10DLC fees and pricing explained

10DLC pricing is confusing because four different parties charge for it, each in its own unit: The Campaign Registry charges per brand and per campaign, the carrier aggregator charges per campaign review, the carriers charge per segment, and your messaging provider charges for the service, the numbers and sometimes a markup on all of the above. This guide puts every fee in one place, in the same figures the 10DLC cost calculator uses, and shows two worked budgets.

Every number below was last checked on October 28, 2026 against provider pricing pages. Fees change a few times a year. If you are reading this long after that date, confirm the figures with your provider before budgeting.

The four kinds of 10DLC cost

1. One-time registry fees: brand registration, and brand vetting if you need throughput.
2. One-time review fees: the campaign review fee, charged per submission including resubmissions.
3. Monthly registry fees: a fee per campaign that depends on the campaign type.
4. Per-message costs: the carrier pass-through surcharge plus your provider’s price per segment, and number rental.

Registration fees get the attention because they come first, but at any real volume the per-message costs dominate. Keep that in mind when choosing a brand type: paying for vetting is cheap compared with sending two segments where one would do.

Brand fees and vetting

Fees last checked: October 28, 2026. Registry and carrier figures, before provider markup.

Brand registration is a one-time fee to The Campaign Registry, paid through your messaging provider when the brand is created. If the registration fails because the legal name, EIN or address does not match tax records, the fee is charged again on resubmission, so it pays to copy the details from your EIN letter. A business with an EIN pays the standard rate; an individual without an EIN registers as a sole proprietor at a slightly lower rate, with one campaign and one number allowed.

Brand vetting is where a TCR-approved vetting partner scores your brand. The score sets your daily segment limit across carriers. Standard brands that skip vetting get the lowest tier, so for most businesses that need volume the vetting fee is part of the cost of entry. Low-volume Standard brands trade vetting for a daily cap of about 2,000 segments, which suits a lot of local businesses, and sole proprietors cannot be vetted at all. Enhanced vetting for very high throughput costs more and is only worth it for large senders.

The campaign review fee

Each time a campaign is submitted for carrier review, a $15 fee is charged. That includes resubmissions after a rejection, and reviewers do not credit partial fixes. A campaign rejected twice has cost three review fees and several weeks. The guide to why campaigns get rejected and the website compliance checker exist to make the first submission the only one.

Monthly campaign fees

Fees last checked: October 28, 2026. Registry and carrier figures, before provider markup.

The campaign type decides the monthly fee. Standard use cases (marketing, mixed, customer care, account notifications, two-factor authentication and the like) are the most expensive. Low Volume Mixed is for registered businesses sending under the daily cap and is the cheapest. Sole Proprietor campaigns sit in between. Special use cases such as charity, emergency, political and agents or franchise have their own rates and extra review requirements; ask your provider for the current figures if one applies to you.

One campaign can cover several message types if they serve the same business and audience, so register a mixed campaign rather than one per message type where you can. Each extra campaign is another review fee and another monthly fee.

Carrier pass-through fees

Fees last checked: October 28, 2026. Registry and carrier figures, before provider markup.

Every outbound segment on registered 10DLC traffic carries a carrier surcharge, passed through at cost by every provider. The rates differ by carrier and have risen several times. A blended figure weighted toward the three national carriers is about $0.0043 per segment, which is the default in the cost calculator; if most of your recipients are on one network, use that carrier’s rate. MMS surcharges are higher per message. Some carriers have also started charging for inbound messages, so replies are no longer free on every network.

Unregistered traffic, where it is delivered at all, pays a higher surcharge and is heavily filtered. Since registration became mandatory in early 2025 there is no practical unregistered route.

Provider pricing

On top of the registry and carrier fees, your provider charges its own price per outbound segment, a monthly fee per phone number, and often a platform subscription. A typical list price per segment is around $0.0083 at the large CPaaS providers, with volume discounts above a few hundred thousand segments a month, and a local number is usually one to two dollars a month. All-in, a registered 10DLC segment to a US number costs roughly the provider price plus the carrier surcharge, a little over a cent at list prices.

Some providers pass registry fees through at cost; others add a markup, bundle them into onboarding, or charge their own recurring “brand” or “campaign” fee. The way to tell is to compare the invoice with the registry figures above.

Worked budget: a local business

A dental practice with one campaign sending 5,000 messages a month, about 1.2 segments each on average, through a provider at list price, with one phone number.

• One-time: brand registration $4.50, standard vetting $41.50, campaign review $15. Total $61.
• Monthly: campaign fee $10, messaging 6,000 segments x $0.0083 = $49.80, carrier fees 6,000 x $0.0043 = $25.80, number $1.15. Total $86.75.
• First year: $61 plus 12 x $86.75 = $1,102.

As a Low-volume Standard brand (under the daily cap, no vetting) the one-time cost drops to $19.50 and the monthly campaign fee to $1.50, so the first year is $958.50. The messaging cost is identical; only the registration overhead changes.

Worked budget: an agency with ten clients

An agency registering ten client brands, each with one Standard campaign, sending 20,000 messages a month per client at 1.2 segments.

• One-time per client: $61 as above, so $610 for ten brands.
• Monthly per client: $10 campaign fee, 24,000 segments x ($0.0083 + $0.0043) = $302.40, one number $1.15. About $313.55 per client, $3,135.50 for ten.
• First year: $610 plus 12 x $3,135.50 = $38,236.

At that scale the registry fees are under 2% of the total. The segment count per message and the provider’s per-segment price are the only numbers worth negotiating. Trimming the average from 1.2 to 1.0 segments saves about $50 a month per client; the SMS segment calculator shows exactly where a template crosses the line.

Costs that are easy to miss

• Resubmission fees after a rejection: another review fee each time.
• Inbound segments: some carriers and most providers now charge for replies, including STOP and HELP.
• MMS: carrier surcharges roughly double the SMS rate, and provider prices are higher.
• Number rental at scale: ten numbers is a small line, a thousand is not.
• Provider markups and platform fees, which can exceed the registry fees many times over.
• Taxes and regulatory recovery fees on telecom invoices.

Checking the figures yourself

The fee defaults on this site live in one file and are shown with the date they were last checked. The sources used for the current figures:

• Telnyx: What is 10DLC (fee schedule)
• Twilio: US SMS pricing and carrier fees
• Twilio: error 30896, campaign vetting rejection

Put your own provider’s rate card into the 10DLC cost calculator to get a first-year figure for your volume, and compare brand types side by side before you register.