Affiliate disclosure: some links in this article are partner links. If you start a paid plan through them, imisofts may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. We only recommend tools we actually use to run client campaigns.
Short answer. Registering a business for 10DLC texting costs $19.50 up front for a sole proprietor or a low-volume standard brand and $61 for a standard brand: a $4.50 brand fee ($46 for a standard brand, including secondary vetting) plus $15 to vet each campaign, at the fees Twilio passes through. Each campaign then costs $1.50 to $10 a month, so a low-volume brand with one $10 campaign pays $139.50 in its first year before it sends a text. Each outbound text also carries a carrier fee of $0.0035 to $0.005 per segment on Twilio's list, and those fees rose at AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon in 2026, most recently on 1 October. HighLevel (GoHighLevel) builds a $3 Fast Track into its $22.50 and $64 registration bundles and documents a 5% markup in at least some cases; Close charges again for each resubmission, and Twilio says it may. We earn a commission if you buy HighLevel or Close through our links; Twilio pays us nothing.
Fees below were read on 26 October 2026 on Twilio's, HighLevel's and Close's own pages; the 12 January figures come from Twilio's pricing page as archived by the Wayback Machine that day. Totals are our arithmetic, before tax, and leave out the phone number ($1.15 a month for a local number on Twilio's list).
Key numbers
| Item | Number |
|---|---|
| Brand registration, sole proprietor or low-volume brand (The Campaign Registry fee since 1 August 2025, passed through by Twilio) | $4.50 one time |
| Standard brand registration, incl. secondary vetting ($4.50 plus $41.50 vetting; EIN and more than 6,000 messages a day) | $46 one time |
| Campaign vetting fee, each campaign (not refunded if the campaign fails vetting) | $15 |
| Monthly fee, each campaign ($1.50 low-volume mixed, $2 sole proprietor, $10 standard use cases) | $1.50 to $10 |
| First year, low-volume brand, one $10 campaign, Twilio list (before any texts are sent) | $139.50 |
| HighLevel one-time registration bundle (includes a non-refundable $3 Fast Track) | $22.50 or $64 |
| HighLevel markup on A2P and carrier fees (none per its 24 Sep fee article; with re-billing per its 12 Oct guide; always per a 9 Sep page) | 5% |
| Same first year on HighLevel ($149.48 if the 5% applies to every A2P fee) | $142.50 to $149.48 |
| Resubmitting a rejected campaign (since 1 February 2026, but its monthly fee runs from submission; Close charges each time, Twilio may) | Free on HighLevel |
| Verizon carrier fee, each outbound SMS segment ($0.004 on 12 January; latest rise 1 October 2026) | $0.005 |
| T-Mobile carrier fee, each outbound SMS segment ($0.003 on 12 January; AT&T now $0.0035, up from $0.003) | $0.0045 |
| Base price per US text segment ($0.00747 on HighLevel, 10% under Twilio's list; its inbound carrier table runs higher) | $0.0083 on Twilio |
Fees read on 26 October 2026 from Twilio's A2P 10DLC fee article and US SMS pricing page, HighLevel's A2P fee article, billing guide, markup page and 1 October changelog, and Close's A2P 10DLC page; 12 January figures from Twilio's pricing page as archived that day; step dates per Telgorithm.
What 10DLC registration costs on Twilio's fee list
10DLC is the US system for business texting from ordinary 10-digit numbers. You register a brand (your business) and at least one campaign (what you send and how people opt in) with The Campaign Registry, through your messaging provider. Twilio says these fees, like the carrier fees, are charged by carriers as part of the 10DLC system and passed through "with no added cost", and that The Campaign Registry raised its brand fee from $4.00 to $4.50 and its standard vetting fee from $40.00 to $41.50 on 1 August 2025. Its list today:
| Fee | Sole proprietor | Low Volume Standard | Standard |
|---|---|---|---|
| Who it is for | No tax ID (EIN) | EIN, fewer than 6,000 messages a day | EIN, more than 6,000 messages a day |
| Brand registration, one time | $4.50 | $4.50 | $46, including $41.50 secondary vetting |
| Campaign vetting, each campaign | $15 | $15 | $15 |
| Monthly fee, each campaign | $2 | $1.50 to $10, by use case | $10 for standard use cases |
The monthly fee follows the use case: $10 for the standard ones, such as marketing and customer care; $2 for sole proprietors; $3 for charities; $5 for emergency services. Low-volume standard brands can instead register a low-volume mixed campaign at $1.50 a month, capped at 2,000 segments a day to T-Mobile and held at the lowest throughput tier whatever its trust score. Twilio bills the fee from approval, then monthly until you deactivate or delete the campaign.
What one brand and one campaign cost in year one
Up-front fees plus twelve monthly fees, before a single message:
- Low-volume brand, one low-volume mixed campaign: $4.50 + $15 + 12 months at $1.50 = $37.50.
- Sole proprietor, one campaign: $4.50 + $15 + 12 months at $2 = $43.50.
- Low-volume brand, one $10 campaign: $19.50 + $120 = $139.50.
