Viber (Rakuten Viber)
Platform · this deep dive is built from the official pages of the platform itself and of the tools that support it.
Overview
Viber (Rakuten Viber) is a messenger with private chats, calls and a public side made up of communities and channels. For promotion it works differently from most platforms in this directory: here almost everything connected with business is paid and requires a contract, and there is no free "creator channel" with a share of ad revenue.
The key difference is written into the developer documentation: since 5 February 2024 Viber bots can only be created on commercial terms — the quote from that same page reads: "since 5.02.24, Viber bots can only be created on commercial terms". In other words, automation on Viber starts not with getting a token but with an application and a commercial agreement. That is the opposite of Telegram, where the token is issued automatically.
The second difference is how the products are divided by purpose. For talking to private individuals there are communities and channels; for companies there are business messages, automation and calls, advertising, branded content, a business account and an ad manager. Each product runs on its own terms.
The platform belongs to the Rakuten group, which is visible on the company page, where Viber Media S.à r.l. is listed alongside other services of the group.
Who's here
The company page says only that "hundreds of millions of people" connect. That is an order of magnitude in the platform's own words, not a measurement.
The only numeric statement about geography is in the advertising section: reach is claimed in "more than 190 countries". This is also a platform claim, and it speaks about where advertising is available rather than about how users are distributed.
The language versions of the site are listed on the company page: English, Spanish, German, French, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian, Vietnamese, Arabic, Tagalog, Ukrainian and Greek. Indirectly this points to the markets the platform considers significant for itself.
The app runs on Android, iPhone and iPad, Windows, Mac and Linux.
Getting started
An ordinary account and the public side
A personal account is enough for communities and channels. The platform describes communities as a format for an unlimited number of members: "Unlimited members, endless growth possibilities". The same page lists the management options: appointing superadmins and admins, deciding whether members may write in the chat, deleting unwanted messages, blocking offenders.
A privacy property important for communities is named separately: the phone numbers of all community members are hidden, and new members see the message history and join the conversation.
Channels are a related format. In the channel privacy notice the platform writes that they can be made public and support a considerably larger number of members — up to a billion.
A business account
A business account is created from the app itself: the platform describes the procedure as opening the "More" screen, going through creation, scanning a code and entering the company details; an existing personal Viber account is required.
The business account tiers are named outright: the free tier gives 30 broadcast messages a month and a presence in the Viber Marketplace; the paid Viber Business Plus subscription gives a higher position in search results, a 30% boost in Marketplace visibility and 300 broadcast messages a month.
Note how search works, as described in the terms: results for business accounts are ranked by category, relevance to the query, user preferences, compliance with the rules and the presence of the "Boost" feature. Paid amplification of visibility is written into the agreement itself.
A bot
A bot is a commercial product. The procedure: apply to create a bot through the official process or through a verified partner; you can no longer set up a bot on your own as you once could. Requests are authenticated with the X-Viber-Auth-Token header carrying the account token; without it a request returns the error missing_auth_token.
What you can publish
Formats and sizes over the API
The limits of the bot interface are given as numbers and differ by the recipient's operating system — a rare case:
- Image — up to 1 MB on iOS and up to 3 MB on Android;
- Video — up to 26 MB, MP4/H264 only;
- File — up to 50 MB;
- Thumbnail and account icon — up to 100 KB;
- Sender name — up to 28 characters;
- Message text — "Max length 7,000 characters";
- The service field
tracking_data— up to 4096 characters; - The whole request in JSON — no more than 30 KB.
The last two are easy to mix up: the 4096 characters apply to the reply tracking field, not to the text. And even with the permitted 7,000 characters the overall request limit of 30 KB remains the upper bound — with heavy markup and nested data it kicks in sooner.
Buttons under a message are laid out on a grid: the number of buttons is counted as 6 × the number of columns × the number of rows in the group, where columns run from 1 to 6 and rows from 1 to 7.
Business message formats
For business broadcasts the platform names the available content types: text with emoji, carousels, call-to-action buttons, lists, rich media, documents and links.
What is prohibited
The terms of use explicitly prohibit: decompiling and reverse engineering; creating multiple accounts or misleading profiles; using automated means to access the service or to extract information about other users; using the service for unlawful purposes. The ban on automated collection of user data covers any analytics built on scraping other people's profiles.
