The question people actually type into a search bar is refreshingly direct: how much can I get per robocall? Federal law gives a refreshingly direct answer. Under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, 47 U.S.C. § 227, an autodialed or prerecorded call or text to your cell phone without your consent carries $500 in statutory damages per violating call or text, and up to $1,500 per call for willful or knowing violations. Statutory means you do not have to prove the call cost you anything: no lost wages, no emotional distress testimony, no receipts. The violation itself sets the price, and your phone log does the multiplication. Ten documented illegal calls is a $5,000 claim at the base rate before anyone argues about willfulness.
There is a second meter most people miss, and it stacks. If your number is on the national Do-Not-Call registry, telemarketing calls to it add independent violations with their own damages under 47 U.S.C. § 227(c)(5), separate from and on top of the robocall claims. The same call can trip both provisions: a prerecorded sales pitch to a registered cell number is a robocall violation and a Do-Not-Call violation at once. This is why the honest answer to the per-call question is a range rather than a number; where a call lands in that range depends on consent, willfulness, and registry status, and those are exactly the facts a demand letter lays out call by call.
Consent is where robocallers make their stand, so it is worth being precise about what it is not. Consent under the TCPA is specific and revocable: buying something from a company once, or answering a call and pressing 1, does not authorize robocalls forever. Prior dealings do not amount to a standing invitation, and consent that was given can be taken back. If you told a caller to stop and the calls kept coming, the later calls are not just violations, they are the kind of calls that support the willfulness argument, which is the difference between the $500 rate and the $1,500 rate.
Now the honest limit, because it decides more of these cases than the statute does: you can only collect from someone you can find. A large share of robocalls come from spoofed numbers run by anonymous overseas scam operations, and no demand letter reaches them; anyone selling you a letter addressed to nowhere is selling paper. The cases that pay are the ones where the pitch identifies a real product from a real company, because under the FCC's vicarious liability framework, the company whose products were being pitched can be liable for its telemarketer's calls. That seller-liability route is how a claim reaches a real address and a real legal department, and it is why the calls worth pursuing are the ones selling something identifiable: an extended car warranty from a nameable company, a solar consultation, a debt-relief program with a website. If the robocalls are from a debt collector specifically, a different federal statute, the FDCPA, may apply as well, with its own remedies.
What turns the statute into money is documentation, and the good news is your phone already did most of the work. Screenshot the call log with dates and times. Save the voicemails, especially the prerecorded ones, because a recording of the robot is close to self-authenticating evidence of a prerecorded call. Save the texts. Note the date you registered on the Do-Not-Call list and the date, if any, you told them to stop. Each entry in that log is a separately priced violation, which is why the file grows in value with every call you would otherwise just decline. A demand letter built on that log does the arithmetic the statute invites, at $500 per call and $1,500 where willfulness is supportable, routes it to the seller who can actually be held to answer, and presents a number that makes settling cheaper than explaining the call log to a court. Small claims court remains available if the letter is ignored, and for larger call counts, TCPA claims are also brought in regular civil courts. But the sequence matters: the letter first is usually the cheapest path to a resolution, and if it goes unanswered, it becomes the exhibit that shows you gave them the chance.
Yes, that is the statutory floor for a violating autodialed or prerecorded call or text under 47 U.S.C. § 227(b)(3), and a court can treble it to $1,500 per call for willful or knowing violations. No proof of monetary harm is required beyond the calls themselves.
Yes. Autodialed texts to your cell without consent are treated as calls under the TCPA and carry the same per-message statutory damages.
It can. Telemarketing calls to a registered number are independent violations with their own damages under 47 U.S.C. § 227(c)(5), stacking with the robocall claims for the same calls.
Usually not from the caller directly, and honesty matters here: anonymous spoofed scam operations can't be lettered. But if the pitch identifies a real seller, the FCC's vicarious liability framework can put that company on the hook for its telemarketer's calls.
Not permanently. Consent under the TCPA is specific and revocable; prior dealings don't authorize robocalls forever, and calls that continue after you say stop strengthen the willfulness case.