messaging limit it influences is per business portfolio, shared by all your numbers. One poorly rated number can hold back a limit increase for the others.
Sources
- Meta Business Help Center: About your WhatsApp Business phone number's quality rating, read 1 October 2026.
More plain-language notes like this one are on the guides page.
Want to know the rating moved before Meta's colour changes?
We set up a business's WhatsApp number on a proper system that shows each number's rating beside its templates, stops a campaign when blocks start, and keeps the opt-in record that stops them starting. A short call is the easiest way to see whether it fits your business.
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