How to grow
Organic reach
Two tools serve public discoverability: the community invite link, mentioned on the communities page, and search across business accounts, whose ranking order is described in the terms of use — including the paid boost.
Advertising
The advertising product exists and is described separately. Confirmed parameters: targeting by intent, behaviour, purchasing habits and socio-demographic attributes; campaign objectives — brand awareness, lead generation and sales, retargeting, moving into a conversation; reach is claimed in more than 190 countries. The ad manager is listed as a separate product on the main page of the business section.
For the pricing model (per impression or per click) and the minimum budget the platform sends you to a manager, so you cannot estimate the cost of advertising here in advance, as you can in the self-serve managers of other platforms.
Business broadcasts
The pricing model for business messages is stated as a principle: "pay only for delivered messages". The same page mentions a fallback channel: an encrypted interface with a switch to SMS when delivery fails. The price list itself is kept in a separate file.
Built-in statistics
The help centre at help.viber.com, where descriptions of the built-in analytics for communities and channels usually live, is closed off by protection against automated requests.
Path to monetization
Viber offers no direct payouts to creators for content: no revenue-sharing programme, no paid channel subscriptions, no tips. Put simply: the platform takes money from businesses rather than paying creators.
The money flows the platform does describe run towards it: the Viber Business Plus subscription, payment for delivered business messages, advertising and commercial terms for bots. Among paid consumer services, the terms describe Viber Out with per-minute call charges and subscriptions, and eSIM with a one-off data package purchase.
You can only earn on Viber indirectly: gather an audience into a community or channel and sell it your own goods and services, run support and sales in conversation. No income from the platform itself arises in the process.
Payment terms, if you are buying the platform's services, are set out as follows: subscriptions come with a 14-day cancellation window, payments are otherwise non-refundable except for billing errors within 90 days.
Tools and automation
Official access
The programming interfaces are listed in the documentation section: a REST API for bots, libraries for Node.js and Python, and a Business Messages API for broadcasts to your own customer base. All of them are tied to a commercial agreement — the requirement that bots be created only on commercial terms is repeated in the documentation.
The REST API allows sending and receiving messages of various types, setting up a webhook, retrieving subscriber information, delivery and read statuses, account data and broadcasts to subscribers. The webhook event types are named explicitly: delivered, seen, failed, subscribed, unsubscribed, conversation_started, message.
The limits you need to design around:
- A broadcast — no more than 300 recipients in one request; rate — 500 requests per 10 seconds;
- User online status — up to 100 identifiers per request;
- Detailed user information — no more than twice per 12 hours per identifier;
- If the webhook is unavailable, the platform retries delivery 10 times at intervals of 10, 60, 300, 600 and then 900 seconds;
- An undelivered message is retried by the platform for up to 14 days.
The fourteen-day delivery window is the longest among the messengers in this directory. The practical consequence: a message with a time-limited offer may reach the recipient long after it was sent, and that is worth allowing for in the text.
Third-party services
Chatbot builders. SendPulse claims an official integration with Viber and on the free tier allows you to create 3 chatbots. On the same page the service honestly warns that Rakuten Viber charges separately for chatbots created after 5 February 2024, and that the bot token has to be obtained from Viber or from an official partner. So a third-party builder does not remove the commercial agreement with the platform — it connects to an already-issued token.
Scheduling tools. The Onlypult platform list names 16 services, and Viber is not among them; in Publer's table of daily limits Viber is likewise missing. This is an observation about two services, not a claim about the industry as a whole.
Limits and rules
- Age. A minimum of 13 to create an account; for paid services — the age of legal capacity under the law of your country; for dating and business accounts — 18.
- Bots. Commercial terms only since 5 February 2024.
- Attachment sizes. Image 1 MB on iOS and 3 MB on Android, video 26 MB, file 50 MB, the whole request 30 KB.
- Rate. 300 recipients in a broadcast, 500 requests per 10 seconds.
- Automation. Using automated means to access the service and to extract information about other users is prohibited.
- Accounts. Creating multiple accounts or misleading profiles is prohibited.
- Law. By default the law of England and Wales applies; users in the European Union and the United Kingdom may go to the courts of Luxembourg and use the European out-of-court dispute resolution procedure; for US residents there is mandatory JAMS arbitration with a class action waiver and the option to opt out within 30 days. The document is marked as updated on 23 March 2026.