- Standard brand, one $10 campaign: $61 + $120 = $181.
From year two only the monthly fee recurs: $18, $24 or $120 a year per campaign, and a second campaign adds $15 plus its own monthly fee. Agencies pay per client, because each client business is its own brand: Twilio's guide for software vendors says "Each Brand comes with its own Brand registration fee". Ten low-volume client brands with one $10 campaign each come to $1,395 in year one at Twilio's list.
What HighLevel (GoHighLevel) charges to register
HighLevel's built-in phone system, LC Phone, registers your brand and first campaign through its Trust Center for one bundled fee: $22.50 for a sole proprietor or low-volume standard brand and $64 for a high-volume standard brand. Both include a $3 Fast Track, which HighLevel says speeds approval to within 3 business days and does not refund; less the $3, the bundles equal Twilio's $19.50 and $61. Each further campaign costs $15 ($15.75 with the 5% below), and monthly fees follow the same use cases.
Resubmitting a rejected campaign has been free on HighLevel since 1 February 2026 (it used to cost $15). But its billing guide says submitting a campaign "starts both your one time registration fee and monthly campaign fee, regardless of the review outcome", so a rejected campaign bills monthly until you delete it. Twilio bills the monthly fee from approval.
HighLevel's 5% markup: three help pages, three answers
- A2P fee article, updated 24 September 2026: the fees are pass-through charges "with no markup from HighLevel".
- Phone System Pricing & Billing Guide, updated 12 October 2026: "A fixed 5% markup" applies to A2P registration and monthly campaign fees and to SMS and MMS carrier fees at the sub-account level, "only when re-billing is enabled". Its A2P table prints monthly fees of up to $2.10 and $10.50 ($2 and $10 plus 5%) but one-time fees of $22.50 and $64 with no 5% added.
- A page on the markup itself, updated 9 September 2026: it applies "regardless of whether agency rebilling is enabled".
For a low-volume brand with one $10 campaign, year one on HighLevel is $142.50 with no markup and $149.48 with 5% on every A2P fee the guide lists ($23.48 up front, then $10.50 a month), against $139.50 at Twilio's list; for ten clients, $1,425 to $1,494.75. A standard brand with one $10 campaign is $184 on HighLevel without the markup and $193.05 with it, against $181. HighLevel calls its in-account Wallet Pricing page the source of truth; we could not read it without a login, so check it before quoting a client. If you resell HighLevel in SaaS mode, re-billing is part of what we configure in a HighLevel white-label SaaS build.
Per outbound text, HighLevel is cheaper than Twilio's list: $0.00747 per US text segment, which its guide calls a 10% discount on Twilio's $0.0083, with the same outbound carrier fees. A thousand outbound segments to Verizon cost $13.30 at Twilio's list and $12.47 on HighLevel, or $12.72 if the 5% applies to the carrier fee; Twilio offers volume discounts through its account team. One HighLevel table needs checking against an invoice: it lists inbound SMS carrier fees of $0.0070 for Verizon and $0.0100 for US Cellular and other carriers, where Twilio's shows none, $0.0025 and none. It may be a shifted column; if it is billed, 1,000 inbound Verizon segments cost $14.47 on HighLevel against $8.30 at Twilio's list. Choosing a platform? Compare HighLevel's plans with these fees included.
What Close charges to register
Close, the sales CRM, uses Twilio, which it calls its telephony partner, and US texts from a Close account are not delivered until its 10DLC registration is approved. Its help page lists $4.50 for a low-volume standard brand, $46 for a standard brand, $4 for a sole proprietor brand without an EIN (Twilio lists $4.50), $15 for campaign verification and $12.50 to retry a failed verification step (Authentication Plus). Monthly, it lists $1.50 for sole proprietor brands (Twilio lists $2) and $10 for organizations sending more than 6,000 segments a month (Twilio's brand threshold is 6,000 messages a day), and says this "is passed down from our telephony partner Twilio".
A rejected campaign, Close says, means "you will be charged another fee for each resubmission"; the page we read gives no amount. For most registrations the up-front math is Twilio's: $19.50 or $61. Want a sales CRM with calling and texting built in? Try Close, and register before your first US text.
Carrier fees per text rose at all three majors in 2026
The carrier fee is generally charged on each outbound segment, on top of the provider's own rate, and carriers changed it in four steps this year, by Telgorithm's count. Twilio's US SMS price list, 12 January 2026 against today:
| Carrier | Outbound SMS fee, 12 Jan 2026 | Outbound SMS fee, 26 Oct 2026 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| AT&T | $0.003 | $0.0035 | +17% |
| T-Mobile | $0.003 | $0.0045 | +50% |
| Verizon | $0.004 | $0.005 | +25% |
| US Cellular | $0.005 | $0.005 | none |
| All other carriers | $0.004 | $0.0042 | +5% |
Telgorithm, a messaging provider, dates the steps: T-Mobile on 19 January, AT&T on 1 April, Verizon on 1 May and again on 1 October. HighLevel announced the 1 October step as Verizon outbound SMS rising from $0.0045 to $0.0050 and "Other" carriers from $0.0040 to $0.0042, applied automatically; our note on HighLevel's October carrier fee rise covers the re-billing side. Inbound fees moved both ways: AT&T's rose from $0.003 to $0.0035, T-Mobile's fell from $0.003 to $0.0025.
