Wapito

Approve WhatsApp Group Join Requests

Review and approve requests to join a group.

Groups are the part of WhatsApp the official Cloud API never reached: there is no endpoint to create one, administer it or read its members. Wapito drives a linked number instead, so a group is an ordinary REST call.

Can the official WhatsApp Cloud API do this?

No. Join requests do not exist in the official API.

Read the full comparison

How it works

Turn approval on, read the pending queue, approve the people you can identify, reject the rest and keep your own audit log.

  1. Turn on approval for the group

    Join approval is a group setting. Switch it on before you publish the invite link anywhere public, otherwise the first hour of a campaign fills the group with accounts nobody has looked at.

    API reference for this step

  2. Read the pending queue

    The queue lists everyone waiting, with the identity that will become the participant. Page through it rather than assuming it is short; a link that was shared widely can produce hundreds of requests overnight.

    API reference for this step

  3. Approve the ones you recognise

    Match each request against your own list - paid subscribers, enrolled students, staff numbers - and approve only those. Approving everything defeats the point of turning the setting on.

    API reference for this step

  4. Reject the rest and record why

    Rejection is quiet: the person is not told why. Keep your own log so a mistaken rejection can be explained when the person asks, because WhatsApp gives them no way to appeal.

    API reference for this step 
curl --request GET \
  --url https://api.wapito.com/v1/groups/120363041234567890@g.us/applications \
  --header 'Authorization: Bearer wpt_YOUR_TOKEN'

Endpoints

Webhook events

  • groups.participantsGroup membership or role changedonGroupsParticipants()

What you can build with it

  • Gate a paid community

    A subscription newsletter publishes one invite link and turns on approval. An automation matches each pending request against the active-subscriber list every few minutes, approves the matches, and leaves everything else for a human to glance at once a day.

  • Staff-only group at a large event

    A festival puts the invite QR on crew lanyards and approves only numbers that appear on the accreditation list. Requests from numbers that are not on it are rejected automatically, so the group stays usable during the busiest hours.

  • Slow the door during a spike

    When a group link is shared unexpectedly widely, an automation switches approval on and drains the queue at a steady rate rather than letting hundreds of strangers arrive at once and push the existing conversation off the screen.

What the official WhatsApp Cloud API does here

Meta's official WhatsApp Cloud API is built for business messaging: templates, customer-service windows and per-conversation pricing. A large part of what WhatsApp itself can do — groups, channels, status, presence, contact lookups — has no endpoint there at all, which is why so many teams end up looking past it. Everything below is checked against Meta's own published reference, with the link and the date we checked it.

Not possible on the Cloud API

No. Join requests do not exist in the official API.

Approving a request presumes a group, and Meta's Cloud API has none. There is no pending queue to read and no approval to grant, so a business using only the official platform reviews nothing because it can see nothing.

Paraphrase (not a verbatim quote), checked against the Cloud API reference index: no group membership request or approval endpoint appears in the reference.
Meta's WhatsApp documentation — checked

The official workaround

None. An admin taps approve or reject in the app, one request at a time.

Wapito is an independent product. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, sponsored by or certified by WhatsApp or Meta Platforms, Inc. WhatsApp is a trademark of Meta Platforms, Inc.

Gotchas

  • The pending queue is paged. A job that reads only the first page will quietly leave older requests waiting forever, so page to the end before you decide the queue is empty.
  • Approval requires admin rights on the group, and the setting itself can only be changed by an admin, so an automation that has been demoted will fail at the first step rather than the last.

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Frequently asked questions

How long do pending requests stay in the queue?

WhatsApp expires them after a period rather than keeping them indefinitely, so a queue that is only drained weekly will lose requests. Drain it on a schedule measured in minutes or hours, and tell people roughly how long approval takes on the page where you publish the link.

Does the person know they were rejected?

They see that they are not in the group, but they are not given a reason and there is no appeal inside WhatsApp. If rejection is part of a business process - an expired subscription, for example - tell them through the channel you already have with them rather than leaving them guessing.

Can I approve everyone automatically?

You can, but then the setting is doing nothing except adding delay. Approval is worth turning on only when you have something to check against: a subscriber list, an accreditation list, a CRM segment. Otherwise leave it off and let people join directly by link.

What identity do requests arrive with?

Increasingly a linked identity rather than a phone number, especially for people who joined from a link they found publicly. Match on the linked identity and resolve the phone number where you can, rather than assuming every request carries a number you can look up in your CRM.

Related

Related features

Errors you may hit

Glossary

Try it on your own number

Create a channel, link a WhatsApp number by QR or pairing code, and call the API in a couple of minutes. The Sandbox plan is free and needs no card.

Create a free channel Read the docs