- Different terms for different services. Viber Out calls and eSIM have their own terms, while payments, programmatic access, business accounts and dating are covered by supplementary agreements.
Who it's for
It suits companies that already have a customer base with phone numbers and a need for transactional messages: confirmations, reminders, one-time codes. The pay-per-delivered-message model and the SMS fallback make Viber a notification tool rather than a storefront.
It suits communities in markets where the messenger is widespread: the community format with hidden numbers and an unlimited number of members works well for local clubs, classified ads and support.
It suits small businesses that need a profile to be present: a free business account with 30 broadcast messages a month lets you try the channel at no cost.
It does not suit creators counting on income from the platform: it has no creator payout programme. It does not suit projects with no budget for automation: bots are created only on commercial terms. It does not suit you if you need transparent self-serve advertising: prices and the minimum budget are not publicly disclosed.
Tools for this platform
The list is built from the tools' own facts: every line is a tool's statement that it supports the platform, with the source named. A tool missing from the list only means we have no such statement.
Scheduling and publishing:
- SMMplanner — publishing; source, checked 2026-07-28
- Sprinklr — inbox; source, checked 2026-07-28
Customer communication:
- Chat2Desk — states support; source, checked 2026-07-28
- Crisp — inbox; source, checked 2026-07-28
- Jivo — inbox; source, checked 2026-07-28
- SleekFlow — states support; source, checked 2026-07-28
- Umnico — inbox; source, checked 2026-07-28
- Wazzup — inbox; source, checked 2026-07-28
- respond.io — states support; source, checked 2026-07-28
Automation:
- Albato — states support; source, checked 2026-07-28
- ApiX-Drive — states support; source, checked 2026-07-28
- BotHelp — states support; source, checked 2026-07-28
- Salebot — states support; source, checked 2026-07-28
- SendPulse — states support; source, checked 2026-07-28
Verified data
The checked data this deep dive rests on.
About the platform
Viber Media S.à r.l. belongs to the Rakuten group and is listed alongside other services of the group
source, checked 2026-07-28
the app runs on Android, iPhone and iPad, Windows, Mac and Linux
source, checked 2026-07-28
Who's here
the platform names no audience figures: it says only that «hundreds of millions of people» connect every month. That is an order of magnitude in the platform's own words, not a measurement
The «About Viber» page was checked — the only page about the company found via links from the home page
source, checked 2026-07-28
Account and access
since 5 February 2024 bots are created ONLY on commercial terms: «since 5.02.24, Viber bots can only be created on commercial terms» — an application to Rakuten Viber is required
source, checked 2026-07-28
an active Viber account on a platform that supports bots (iOS or Android) is required; that account becomes the bot's administrator
source, checked 2026-07-28
You can register only with a phone number able to receive a call or an SMS: verbatim «Internet-based phone numbers cannot be used to activate / register on Viber». The number of activation attempts is limited — verbatim: «To prevent spammers from using Viber, there is a limit to the number of times that you can attempt to activate / register an account. You will be notified if you reach that limit». A number may be temporarily restricted on suspicion of spam — verbatim: «If you see an Activation failed error, it means Viber has temporarily restricted your phone number. This usually happens when our system detects activity that looks like spam».
The help article «Solve activation and registration issues» was read in full, as was the complete list of all 143 articles in the help centre help.viber.com (en-us) and the articles «Message requests inbox», «Identify and report spam messages» and «Content and account enforcement on Viber». The robots.txt of help.viber.com was read in full (both groups, AppleBot and *): the paths /hc/*/articles are not forbidden. The HTML pages return 403 to our fetcher, so the texts were taken through the official help centre API on the same host, without circumventing protection.
source, checked 2026-08-07
Entering a six-digit confirmation code from an SMS or the last four digits of the number of an incoming Flash Call — verbatim: «You'll receive an incoming call from a random number», «Look at the last four digits of the calling number - this is your activation code». If the spam restriction has triggered, it can be lifted only through support — verbatim: «If this is your first time ever joining Viber, or if you believe your account was restricted by mistake, please reach out to us».
