10DLC Sending Limits Overview

Carrier throughout sets limits on how quickly and how many messages organizations can send within a certain timeframe. Your organization's sending limits vary based on a number of factors, including the carrier, use case, tax-exempt status, and vetting score. 

This guide explains how carrier throughput works, where to find your organization's current sending rate limits, what determines your limits, and how to plan campaigns around them. Use this when planning large sends or investigating delivery delays. New to these terms? Check out the Defining Key Terms section at the bottom of this article.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• What is Throughput
• How ThruText Manages Sending Limits
• Where to Find Your Sending Rate Limits
  • How to Check Your Sending Details
  • How to Tell If Messages Were Queued
  • Tips to Maximize Sending Capacity
• Sending Limits by Carrier
  • Per-Minute vs Per-Day Limits
  • T-Mobile (Daily Cap; EIN-level)
  • AT&T (Per-Minute)
  • Verizon (Per-Minute)
  • US Cellular (Per-Minute)
  • Other Carriers (Per-Minute)
• Use Cases and Sending Planning
  • AT&T Rate-Limit Examples (Initial Messages)
• Defining Key Terms

What is Throughput

Throughput is the number of segments that carriers allow you to send within a given time window (per minute or per day). If your sending volume exceeds the available sending limit, messages are queue and are sent as capacity opens.

How ThruText Manages Sending Limits

ThruText automatically observes carrier rate limits. If a limit is hit, messages are queued and sent when capacity is available. Carriers differ: some enforce per-minute limits by use case (e.g., AT&T), and others use per-day limits by EIN (e.g., T-Mobile). More details on this are covered below.

Where to Find Your Sending Rate Limits

Your Compliance page provides information about your organization's score and sending limits across carriers, including the daily T-Mobile capacity. You can use this information when planning campaigns or reviewing messages that may be queued due to carrier limits.

How to Check Your Sending Details

Navigate to the Compliance page under Account Tools to review the following information:

1. Vetting Score: A score from 0–100 that helps determine your throughput level for carriers. Ensure your Brand Registration details match your tax filings to receive your highest score. Contact support if you need updates or have documentation to share for a score appeal. For details on submitting Brand Registration, review our Brand Registrationguide.
   • The most common reasons for a lower score include:
     • Mismatched Business Information: A mismatch in information submitted (e.g. mailing address) against official records in government or business sources.
     • Company Size or Age: Company years in operation less than 1 year or company size less than 5 people as reported by government or business sources.
     • Address: The address is a commercial mailing receiving agency or PO box.
     • Email Domain Mismatch: The e-mail address domain submitted does not match the company website domain.
     • Business Not Found: The company information is not found in government business registration or global business sources, such as the IRS, SEC, or state business registries.
   • If you are a Political organization with a Campaign Verify (CV) token then the vetting score will display as Active CV Token. If the token has expired, it will instead show Expired CV Token. Check out our Campaign Verify guide for more details.
     
2. Tax Exempt Status: Indicates whether your organization is recognized as tax exempt.

   • The tax-exempt status helps determine which use case you are eligible to register for. Providing accurate organization details in the brand registration help the vetting partner identify your organization type correctly.

   • Reach out to support@getthru.io if your organization is tax exempt but it is not listed here. The status can be appealed with the external vetting team using tax documentation (example: tax exempt determination letter).

3. T-Mobile Daily Limit: The total number of SMS segments and MMS messages that your organization can send to T-Mobile contacts each day.
   • This limit is enforced per EIN, which means that entities, or brands, that share an EIN will share this limit. We recommend using a different EIN whenever applicable to avoid sharing a limit between multiple accounts. This limit can also be shared between different texting vendors if the same EIN is used to create brands on different vendors.
   • For Political organizations with CV tokens, the T-Mobile Daily Limit will display Uncapped, as these organizations have no daily limit on how many messages they can send to T-Mobile users.
4. T-Mobile Primary Remaining: The number of SMS segments and MMS messages remaining today for initial messages.
5. T-Mobile Replies Remaining: The number of SMS segments and MMS messages remaining today for replies.
   
6. Queued Segments: The number of segments in the account currently waiting to send due to carrier throughput limits or attempts to send outside open hours.
7. Messaging Rate Limits: Under your Use Case section, you can review the messaging rate limits applied to the use case for additional carriers, outside of T-Mobile.
   

Your Vetting Score and Tax-Exempt Status will appear after your Brand has been verified, while your T-Mobile Daily Limit and additional carrier messaging rate limits will appear after your Use Case has been approved.

