What is WhatsApp?
It fetches a page with an HTTP GET request to build a link preview when a link is shared in WhatsApp.
Fetches a page when someone shares its link, to draw the preview card. Blocking it breaks your previews in that app.
Meta says the user agent ends in A, I or N for Android, iOS and web. Its link preview page does not mention robots.txt.
WhatsApp user agent
Meta documents these user agents for WhatsApp. Version numbers in it change over time, so match on the name, not the whole string.
WhatsApp/2.22.20.72 A
WhatsApp/2.22.19.78 I
WhatsApp/2.2236.3 NShould you block WhatsApp?
Allow it. Blocking it breaks the preview card when someone shares your link.
How to block WhatsApp in robots.txt
Meta documents no robots.txt token for WhatsApp that we could confirm, so we don’t suggest one here. Block it at your server or firewall by user agent instead.
How to verify a request is really WhatsApp
Anyone can send any user agent, so the string alone proves nothing.
Meta publishes no IP ranges or DNS names for WhatsApp that we could find, so there is no reliable way to tell a real WhatsApp from a scraper using its user agent.
See when WhatsApp reads your site
Bots don’t run JavaScript analytics, so a script tag never sees them. invisit records crawler reads on the server instead, through its server SDK or a Cloudflare Worker, and shows which bots read which pages, next to your visitors.
Checked against Meta’s own documentation on . Something changed? Write to help@invisit.dev.