The help article «Solve activation and registration issues» was read in full, as was the complete list of all 143 articles in the help centre help.viber.com (en-us) and the articles «Message requests inbox», «Identify and report spam messages» and «Content and account enforcement on Viber». The robots.txt of help.viber.com was read in full (both groups, AppleBot and *): the paths /hc/*/articles are not forbidden. The HTML pages return 403 to our fetcher, so the texts were taken through the official help centre API on the same host, without circumventing protection.
source, checked 2026-08-07
24 hours before the next registration attempt — verbatim: «To try activating / registering again, please wait 24 hours»
This is the only period Viber names in connection with creating an account. The help centre names no period after which a registered account gains additional features. The help article «Solve activation and registration issues» was read in full, as was the complete list of all 143 articles in the help centre help.viber.com (en-us) and the articles «Message requests inbox», «Identify and report spam messages» and «Content and account enforcement on Viber». The robots.txt of help.viber.com was read in full (both groups, AppleBot and *): the paths /hc/*/articles are not forbidden. The HTML pages return 403 to our fetcher, so the texts were taken through the official help centre API on the same host, without circumventing protection.
source, checked 2026-08-07
Business terms
the business section lists the products: business messages, automation and calls, Viber advertising, branded content, a business account, an ad manager
The business section is moved to a separate domain, forbusiness.viber.com
source, checked 2026-07-28
a business account is created in the app via the «More» screen; an existing personal Viber account is required
source, checked 2026-07-28
search results for business accounts are ranked by category, relevance to the query, user preferences, compliance with the rules and the presence of the «Boost» feature
Paid amplification of visibility is written into the agreement itself
source, checked 2026-07-28
What you can publish
the maximum length of message text is 7,000 characters: the text parameter carries «required. Max length 7,000 characters». Independently of it a general limit applies: the whole request in JSON must not exceed 30 KB, and with heavy markup it kicks in sooner. The 4096-character limit applies to the service tracking field, not to the text
CORRECTED BY the previous edition claimed the limit was NOT named on the page. The line is present verbatim — verified against the raw HTML of the page, without a model's retelling. The earlier edit was an overcorrection: a correct fact was deleted and replaced with an incorrect statement. See docs/research/S193-перекоррекция.md
source, checked 2026-07-28
attachment sizes: image — up to 1 MB on iOS and up to 3 MB on Android; video — up to 26 MB and no longer than 180 seconds; file — up to 50 MB, file name up to 256 characters including the extension; video thumbnail — up to 100 KB
Different limits for iOS and Android are a rare case: the limit depends on the recipient's device
source, checked 2026-07-28
sender name — up to 28 characters, sender icon — no more than 100 KB
source, checked 2026-07-28
the keyboard under a message: up to 6 buttons calculated across columns and rows, each button no taller than 7 rows
source, checked 2026-07-28
communities are described as a format with an unlimited number of members: «Unlimited members, endless growth possibilities»
There is no figure — this is a qualitative claim by the platform
source, checked 2026-07-28
the phone numbers of all community members are hidden; new members see the message history and join the conversation
source, checked 2026-07-28
superadmins and admins; the decision on whether members may write in the chat; deleting unwanted messages; blocking offenders; private correspondence between members with the number hidden
source, checked 2026-07-28
channels can be made public and support a considerably larger number of members — up to a billion
The page is a channel privacy notice; the figure appears there
source, checked 2026-07-28
sender name — up to 28 characters; sender icon — no more than 100 KB, recommended size 720x720
A recheck of the earlier record; the recommended icon size has been added
source, checked 2026-07-28
the number of buttons is counted as 6 × the number of columns × the number of rows in the group; columns from 1 to 6, rows from 1 to 7
Clarifies the earlier keyboard record: the limit is not «6 buttons» but the product across the grid
source, checked 2026-07-28
text with emoji, carousels, call-to-action buttons, lists, rich media, documents and links
source, checked 2026-07-28
Advertising
targeting by intent, behaviour, purchasing habits and socio-demographic attributes; campaign objectives — brand awareness, lead generation and sales, retargeting, moving into a conversation; reach claimed in more than 190 countries
«More than 190 countries» is a platform claim about where advertising is available, not an audience measurement
source, checked 2026-07-28
How the money works here
the pricing model for business messages: pay only for delivered messages; a switch to SMS is provided when delivery fails
