10DLC Fees Explained: Registration and Carrier Costs

10DLC costs come in two layers: one-time and monthly registration fees for your brand and campaign, and small per-message carrier fees on each text. Using Twilio's published schedule as a reference, a low-volume business pays $4.50 to register its brand, $15 to vet a campaign, and $1.50 to $10 a month per campaign, plus fractions of a cent per message.

Below is every fee, what triggers it, and how to estimate your yearly cost.

Why there are fees at all

The 10DLC system is run through The Campaign Registry (TCR), which registers brands and campaigns for US mobile carriers. TCR charges for registration and vetting, and carriers charge for campaign upkeep and A2P message delivery. Your provider passes these through. Twilio's help center states that both registration and carrier fees are passed through to its customers with no added cost. Other providers may mark them up or bundle them.

Registration fees

From Twilio's "Pricing and Fees for A2P 10DLC Service" page, reflecting TCR's increase effective August 1, 2025:

Fee	Amount	When charged
Sole proprietor brand registration	$4.50 one-time	At brand creation
Low volume standard brand registration	$4.50 one-time	At brand creation
Standard brand registration (includes secondary vetting)	$46 one-time	At brand creation
Standard vetting (on its own)	$41.50 per vetting	When vetting runs
Vetting appeal	$11	Per appeal
Authentication Plus (public for-profit brands)	$12.50 per retry	Each time the step is retried
Campaign vetting	$15	At campaign vetting

Twilio's table of the August 2025 change shows brand registration rising from $4.00 to $4.50, standard vetting from $40 to $41.50, and vetting appeals from $10 to $11.

Monthly campaign fees

Each approved campaign carries a recurring monthly fee. Twilio's schedule:

Campaign type	Monthly fee
Low-volume mixed	$1.50
Sole proprietor (starter)	$2
Charity / 501(c)(3) nonprofit	$3
Emergency services	$5
Standard use cases (customer care, marketing, notifications, mixed, etc.)	$10

Twilio notes the campaign fee is billed at approval and renews monthly until the campaign is deactivated or deleted. Low-volume mixed campaigns are capped at 2,000 SMS segments and MMS per day toward T-Mobile and sit at the lowest throughput tier.

Per-message carrier fees

Carriers add a fee to each A2P message on their network. Twilio's US SMS pricing page lists these long code carrier fees:

Carrier	SMS outbound	SMS inbound	MMS outbound	MMS inbound
AT&T	$0.0035	$0.0035	$0.009	$0.009
T-Mobile	$0.0045	$0.0025	$0.01	$0.01
Verizon	$0.0045	none listed	$0.007	none listed
US Cellular	$0.005	$0.0025	$0.01	$0.01
All other carriers	$0.004	none listed	$0.01	none listed

These are charged per SMS segment. A standard SMS segment holds up to 160 GSM-7 characters; longer messages, or messages with emoji and some special characters, split into more segments. These fees are in addition to your provider's own per-message price.

A worked example

Consider a small business with an EIN that registers a low-volume standard brand and one low-volume mixed campaign, and sends 1,000 outbound single-segment texts a month, split evenly across AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon. Using Twilio's figures:

Cost item	First year
Brand registration	$4.50
Campaign vetting	$15.00
Campaign fee, 12 x $1.50	$18.00
Carrier fees, about 12,000 SMS at an average of roughly $0.0042	about $50
Total TCR and carrier fees	about $87.50

This excludes your provider's own messaging and number charges. A business on a standard campaign would pay $10 a month instead of $1.50, adding $102 a year. Use your own volume and carrier mix for a real estimate.

Fees that catch people out

• Resubmissions. A rejected campaign may need to be vetted again. Getting it right first time saves money. See why 10DLC campaigns are rejected.
• Forgotten campaigns. Monthly fees keep running on campaigns you no longer use. Deactivate unused ones.
• Long messages. A 300-character message is two or more segments and is charged as such.
• MMS. Picture messages cost more per message in carrier fees than SMS.
• Inbound fees. Some carriers, including T-Mobile and AT&T in Twilio's table, also charge on inbound messages, so a busy two-way conversation costs more than outbound alone.
• Changing providers. If you move your number to a new provider, expect to register again there, which can mean paying registration and vetting fees a second time.
• Unverified brands. The brand fee is charged at creation even if the brand comes back unverified, according to Twilio's note.

How providers package fees

Approach	What you see
Pass-through at cost	Line items for TCR and carrier fees on your bill
Marked-up pass-through	Same line items at higher prices
Bundled one-time fee	A single setup fee covering brand and campaign submission
Included in plan	Fees absorbed into the monthly plan price

Compare on total cost over a year, not just the headline registration fee.

Keeping per-message costs down

Carrier fees are small per message, but they scale with volume and segment count. A few habits keep them in check:

• Write short. Aim for messages under 160 standard characters. A greeting, the key detail and opt-out language fit comfortably.
• Watch special characters. Curly quotes pasted from a word processor, emoji and some accented characters switch a message to a different encoding with a lower per-segment character limit, which can double the segment count.
• Prefer a link over an image. If you need to share a document or photo, a link on your own domain in an SMS is usually cheaper than an MMS.
• Avoid duplicate sends. Check that automations do not send the same reminder twice when an appointment is rescheduled.
• Clean your list. Messages to numbers that have opted out or are disconnected waste money and hurt your sending reputation.

How 10DLC compares to toll-free texting costs

Toll-free numbers do not use 10DLC registration. Twilio's help center says toll-free verification itself is free, and carriers apply their own per-message fees to toll-free traffic. The trade-off is that toll-free numbers lack the local presence of a city area code, and verification runs per number. If you are still choosing a number type, see local vs toll-free numbers.

Fee checklist

• Brand type chosen for your volume
• Only the campaigns you need
• Unused campaigns deactivated
• Messages kept to one segment where possible
• Your provider's markup, if any, understood
• Rejection and resubmission costs understood

For background on the system, read what 10DLC is, brand registration and campaign registration.

Texting costs on Callata

Callata charges a one-time $49 fee to register your business for texting with the carriers, which covers submitting your brand and campaign. Business texting is otherwise part of Callata Office ($99 a month for up to five users, then $20 per additional user), with a shared inbox, templates and delivery receipts. If carriers reject the registration, you can update your details in the app and resubmit. Create your account and register texting from the settings page.