TCPA penalty estimator: statutory exposure from your message counts

The TCPA gives a person two private actions, each with its own amount. Under § 227(b)(3), a call made with an autodialer or an artificial or prerecorded voice without consent lets the person “receive $500 in damages for each such violation” or their actual loss, whichever is greater. Under § 227(c)(5), a person who “has received more than one telephone call within any 12-month period” in breach of the do-not-call rules may recover “up to $500” for each violation. Both carry the same sentence: if the defendant acted willfully or knowingly, the court “may, in its discretion” raise the award to not more than three times that amount. In plain form: $500 per call or text, up to three times that ($1,500) if the court finds the violation willful or knowing.

So the estimator treats every message as one violation and gives a range. For § 227(b) the low end is the fixed $500 and the high end is $1,500 with the ceiling switched on. For § 227(c)(5) the statute says “up to”, so there is no floor, and nobody who received a single call counts at all. Texts are in scope: the Supreme Court noted that “the TCPA's prohibition also extends to sending unsolicited text messages”, and the FCC's do-not-call rules apply to “telemarketing calls or text messages to wireless telephone numbers” (47 CFR § 64.1200(e)).

Whether your texts fall under § 227(b) at all turns on the equipment. Since Facebook v. Duguid, an autodialer must have “the capacity to use a random or sequential number generator to either store or produce phone numbers to be called”; a prerecorded voice is covered either way. Read what counts as an autodialer before you pick the claim, and prior express written consent for the consent that takes a message out of the count.

The statute gives a separate damages provision in each subsection, and the Sixth Circuit read that literally: “a person may recover statutory damages of $1500 for a willful or knowing violation of the automated-call requirements, § 227(b)(3), and $1500 for a willful or knowing violation of the do-not-call-list requirements, § 227(c)(5)—even if both violations occurred in the same telephone call” (Charvat v. NMP, LLC, 656 F.3d 440 (6th Cir. 2011)). That is the “Both claims” option above. It is one circuit's reading; other courts can differ.

Three things pull the number down. Consent: a message sent with the consent the rule requires is not a violation, which is why the record of it matters (the TCPA consent form builds one). The do-not-call defence: § 227(c)(5) itself makes it an affirmative defence that the caller “has established and implemented, with due care, reasonable practices and procedures”, and the FCC's safe harbor asks for five things, including a registry copy no older than 31 days (do-not-call rules for business, DNC scrubbing software). And the statute's own words: the treble is discretionary, and the § 227(c)(5) amount is a ceiling, not a fixed sum.

Several states wrote their own private action with a per-violation amount. The 5 below were read on each legislature's own site on 2026-10-22; each has its own scope and its own catch. The wider picture, including consent and calling-hour rules, is in mini-TCPA state laws.

Every amount the estimator encodes, with the date it was read. For the rules behind the counts, start with what TCPA compliance means and the TCPA compliance checklist.