10DLC Trust Score and Secondary Vetting Explained

Two businesses register the same campaign type; one can send 200,000 message segments a day to T-Mobile customers, the other 2,000. The difference is the trust score, the number TCR’s vetting partners assign to your brand, which carriers translate directly into throughput limits.

Baseline vetting: free, automatic, limited

When you register a Standard brand, TCR runs automated identity vetting: your EIN, legal name, and address are checked against public records. Passing gets you verified status and a modest default throughput tier. This baseline vetting establishes that you exist, not that you’re reputable, so carriers keep default limits conservative.

Secondary vetting: paid, optional, and usually worth it

Secondary vetting is an optional deeper review (via TCR partners such as Aegis Mobile) costing roughly $40 as a one-time fee. The vetter examines your business more thoroughly (corporate registration depth, business history, public footprint) and returns a score, commonly expressed out of 100.

The score maps to carrier tiers. In broad strokes (exact mappings are carrier-specific and change over time):

• High scores (roughly 75+) earn top standard tiers: high daily caps on T-Mobile, high messages-per-minute on AT&T.
• Mid scores get intermediate tiers, often several times the default.
• Low scores bring little or no improvement over the unvetted default.

Scores are valid for a defined period (typically a year, renewable) and results are not guaranteed; a thin public footprint can score low even for a legitimate business. But for any brand doing real marketing volume, one $40 fee that multiplies daily capacity is one of the best deals in messaging.

Who should skip it

• Low-volume senders comfortably inside default limits, like reminders for a single clinic or notifications for a small store. If you never brush the cap, the score changes nothing. (Consider Low Volume Standard instead.)
• Sole Proprietor brands, since secondary vetting does not apply to them.
• 2FA-focused senders at modest scale; OTP traffic rarely hits marketing-scale caps.

How to present well to a vetter

You cannot game vetting, but you can avoid own goals:

• Register with your exact legal identity, consistently, everywhere (IRS, state registry, website footer).
• Have a real, working website that clearly belongs to the registered legal entity.
• Make sure your business address is consistent across public records.
• If your entity is very new, expect a weaker score. Sometimes waiting a few months before vetting yields a better result.

Trust scores are about capacity, not approval: a low score does not reject your campaign, and a high score does not protect non-compliant content from filtering. Think of it as buying lane width on a highway where the traffic rules still apply to everyone.

Frequently asked questions

How much does secondary vetting cost?

Roughly $40 as a one-time fee per vetting, passed through from TCR’s vetting partner. The resulting score is typically valid for one year and can be renewed.

Can I appeal or retry a low trust score?

You can request re-vetting (paying the fee again), ideally after fixing what likely dragged the score down, such as inconsistent public records, a thin web presence, or a very young entity. There is no free appeal channel.

Does the trust score affect message filtering?

Not directly. The score sets throughput ceilings. Spam filtering operates on content and recipient complaints regardless of score; a high-scored brand sending spammy content still gets filtered.