WhatsApp Broadcast vs. Broadcast List: The Difference

A broadcast list is a feature inside the free WhatsApp and WhatsApp Business phone apps that sends one message to up to 256 saved contacts as separate private chats. A business broadcast is the same idea run through the WhatsApp Business API by a tool like ConvoFly: the same private 1:1 delivery, but to thousands of opted-in contacts, whether or not they saved your number, with delivery reporting and personalization.

Both are called "broadcast", and that single overloaded word is why merchants spend an afternoon building lists in the app before discovering that half the recipients never got the message. The two features differ on five things that actually decide which one you can use: the contact cap, the address-book requirement, personalization, reporting, and cost. This guide walks each one, with a full side-by-side table, and ends with the migration path if you have outgrown the app.

The 30-second answer

Use a broadcast list if you are messaging fewer than 256 people, every one of them has your number saved in their phone, and you do not need to know who read it. Use a business broadcast for anything else — a customer list larger than 256, people who bought from you but never added you as a contact, messages that include a first name or order number, or any campaign where you need a delivery report afterwards.

Most stores cross that line at around their first few hundred customers. If you are still deciding what a broadcast even is, start with what a WhatsApp broadcast is and come back.

What a broadcast list is

A broadcast list lives on your phone. You tap New broadcast, tick some contacts, type a message, and send. Each person receives it as an ordinary one-to-one chat — they cannot see who else was on the list, and their reply comes back to you privately, not to the group. That privacy behaviour is identical to a business broadcast; it is the only thing the two share cleanly.

WhatsApp caps a broadcast list at 256 contacts, and states that only contacts who have your number saved in their phone's address book will receive the message (WhatsApp Help Centre, about broadcast lists). The same feature and the same cap apply in the free WhatsApp Business app (WhatsApp Help Centre, broadcast lists in the Business app). There is no paid upgrade inside the app that lifts either rule.

The step-by-step taps for Android and iPhone are in how to create a WhatsApp broadcast list. This page is about whether you should.

What a business broadcast is

A business broadcast goes through the WhatsApp Business API — Meta's official channel for companies that message at scale, which you reach through an approved provider rather than the phone app. In ConvoFly you pick an approved message template, choose an audience, and send; recipients get a private 1:1 chat exactly as they would from a broadcast list.

Two structural differences follow from using the API. First, there is no 256-contact list object at all — instead your ceiling is your number's messaging tier, which is the number of unique people you may message in a rolling 24 hours. Meta's tiers run 250 → 2,000 → 10,000 → 100,000 → unlimited, and every new WhatsApp Business portfolio starts at 250 (Meta, WhatsApp messaging limits). See messaging limits and tier caps for how to climb them.

Second, business-initiated messages must use a template — a message you write once and Meta reviews before you may send it in bulk (Meta, message template guidelines). That review is the trade for the scale: you cannot type whatever you like, but you can reach people who never saved your number.

Side by side: every difference that matters

The address-book rule is the real dividing line

Everyone fixates on the 256 cap, but the rule that quietly wrecks campaigns is the other one: a broadcast-list message only reaches contacts who have saved your number (WhatsApp Help Centre). WhatsApp does not tell you who was filtered out. Your screen shows a sent tick; the customer's phone shows nothing.

Think about who actually saves a shop's number. People who have messaged you repeatedly, usually. Not the customer who checked out once, not the person who found you through an ad, not a lapsed buyer from eight months ago — which is precisely the audience a win-back or a launch announcement exists to reach. A broadcast list is structurally incapable of reaching the people you most want to reach.

The API has no such rule. If a contact opted in to hear from you, the message is delivered regardless of whether you exist in their address book. That single difference is why win-back campaigns only work on the business side.

Cost: free is not the same as cheaper

Broadcast lists cost nothing. Business broadcasts cost money twice over — Meta charges a per-message fee, and you pay for the software. Since 1 July 2025 Meta bills per delivered message rather than per 24-hour conversation, and states plainly that "You are only charged when a template message is delivered" (Meta, WhatsApp pricing). Marketing templates are charged on delivery; utility templates delivered inside an open customer service window are free; all non-template messages are free. Rates differ by country and Meta publishes them on a separate rate card, so do not trust any single per-message figure you read online, including on competitor blogs.

The honest comparison is cost per message that arrives. A free broadcast list that silently drops 60% of its recipients because they never saved you is not cheaper than a paid send that reaches all of them — it is just a smaller campaign you cannot measure. Work the numbers for your own list in how much a WhatsApp broadcast costs.

What you lose by staying on broadcast lists

• Manual list maintenance. A 2,000-contact customer base means eight separate 256-contact lists, kept in sync by hand, on one phone.
• No personalization. Everyone receives the identical sentence. Adding a first name means sending individually — see personalizing broadcasts with variables for what the alternative looks like.
• No report. You cannot answer "how many people read it" or "which link did they tap", so you cannot improve the next one. Delivery stats and reports covers what a real report contains.
• No scheduling. A 9am Saturday send means being awake at 9am on Saturday with the phone in your hand.
• Manual unsubscribes. When someone asks to stop, you must remember to remove them from every list — and forgetting is what gets numbers reported.
• One person, one phone. Replies land in a personal WhatsApp, not somewhere two staff can both answer.

What you give up by moving to the API

This is not a one-sided comparison, so here is the other column honestly. Moving to a business broadcast means you can no longer type whatever you feel like and hit send: outside the 24-hour customer service window, promotional messages must use a template Meta has reviewed against its guidelines. Approval is usually quick in our experience, but it is not instant and marketing templates get rejected for wording that reads as misleading.

You also inherit Meta's rules properly. Your number carries a quality rating, you sit on a messaging tier that starts at 250 people per 24 hours, and every recipient must have genuinely opted in under the WhatsApp Business Messaging Policy. And a very large send takes real time — ConvoFly paces at roughly 120 messages a minute, so 20,000 recipients is a multi-hour job, which the composer tells you upfront as an estimated sending time.

Which one do you need? A three-question test

1. How many people? Over 256, the app cannot do it in one send. Stop here — you need the API.
2. Have they all saved your number? If you cannot honestly say yes for essentially everyone, the app will silently under-deliver. You need the API.
3. Do you need to know what happened? If "how many read it" or "who clicked" matters to the decision you make next, the app cannot tell you. You need the API.

Three no's and you are fine on a broadcast list — a shop with 40 regulars who message weekly genuinely does not need more. One yes and the app is the wrong tool.

How to move from a broadcast list to a business broadcast

1. Export your contacts. Get the numbers out of your phone into a spreadsheet, with a column for anything you know about each person — first name, last order, city.
2. Check your opt-in story. For each group of contacts, be able to say how they agreed to hear from you. This is the one step people skip and the one Meta's policy actually cares about.
3. Connect your WhatsApp number to ConvoFly. A number in use on the phone app has to be migrated to the API; you cannot use both at once on the same number.
4. Create your first template. Open Templates, write the message in the Marketing or Utility category, and leave placeholders like {{1}} where a name or order number goes.
5. Import the contacts and tag them. Tags and segments replace the lists you used to keep by hand, and they update themselves.
6. Test-send to your own number before anything goes wide, then send. The full walkthrough is how to send your first WhatsApp broadcast.

The other two comparisons people ask about

Broadcast lists are not the only thing "broadcast" gets confused with. A group puts everyone in one shared room where members see each other's numbers — the opposite of a broadcast's privacy, and covered in broadcast vs. group. A Status update is something customers choose to view rather than something that arrives in their chat list, compared in broadcast vs. Status. Between the four, a business broadcast is the only one that reaches a customer who never saved your number.