Create your WhatsApp link

How it works

The official format is wa.me/<prefix><number>?text=<message>: whoever clicks (or scans the QR) opens a WhatsApp chat with you, message already typed. The tool normalizes the number (spaces, dashes, +, 00) and encodes the message for you.

Watch the prefix

The number must be in international format without + and without 00. In most countries you drop the leading 0 of the local format (e.g. UK 07911… becomes 447911…); Italian landlines are an exception and keep their 0.

Privacy

The link is created in your browser: number and message are never sent to any server.

What a direct link is really for

It removes the most fragile step of all: saving a number in your contacts. Someone seeing a number on a sign, a flyer or a page has to copy it, open the app, search for it and type; with a link they tap once and the conversation is already open, with the message already written.

It is why it works well printed as a QR code on a shop window, on a restaurant menu, on a rental sign or on a business card: whoever scans it finds themselves writing «I'd like to book a table for two» without having typed anything. And it works in an email or in a button on a website too.

The country code is where everybody goes wrong

The number has to be written in international format without the plus and without leading zeros: for Italy, 39 followed by the full mobile number. The commonest error is leaving the plus sign or the leading zeros, and then the link opens no conversation and gives no clear error: it simply finds nobody.

The second error concerns Italian landlines, where the leading zero of the city code has to be kept: a Rome number stays 39 followed by 06 and the rest. It is the exception that confuses, because for mobiles the zero is not there at all.

The prefilled message is the useful part

A link that opens an empty chat leaves the person to work out what to write, and that is where half the contacts are lost. A ready-made message — «I'd like information about the October course», «I'm interested in the advert» — starts the conversation and also tells the recipient where the contact came from.

Hence a practical use: putting links with different messages in different places. Whoever answers knows at once whether the contact came from the window, the flyer or the website, with no analytics tool at all. It is the simplest way to learn what works.

What the link does not do, and the rules to respect

It does not add the number to the contacts of whoever clicks, it does not work if the person has no app installed, and on a computer it opens the web version only if a session is already active. In some in-app browsers inside social platforms, links open in an internal browser that can block the app from opening: it is the commonest cause of links that «do not work» when they arrive from social media.

And there is one rule that outweighs all the others: a link lets somebody write to you, not you write to somebody. Sending commercial messages to numbers collected without consent is prohibited, and on WhatsApp it leads quickly to account closure as well as to a breach of data protection rules.

Nearby tools

To print the link there is QR code generator, and to read somebody else's code Read a QR code. For the message texts Character counter by platform, and for the home network WiFi QR code.