Link unlimited numbers by QR and send or receive text, media, voice notes and polls over one clean REST API. Flat price, no per-message fees, no Meta verification.
Everything you can do by hand in the app, you can do over the API — one consistent request shape for every message type.
Text, images, video, documents, stickers, location, contacts, reactions — plus native polls and voice notes generated on the fly.
Every inbound message, delivery receipt and session event pushed to your endpoint. Drops straight into n8n, Make or your own backend.
Run one number or fifty from a single account. Each session is isolated, labelled and independently monitored.
A watchdog reconnects dropped sockets, restarts crashed workers, and only pings you when a number truly needs a re-scan.
Per-number rate limits, warmup pacing, quiet hours, opt-out handling and a duplicate guard keep your sending clean.
Every request, response and webhook delivery stored and searchable. Filter, export or replay any event.
No Business account, no templates to get approved, no waiting on Meta review.
Hit Add number and scan the QR from WhatsApp → Linked devices. The session persists across restarts.
Paste your n8n or backend URL and choose the events you want — messages, receipts, session state.
Generate a key and send your first message. Same request shape for every number you own.
Give each number its own label, webhook and sending profile. See connection health across all of them at a glance, and route sends to whichever number fits the job.
When WhatsApp changes something, the open-source community ships a fix and Relay's auto-updater pulls it within a day — tested on a staging session first. The watchdog handles the routine drops and restarts in between. You're alerted only when a human is genuinely needed.
Health-checks every session, auto-reconnects drops and restarts crashed workers — no manual babysitting.
Checks daily for a new build, validates it on staging, then promotes it. You stay current without lifting a finger.
Only the rare break that needs you triggers a ping — to Telegram, WhatsApp or email. Silence means it's handled.
The unofficial gateways all link your account by QR. The differences are price model, control, hosting and honesty. Third-party prices are public list prices as of early 2026 and change often.
| Relay | Whapi.Cloud | Maytapi | UltraMsg | Official Cloud API | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Price model | Flat / self-host | ~$29–35/no. | ~$24/no. | ~$39/inst. | Per message |
| Per-message fees | None | None | None | None | Yes, by country |
| Meta verification | Not needed | Not needed | Not needed | Not needed | Required |
| Self-hostable | Yes | No | No | No | N/A |
| Own your session data | Yes | Vendor | Vendor | Vendor | Meta |
| Native polls | Yes | Yes | Partial | Partial | No |
| Ban risk | Yours to manage | Present | Present | Present | None |
Send as much as your numbers can safely handle. Self-host for free, or let Relay host and monitor it for you.
Mechanically, yes — Relay links your normal WhatsApp account through the same web protocol, so there's no Meta Business account or per-message billing. The difference is you can self-host it and keep your session data on your own infrastructure, and the health, monitoring and multi-number tooling are built in rather than bolted on.
It can. Any account automated through the unofficial protocol can be limited or banned by WhatsApp, especially when it sends high volume, messages people who never opted in, or blasts identical text. Relay's rate limits, warmup pacing and opt-out handling reduce that risk by keeping your patterns clean — but no gateway can promise immunity, and anyone who claims otherwise is selling something.
Yes. Relay sends native tappable buttons (reply, link and call) and list menus using the same interactive construction hosted gateways use, and they render on current WhatsApp versions. One honest caveat: WhatsApp officially reserves interactive messages for its Business API, so a very old client can still fall back to plain text — which is why Relay also gives you numbered menus and polls, the universally-compatible options, to pair with buttons in flows that must reach everyone.
Breakages are fixed upstream by the open-source community, then pulled into your instance automatically and tested on staging first. The watchdog handles routine disconnects and restarts in between, so you're alerted only for the rare case that needs a human.
That's the point. Add as many numbers as you like; each runs as an isolated session with its own label, webhook and sending profile, and you address them by name in every API call.
Link a number, point a webhook, send. Free to start — no card required.