How much does A2P 10DLC cost in total?

There is no single number, because the stack has four parts: one-off brand vetting from around $48, campaign registration around $15 to $17, a recurring campaign fee of roughly $1.50 to $10 per month depending on use case, and a per-message carrier surcharge of roughly $0.003 to $0.005. For a single small business sending modest volume, the fixed portion is usually under $100 to start and under $10 a month to maintain.

What is changing on 1 October 2026?

Verizon increases its outbound pass-through fee on A2P SMS from $0.0045 to $0.005 per message. It applies across 10DLC, short code, and toll-free traffic. On a 50,000 message reactivation campaign that is roughly $25 of additional carrier cost, so it matters for planning at volume rather than for a typical monthly send.

Do I pay again if my campaign is rejected?

No. The $15 A2P resubmission charge has been removed, so resubmitting after a rejection is free. The real cost of a rejection is the review cycle it restarts, not the fee.

Are these fees charged by GoHighLevel or by the carriers?

They originate with The Campaign Registry and the mobile carriers, and your platform passes them through. That is why the numbers are broadly similar across HighLevel, Twilio, and others: the platform is a conduit for costs it does not set. Compare platforms on their own markup and on deliverability, not on the underlying carrier fees.

Is the per-message surcharge on top of what I already pay for SMS?

Yes. The carrier surcharge sits on top of your platform's own per-segment messaging rate. When you are modelling a large send, count both, and remember a message over 160 characters bills as multiple segments, which multiplies both the platform rate and the surcharge.

A2P 10DLC

What A2P 10DLC Actually Costs

Four separate fees from three different places, which is why nobody quotes you one number.

Howard KanCo-founder and COO, Agency Logics

Spent 8 years running operations for a startup studio that launched more than a dozen companies. Leads CRM, automation, AI assistants, websites, and delivery infrastructure at Agency Logics.

Published September 1, 2026

The four fees

A2P 10DLC fee components. Ranges are published market figures and vary by provider and use case.
Fee	Typical amount	When it applies
Brand vetting	From ~$48	Once, per business entity
Campaign registration	~$15 to $17	Once, per campaign
Recurring campaign fee	~$1.50 to $10 per month	Monthly, per campaign, varies by use case
Carrier surcharge	~$0.003 to $0.005 per message	Every message, on top of your platform rate
Resubmission after rejection	$0	The $15 resubmission charge has been removed

A2P 10DLC fee components. Ranges are published market figures and vary by provider and use case.

The first three are small and predictable. The fourth is the one that scales, and it is the one people forget when modelling a large one-time send.

The 1 October 2026 Verizon increase

Effective 1 October 2026, Verizon raises its outbound pass-through fee on A2P SMS from $0.0045 to $0.005 per message, applied across 10DLC, standard-rated short code, and toll-free traffic.

Put in proportion: on a 50,000 message reactivation send, that is roughly $25 in additional carrier cost. It is not a reason to change plans. It is a reason to make sure whoever is quoting you a per-message all-in number is quoting the post-October figure, and to notice that carrier surcharges move upward on a schedule you do not control.

Modelling a real campaign

The mistake worth avoiding is budgeting per message when carriers bill per segment.

An SMS bills in segments. A message over roughly 160 characters becomes two segments, and both the platform rate and the carrier surcharge apply to each one.
A reactivation sequence is usually three to five touches, not one, so multiply by the sequence length as well as the list size.
Replies cost too. A campaign that works generates inbound volume, which is a good problem with a real line item attached.
Registration fees are per business entity. An agency running ten client sub-accounts pays the fixed stack ten times, not once. See the GoHighLevel walkthrough for why the brand has to sit under each client's own legal entity.

What this means against the alternative

Even fully loaded, the arithmetic on database reactivation stays lopsided, because the contacts cost nothing to acquire. A five-touch sequence to 10,000 contacts is roughly 50,000 segments, so the carrier surcharge lands around $250 at the new Verizon rate, plus your platform rate and the fixed registration stack. Against the cost of buying 10,000 new leads, that is not a close comparison. The constraint on reactivation is list quality and consent, not cost.

Common questions

How much does A2P 10DLC cost in total?: There is no single number, because the stack has four parts: one-off brand vetting from around $48, campaign registration around $15 to $17, a recurring campaign fee of roughly $1.50 to $10 per month depending on use case, and a per-message carrier surcharge of roughly $0.003 to $0.005. For a single small business sending modest volume, the fixed portion is usually under $100 to start and under $10 a month to maintain.
What is changing on 1 October 2026?: Verizon increases its outbound pass-through fee on A2P SMS from $0.0045 to $0.005 per message. It applies across 10DLC, short code, and toll-free traffic. On a 50,000 message reactivation campaign that is roughly $25 of additional carrier cost, so it matters for planning at volume rather than for a typical monthly send.
Do I pay again if my campaign is rejected?: No. The $15 A2P resubmission charge has been removed, so resubmitting after a rejection is free. The real cost of a rejection is the review cycle it restarts, not the fee.
Are these fees charged by GoHighLevel or by the carriers?: They originate with The Campaign Registry and the mobile carriers, and your platform passes them through. That is why the numbers are broadly similar across HighLevel, Twilio, and others: the platform is a conduit for costs it does not set. Compare platforms on their own markup and on deliverability, not on the underlying carrier fees.
Is the per-message surcharge on top of what I already pay for SMS?: Yes. The carrier surcharge sits on top of your platform's own per-segment messaging rate. When you are modelling a large send, count both, and remember a message over 160 characters bills as multiple segments, which multiplies both the platform rate and the surcharge.

Sources

1.HighLevel: A2P 10DLC messaging fees, registration, monthly and carrier costs Platform-side fee breakdown.
2.A2P carrier fees guide 2026 Source for the 1 October 2026 Verizon increase from $0.0045 to $0.005.
3.The Campaign Registry and 10DLC campaign fees Registry fee categories and campaign vetting charges.
4.A2P 10DLC registration requirements, cost and timeline Brand vetting and campaign registration ranges.

Want the real number for your list?

Segment count, sequence length, and list size drive the cost far more than the registration fees do. We model this before a campaign is built, so the send budget is known before anyone writes a message.

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