The price list itself is kept in a separate file and was not part of the check
source, checked 2026-07-28
Pricing
free business account: 30 broadcast messages a month and a presence in the Viber Marketplace. Viber Business Plus subscription: a higher position in search results, a 30% boost in Marketplace visibility, 300 broadcast messages a month
The subscription price is NOT named on the page
source, checked 2026-07-28
subscriptions come with a 14-day cancellation window; payments are otherwise non-refundable except for billing errors within 90 days
source, checked 2026-07-28
Limits and restrictions
broadcasting to several recipients: no more than 300 addressees in the list, rate — 500 requests per 10 seconds
source, checked 2026-07-28
if a message could not be delivered, the platform keeps trying to deliver it for up to 14 days
The longest redelivery window among the messengers in the project
source, checked 2026-07-28
a single request can return information on no more than 100 users, and all of them must be subscribed to the account
source, checked 2026-07-28
detailed user information may be requested no more than twice per 12 hours per identifier
A separate limit, distinct from the 100-identifiers-per-request limit on get_online
source, checked 2026-07-28
Restrictions
a minimum of 13 to create an account; for paid services — the age of legal capacity under the law of your country; for dating and business accounts — 18
The age threshold differs by service — an arrangement rare in the registry
source, checked 2026-07-28
decompiling and reverse engineering are prohibited; so is creating multiple accounts or misleading profiles; using automated means to access the service and to extract information about other users; using the service for unlawful purposes
The ban on automated collection of user data covers external analytics
source, checked 2026-07-28
Moderation
No ladder is announced. The terms: «Viber has the right to terminate your rights under our Services without notice, including, without limitation, by blocking you, suspending or terminating your Account» (verbatim); also «we reserve the right to remove any offending content, terminate or limit the visibility of your account, and notify third parties — including law enforcement» (verbatim).
The help articles about the temporary 24-hour anti-spam block (help.viber.com) return 403 and were not read; the robots of www.viber.com forbid only the Viber Dating pages.
source, checked 2026-08-07
No formal procedure for appealing a block is described in the terms; the contact is the support form vb.me/ContactUs, and for non-US residents in disputes about paid services [email protected].
The help articles about appeals are closed by protection (403 on help.viber.com/hc/en-us/articles/...).
source, checked 2026-08-07
Legal
besides the general terms there are separate ones for specific services: Viber Out calls and eSIM have their own terms, while payments, programmatic access, business accounts and dating are covered by supplementary agreements
The split is by service rather than by country; the platform separately notes that the EU and UK version is available to everyone for comparison
source, checked 2026-07-28
by default the law of England and Wales applies; users in the European Union and the United Kingdom may go to the courts of Luxembourg and use the European out-of-court dispute resolution procedure; for US residents — mandatory JAMS arbitration with a class action waiver and the option to opt out within 30 days · the source is dated 2026-03-23
The document is marked as updated on 23 March 2026
source, checked 2026-07-28
API access
How it connects. an account token issued when the bot is created and passed in every request; the webhook is configured once when the account is set up
source, checked 2026-07-28
webhook event types: delivered, seen, failed, subscribed, unsubscribed, conversation_started, message
The full list of events you can subscribe to
source, checked 2026-07-28
if the webhook is unavailable, the platform retries delivery 10 times at intervals of 10, 60, 300, 600 and then 900 seconds
Differs from the 14-day window for delivering a message to a user: this is retrying the call to the developer's server
source, checked 2026-07-28
programming interfaces: a REST API for bots, libraries for Node.js and Python, a Business Messages API for broadcasts to your own customer base
The requirement that bots be created only on commercial terms is repeated here too
source, checked 2026-07-28
Languages
the interface language of the home page: en-US; declared language versions: ar, cy, de, de-de, en, en-us, es, es-es, fr, fr-fr, gr, hu and 12 more
The language is taken from the markup attribute, the versions from hreflang. The "and N more" figure is OUR count of the remaining hreflang links in the markup, not a claim by the source: that number does not appear on the page.
source, checked 2026-07-28
language versions of the site: English, Spanish, German, French, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian, Vietnamese, Arabic, Tagalog, Ukrainian, Greek
The list is from the company page; the platform gives no quantitative data on audiences by country
source, checked 2026-07-28
Catalogue section: all similar See also: catalogue index · region: Japan · scheduler comparison · find by situation · platform restrictions