10DLC registration cost and process

What your 10DLC registration costs

10DLC fees at The Campaign Registry and three providers

Sources: TCR's fee schedule (last updated 13 August 2026); Twilio, Telnyx and Bandwidth. Telnyx's campaign fees are TCR's at cost ("does not currently charge a markup"); it does not list a vetting or sole proprietor price. An Enhanced Vet costs $101.50 at TCR, Authentication+ for public companies $12.50 a vet, and a vet appeal $11.

Carrier fees per text on 10DLC

No carrier's own fee schedule was reachable, so each figure is the provider's, named in the row. Telnyx lists AT&T and T-Mobile lower than Bandwidth and Twilio. T-Mobile adds, at Bandwidth, $250 for a non-use fee and $500 for a special business review.

What is 10DLC registration?

10DLC registration is the process of recording a business and its texting use with The Campaign Registry (TCR). 10DLC itself means a standard ten digit US local number a business uses to send application to person (A2P) texts. The registration records the business, called the brand, and each use of texting, called the campaign. You register through your SMS provider, and the provider passes TCR's fees on to you. The fees are the subject of the rest of this page.

The registration steps

Choose your brand type

Pick the brand type that matches your business before you submit anything. TCR's fee schedule, last updated 13 August 2026, charges $4.50 to register a government, nonprofit, private or public company and $4.00 for a sole proprietor. A low volume standard brand skips secondary vetting, and a standard brand with secondary vetting pays the third-party Standard Vet fee of $41.50.

Register the brand

Submit the brand through your SMS provider, since TCR charges registration to the CSP account the provider holds. Twilio charges $46 one time for a standard brand with secondary vetting, the $4.50 brand fee plus the $41.50 Standard Vet, and $4.50 for a low volume standard brand without vetting or a sole proprietor brand. Telnyx charges $4.50 for brand registration, with no markup on 10DLC fees.

Register each campaign

Register every campaign by use case, since TCR bills campaign fees monthly per campaign. Standard use cases such as marketing, mixed, 2FA and customer care cost $10 a month, Low Volume Mixed costs $1.50, and Sole Proprietor costs $2. Twilio and Telnyx each charge a $15 vetting or campaign review fee, and Telnyx bills campaign fees for three months initially, then monthly.

Send and budget for carrier fees

Send on the registered number and budget for the carrier fees each text carries. Providers that pass them through, as read 21 September 2026, list AT&T at $0.0035, T-Mobile at $0.0045 and Verizon at $0.0045 per outbound SMS on registered traffic. Unregistered traffic at Bandwidth costs more, at $0.0100 for AT&T and Verizon and $0.0120 for T-Mobile per SMS.

Registration is the carriers' step, and the consent, opt-out and sending hour rules a registered campaign's texts meet are quoted from the FCC and CTIA on the rules for business texting.

10DLC, toll-free and short code

Brand registration at TCR's own schedule costs $4.50, or $46 in all for a standard brand with secondary vetting, with campaign fees from $1.50 a month and carrier fees per text on top. Verification is free at Twilio and Telnyx for toll-free, and the number costs $2.15 a month at Twilio and $1.00 at Telnyx. Published throughput runs from 10 texts a second at Sinch to 25 a second on a verified toll-free number at Plivo. Short codes cost the most. The Short Code Registry leases a code you choose for $1,000 a month and a random code for $500 a month, paid up front for three, six or 12 months. Published throughput runs from 100 texts a second at Twilio and Plivo to 1,000 per short code at Telnyx. On 10DLC, Twilio publishes up to 225 messages a second per campaign. For volume pricing, see our page on bulk SMS providers.

A short code is leased from the U.S. Short Code Registry at $500 a month for a random code or $1,000 for one you choose, and what 16 providers charge for a short code is set beside that lease.

Toll-free verification for US numbers

Toll-free verification is the review a US toll-free number must pass before it can send business texts; until then, the number stays Restricted. Twilio's Verification Ops reviews the submission, and a rejection that cannot be resubmitted leaves the number Blocked. Most scored providers publish how verification works on their service. Most of those file or guide the verification for you. None of them publishes a fee above $0, and waits run from same day or within 48 hours at SlickText to about 4 weeks at Avochato.

31 of the 45 providers we score publish how toll-free verification works. No process or fee published: Attentive, Birdeye, BulkSMS, Clickatell, Community, Emotive, Notifyre, Podium, Sendlane, Skipio, TextUs, TrueDialog, Weave, YepText.

10DLC questions