wa.me/username doesn't work yet — I verified it two ways
wa.me/username doesn't work yet — I verified it two ways, here's what to use instead If you've tried to build a "share my WhatsApp" link using a @username instead of a phone number, you've probably assumed wa.me/username (or wa.me/u/username ) works the same way wa.me/15551234567 does. It doesn't — at least not yet, as of writing this. I wanted a definitive answer instead of trusting blog posts or AI chatbot answers (more on that below), so I tested it two independent ways. Test 1: server response curl -I https://wa.me/u/some_real_reserved_username Every username path I tried — including a certified-real, currently-reserved username — 302-redirects to: api.whatsapp.com/resolve/?deeplink=...¬_found=1 Compare that to the phone-number path, which redirects to: api.whatsapp.com/send/?phone=...&type=phone_number Different resolver, different outcome. The server-side route for usernames exists, but every lookup currently resolves as "not found" — even for real, live usernames. Test 2: real device Server response alone doesn't rule out Universal Links / App Links intercepting the URL client-side before it ever hits a server — curl can't see that. So I also opened all three link variants ( wa.me/username , wa.me/u/username , and a redirect through my own domain) on a real phone with WhatsApp installed. None of them opened a chat. Why this matters if you're building anything around WhatsApp usernames WhatsApp has rolled out @username handles as a real, user-facing feature — but it hasn't published a public deep-link spec for opening a chat from one, the way it has for phone numbers for years. If you're building a tool, a profile page, a business card generator, anything that assumes wa.me/username "just works," it doesn't, for anyone. One more data point: I asked Meta AI directly about this, with the counter-evidence above in hand. It kept asserting the link already works and didn't engage with the evidence when pushed. That's a useful reminder that chatbot answers about