How to Tell If Messages Were Queued

There are three places you can review whether messages have been queued:

• Compliance Page: Review your Queued Segments from the Compliance page within your Account Tools. This will include both queued SMS segments and MMS messages from all active campaigns.
• In Analytics: See the number of queued messages on the campaign page (Analytics section). For more information, review our guide ThruText Campaign Summary Page - Section: Campaign Analytics.

• In Exports: Message Exports show each message’s status. Unsent means the system hasn’t sent it yet; it can still progress. Sending Failed means the IMSW passed and any remaining unsent initial messages changed to this message status. You are not charged for unsent or sending failed messages.

Recommendation for Queued Messages: Monitor your campaign the next day to handle replies.

Tips to Maximize Sending Capacity

• Use MMS for longer content (always 1 segment and up to 1,600 characters).
• Send earlier in the day to reduce queue-related delays.
• Confirm your initial message window and campaign open/close times to avoid missing send windows.

Sending Limits by Carrier

SMS and MMS sending limits are based on the carrier, vetting type, vetting score, and use case type.

Per-Minute vs Per-Day Limits

• Per-minute limits: Messages queue and are sent at the determined speed limit. If the queue extends past your campaign close time, they remain queued and resume when the campaign reopens.
• Per-day limits: Messages exceeding the daily cap queue for the next day when the campaign is open.

T-Mobile (Daily Cap; EIN-level)

The T-Mobile daily cap is a limit on how many SMS or MMS segments you can send to T-Mobile users per day, for all brands using the same EIN. To ensure that you can engage with contacts who respond in a timely manner, GetThru allocates 5% of this cap towards replies, leaving 95% of the cap to be used for initial messages. This prevents the cap being entirely consumed by initial messages, ensuring replies can be sent without delay.

AT&T (Per-Minute)

AT&T’s per-minute limits depend on a mix of your brand score, tax status, and use case.

• The Political use case always get AT&T’s highest limit, regardless of brand score or tax-exempt status.
• If a 501c3 has a non-political use case, such as Charity, Higher Ed, Polling & Voting, PSA, or Customer Care, they'll receive the second highest limit regardless of the brand score.
• For all other brands with a standard use case, AT&T uses your brand score to determine the throughput tier for that use case. 

Verizon (Per-Minute)

Verizon limits how many segments you can send to their users per minute, per sending phone number, and it is independent of the vetting score.

US Cellular (Per-Minute)

US Cellular limits how many segments you can send to their users per minute per use case, and it is independent of the vetting score. Typically, US Cellular makes up less than 2% of sending.

Other Carriers (Per-Minute)

Other Carriers, besides the ones listed, all share a slower rate limit, which is independent of the vetting score. Typically, other carriers make up less than 3% of sending. 

Use Cases and Sending Planning

Choosing the appropriate Use Case is vital to achieving the highest throughput for your messages. Special Use Cases, such as Political and Charity, have higher sending rates than other Use Cases and receive preferential treatment from carriers.

For planning, a common distribution is 30% AT&T / 30% T-Mobile / 30% Verizon / 10% other. For a 60,000-contact campaign, that’s 18,000 contacts each on AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon, and 6,000 on other networks. Use the AT&T table below for timing estimates; consider your T-Mobile daily cap when planning.

AT&T Rate-Limit Examples (Initial Messages)

If your vetting score is low and you are not a verified non-profit, aim for 2–3 SMS segments. Consider your campaign size, segment count, and time of sending to ensure successful delivery of your messages to your contacts.|

Defining Key Terms

• Segment: Throughput and carrier limits are enforced per segment, so shorter SMS (fewer segments) move through queues faster.
• MMS: Counts as 1 segment and supports up to 1,600 characters. Use MMS for longer content to maximize throughput. Review our guide What is MMS in ThruText? for more information.
• Queue / Queued Message: When the sending speed exceeds the carrier limits, messages are held and sent as capacity opens. Queued messages continue sending when the campaign is open.
• Open and Close Times: Ensure that messages are not sent too early in the day or late in the evening. Overnight queued messages send when the campaign opens.
• Initial Message Sending Window (IMSW): The allowed window for first messages to send. Initial messages won’t send if this window has passed; you can identify any remaining unsent messages via export. Review our guide, Initial Message Sending Window, for more information on this campaign setting.
• Unsent: The system hasn’t sent it yet (still in process). Status can change. Not billed.
• Sending Failed: When the IMSW passed and the campaign opened next, any unsent initial messages change to this message status. Not billed. Review our guide Understanding Message Statuses in ThruText for more details. 
• Vetting Score: Determines throughput on standard use cases. Keep Brand Registration accurate to improve your score.
• Use Case: The messaging category (e.g., Political, Charity). Some use cases receive higher throughput from carriers.