On an even split across the three majors, the outbound carrier fee rose from about $3.33 to $4.33 per 1,000 segments, roughly $1 more per 1,000 segments than on 12 January. A Verizon segment now costs $0.0133 at Twilio's list ($0.0083 plus $0.005), and the carrier fee is roughly 30% to 38% of the all-in price of an outbound text at Twilio's list, depending on the carrier.
The fees you pay when registration goes wrong
- A rejected campaign: the $15 vetting fee is not refunded. Twilio says resubmitting may bring more charges, Close charges for each resubmission and HighLevel resubmits free, though its bundle (with the non-refundable $3 Fast Track) and monthly fee start at submission.
- A brand not yet verified: Twilio charges the brand fee when the brand is created and notes that it may still be in an unverified state.
- Authentication Plus retries: $12.50 each time a public, for-profit brand has to redo the step after an error or an incorrect submission.
- Vetting appeals: $11 per appeal, up from $10 in August 2025.
- Failed and undelivered texts: Twilio adds a $0.001 processing fee to each message that ends as failed. HighLevel bills every message it attempts, whatever the final status, and refunds no undelivered texts.
Close's help page calls inaccurate or mismatched information one of the most common causes of rejection; our guide to a rejected A2P 10DLC campaign covers the rest.
How to keep the 10DLC bill down
- Pick the right brand type. Below 6,000 messages a day, a low-volume standard brand costs $4.50 instead of $46.
- Use a low-volume mixed campaign if its limits fit. At $1.50 a month it saves $102 a year against a $10 campaign, for a low-volume standard brand that can live with the lowest throughput tier and 2,000 segments a day to T-Mobile.
- Get the campaign right the first time. Outside HighLevel a resubmission can cost another fee; on HighLevel the monthly fee runs from submission.
- Keep texts to one segment. Most US carriers count 160 plain-text characters as one, HighLevel notes, and each extra segment repeats the carrier fee.
- Consider toll-free for some traffic. Twilio notes that toll-free numbers need verification but no brand and campaign registration; one costs $2.15 a month against $1.15 for a local number, carrier fees still apply, and verification has its own rules (see toll-free verification policy URLs).
Home-service firms use texting to confirm jobs booked by phone, and A2P 10DLC registration for that text leg is part of our AI calling for home services setup. Still choosing the voice side? Compare the best AI voice agents and what an AI answering service for HVAC costs. On HighLevel, our GoHighLevel services team handles A2P brand and campaign registration, or start with HighLevel through our link.
Frequently Asked Questions
At the fees Twilio passes through from The Campaign Registry, $19.50 up front for a sole proprietor or a low-volume standard brand ($4.50 brand fee plus $15 to vet each campaign) and $61 for a standard brand, whose $46 brand fee includes secondary vetting. Each campaign then costs $1.50 to $10 a month, so one brand and one campaign cost $37.50 to $181 in year one, before any texts are sent.
HighLevel bills a bundle of $22.50 for a sole proprietor or low-volume standard brand and $64 for a high-volume standard brand, each including a non-refundable $3 Fast Track, plus $15 for each further campaign and a monthly campaign fee of $1.50 to $10. Its billing guide adds a 5% markup on these fees when re-billing is enabled and prints monthly fees of up to $2.10 and $10.50; another HighLevel page says the 5% applies regardless. Resubmitting a rejected campaign is free, but the monthly fee starts at submission.
Yes. Twilio bills the campaign fee when the campaign is approved and again each month until you deactivate or delete it: $1.50 for a low-volume mixed campaign, $2 for a sole proprietor campaign and $10 for standard use cases such as marketing or customer care. HighLevel starts the monthly fee when you submit the campaign, whatever the review outcome.
The $15 vetting fee is not refunded. Twilio says resubmitting may bring more charges and Close charges another fee for each resubmission; HighLevel has not charged for resubmissions since 1 February 2026, though its monthly fee runs from submission. Twilio also lists $11 for a vetting appeal and $12.50 for each Authentication Plus retry by a public, for-profit brand.
On Twilio's US price list on 26 October 2026, each outbound SMS segment carries $0.0035 to AT&T, $0.0045 to T-Mobile, $0.005 to Verizon and US Cellular and $0.0042 to other carriers, on top of Twilio's $0.0083 base rate. On 12 January 2026 the same list showed $0.003, $0.003, $0.004, $0.005 and $0.004.
Yes. Each client business is its own brand, and Twilio's guide for software vendors says each brand comes with its own registration fee and trust score. Ten low-volume client brands with one $10 campaign each cost $1,395 in year one at Twilio's list, and $1,425 to $1,494.75 on HighLevel, depending on whether its 5% applies.