WhatsApp Business: Character Limits and other Messaging Restrictions

It’s so easy to message friends and family with WhatsApp. There are limits, yes … but they’re usually fine. “Only” 65,536 characters in a message. That feeling of ease stops soon when you begin using WhatsApp Business. Here, there are plenty of limits, and they do make a difference in the way you can use or not use a feature. Let’s talk about these limits and restrictions.

Let’s start with what you’re probably looking for: how long can a text message be?

Character Limits of WhatsApp Text Messages

You can send WhatsApp text messages with up to 1,600 characters. For text messages it doesn’t matter if the message is a session message or an approved template message. Other types of template messages may have different limits; the rest of the article deals with those.

You can receive inbound text messages with more than 1,600 characters—the exact limit is a bit more complicated. The whole message needs to be less than 32kb of data. We’ve tested and could receive between 2,5000 and 3,000 characters for English messages. If you’re dependent on receiving large messages, please test the limits for your specific use-case. As usual, we’re happy to support you—please reach out via the live-chat.

For readers who aren’t engageSPARK customers, please note that this limit is vendor-specific. The above limit goes for engageSPARK and Twilio, but other vendors may impose different limits. For example, with Amazon inbound text messages may not exceed 1,024 characters.

Text message limits for various vendors

For your convenience a few vendors and their maximum number of characters for outbound WhatsApp Business in-session(!) text messages, as of December 2024.

• engageSPARK: 1,600 characters
• Infobip: 4,096 characters (docs)
• Meta: 4,096 characters (docs)
• Twilio: 1,600 characters (docs)
• Vonage: 4,096 characters (docs)

Other Restrictions for WhatsApp Text Messages

• For template messages, each message can only have up to 100 personalizations / variables.

Restrictions on Business-initiated Conversations: Templates and the Infamous 24h Session

As a business, you cannot message just anyone with anything you like. While users can reach out to your business account any time they like, Meta is limiting your ability to start conversations.

To be able to start a conversation, you need to pre-register a so-called template message that you’d like to use as a conversation starter. If Meta approves this template message, you then can send it to a user.

A template message might be “Hello {first name}, thank you so much for participating in our workshop over the weekend. Would you like to participate in a feedback survey?” You could then include two buttons, yes and no.

If this user chooses to reply, a “24h session” opens—during these 24 hours you may now message the contact with unregistered, spontaneous messages.

There are different categories of templates, which determine their own restrictions. We’ll explain the differences somewhere else and focus on the restrictions here.

Limits of marketing templates

Unlike authentication or utility templates, marketing templates aren’t messages that are expected by the user. That means the rules are stricter:

• You cannot message the same person with a marketing template again, if you have send them a marketing template recently and they didn’t reply. What “recently” means is a mystery kept by Meta. The idea is: if someone doesn’t reply, they don’t want to hear from you so you need to back off.
• If you keep messaging people with marketing templates and no one ever engages that signals to Meta that people generally don’t want your messages. In this case, your messages might not get delivered.

Both cases lead to delivery issues. We’re describing these delivery errors and what you can do about them in a separate support article.

How Many Contacts Can You Reach Out To?

With a template you can theoretically reach out to any WhatsApp user. However, you cannot reach out to as many as you might want.

Every WhatsApp Business sender (phone number) has a messaging limit assigned. You cannot initiate more conversations (using template messages) than this limit gives you. It doesn’t matter what type of template you use.

Currently, as of Dec 2024, there are five tiers: 250, 1k, 10k, 100k, and unlimited. By default, you’re on the first tier where you can only send templates to 250 people within a 24h “moving window”.

That means, if you send a new message, the WhatsApp system checks with how many people you have initiated conversations in the last 24h. If that’s 250, then your messages will fail (as explained in this support article) until that number drops below 250.

This limit on your sender is re-evaluated every 7 days (and you can request an increase as well). To be eligible for an upgrade you need to verify your business and perhaps your identity. Also, you need to have gotten close to your existing limit, and you need to have a great quality rating.

Read more about quality ratings and messaging limits over at Meta’s documentation.

Various Restrictions per Message Type

Authentication (for OTPs)

Not supported by engageSPARK.

Audio

• Does NOT support text in the same message
• The maximum file size for an audio file is

Button (AKA Quick Reply)

A button-type question has a message text and can have up to 3 buttons for replying. Here are the other limits that apply:

• The message text can have up to 1,600 characters.
• Each of the 3 buttons can have a title of up to 20 characters.

Carousel

Carousels are currently not supported by engageSPARK. Please message us if you must have those.

Catalog

Catalogs are currently not supported by engageSPARK. As non-profit organizations and universities typically do not sell products via WhatsApp, this will likely not change any time soon. Please message us if you need this.

Document

• Supported file formats: PDF
• Maximum file size is 16 MB
• Captions can have a maximum length of 1,600 characters

Image

• Supported file formats: JPG, PNG
• Maximum file size is 5 MB
• Supports a text caption of maximally 1,600 characters

List

A list gives you a button below the message text that opens a list of options to select from.

An important limit of lists is that they cannot be used as a registered template. In other words, they cannot be used to contact people outside of an existing 24h session. (See also above.)

The following limits apply. The pictures below illustrate where the respective elements are.

1. Message text: You must provide a message text of up to 1,024 characters.
2. Button text:  You must provide a text of up to 20 characters.
3. Items: The list must contain at least 1 item, and can contain up to 10 items. Each item can have a title of up to 24 characters and a description of up to 72 characters.

Message text and button:

Four list items, one selected:

Location

Locations are not supported by engageSPARK.

Captions would likely be limited to 1,600 characters.

Stickers

Stickers are not supported by engageSPARK.

Stickers do NOT support captions.

According to Meta, there are two types of stickers: static and animated. In both cases you must provide an image with a resolution of 512×512 pixels. The image for static stickers cannot exceed 100 KB, the image for animated stickers cannot exceed 500 KB.

Video

A WhatsApp video message via engageSPARK has the following restrictions:

• maximum file size is 16 MB

Size Limits on ALL WhatsApp Messages

A WhatsApp message including all text and attachments must be below 16 MB. Given the other, more restrictive limits, this 16 MB limit isn’t very relevant.

Not sure which limit applies?

The best advice is to test it for your use-case. Unlike with SMS, very few aspects of WhatsApp depend on the country of the contact you’re exchanging messages with—so you can even test these things with your own WhatsApp account.

If you’re in doubt, reach out to us.