Check if a phone number is a WhatsApp Business account

The WhatsApp Business check answers two questions about a phone number: does it have a WhatsApp account, and is that account a WhatsApp Business account? You get registered (true, false or unknown) plus a business flag, with the time we checked. It works worldwide, in real time and in bulk jobs, and never returns profile details.

How can you tell if a WhatsApp number is a business account?

There are two ways: look in the app for one chat, or check the number through the API.

• In the app. Open the chat and tap the name at the top. A business account opens a business profile with whatever details the business chose to add, instead of a personal profile. Some businesses also show a Meta Verified badge, which "means a business has registered their information with Meta" (Meta, 6 June 2024). Most business accounts have no badge, so its absence says little.
• Through the API. Send the number with the check whatsapp.business. You get registered (true, false or unknown) and attributes.business (true for a business account, false for a regular one), without opening a chat or saving the number. For a list, run it as a bulk job.

Either way, a business account shows how the account was set up, not who owns it. Anyone can install the WhatsApp Business app.

What does the WhatsApp Business check tell you?

It reports whether a WhatsApp account is associated with the number and, if so, whether it was set up as a business account. WhatsApp launched the separate WhatsApp Business app for small businesses in January 2018 (WhatsApp blog). Larger companies reach customers through the WhatsApp business platform instead. Either way, a number carries one WhatsApp account at a time, so a business number is not also a personal account.

• registered: true and attributes.business: true: a WhatsApp Business account exists.
• registered: true and business: false: a regular WhatsApp account exists.
• registered: true and business: null: an account exists, but the business flag could not be determined this time.
• registered: false: conclusive answer, no account. registered: null: unknown, not charged.

The flag describes how the account is configured. It says nothing about who owns the number or whether the business is genuine.

Who uses it, and why?

The business flag helps where the difference between a consumer and a company matters.

• B2B lead verification. A sales lead that gives a company mobile number with a business account on WhatsApp is consistent with its claim. A lead claiming to be a company with no account at all may deserve a closer look. See lead verification.
• Marketplace and merchant onboarding. Platforms that onboard sellers, drivers or service providers can record whether the contact number is run as a business account, as one input to their review.
• Impersonation and fraud review. Scammers often pose as a company's support line. Knowing whether a number that contacted your customers is a business account helps a fraud team decide how to triage reports, together with a spam reputation check where it is available.
• Channel planning for consented messages. Messages from your own business account to a customer's business account behave like any other WhatsApp chat, but many businesses route business contacts to e-mail or account managers instead. Agencies cleaning client lists before a campaign can follow WhatsApp list hygiene for marketing agencies.

What do you get back?

One result per number in checks["whatsapp.business"]. The older top-level whatsapp object mirrors it and adds a business field, so v1 integrations keep working.

If you request whatsapp and whatsapp.business together, the two collapse into whatsapp.business, because it answers both.

How is it billed?

You pay per number, for conclusive answers only. You're not charged for inconclusive results (unknown, unsupported country, timeout, invalid, duplicate). A result with a conclusive registered value counts as conclusive even when business is null. The business check has its own real-time and bulk prices, which differ from the plain registration check, so see pricing for current rates. In a bulk job, the bulk price applies to groups of at least 132 numbers from the same country; smaller groups are checked the real-time way and priced at the real-time price, as the free job estimate shows before the job runs (see bulk jobs).

Repeat checks of the same number within the freshness window can be answered from your account's cache for free (cached: true, billed: false). Send max_age: 0 to force a fresh, billed check, and max_cost to cap what a request may cost.

What are the limits?

The check runs in real time (POST /v1/lookup, up to 100 numbers per request) and in bulk jobs (POST /v1/jobs, up to 50,000 numbers and e-mails per job) for numbers in every country.

• The business flag is filled more reliably in bulk jobs. Real-time answers may return business: null next to a conclusive registered value. If the flag is essential, run the list as a job with at least 132 numbers per country (smaller groups are checked the real-time way).
• Up to 20 checks per request; numbers × checks may not exceed 2,000 per lookup or 100,000 per job.
• Requests that look like sequential number ranges or generated e-mail lists are rejected (suspected_enumeration).
• A daily cap applies per account; GET /v1/limits shows what is left today.

How do I use it responsibly?

Check numbers you have a lawful reason to process: leads who contacted you, sellers applying to your platform, numbers reported to your fraud team. Don't use the flag to compile lists of businesses to message cold. Our acceptable use policy forbids unsolicited bulk messaging and range scanning, and WhatsApp's own business messaging rules require opt-in before a business messages someone. People whose numbers were checked can object via the opt-out form.

Example request

+447700900006 is the test number for a registered business account. The other test numbers behave as documented in test mode; for them business is false whenever the answer is conclusive.

curl https://api.mobilevalidate.com/v1/lookup \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer mv_test_publicSandboxn9ZgneuhR1B9CRfKG3fulym" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"numbers":["+447700900006"],"checks":["whatsapp.business"]}'

// npm install mobilevalidate · Node.js 20+ · save as check.mjs and run: node check.mjs
import { MobileValidate } from "mobilevalidate";

// Omit apiKey to read MOBILEVALIDATE_API_KEY from the environment.
const mv = new MobileValidate({ apiKey: "mv_test_publicSandboxn9ZgneuhR1B9CRfKG3fulym" });
const { data, error } = await mv.lookup({
  numbers: ["+447700900006"],
  checks: ["whatsapp.business"],
});
if (error) console.error(error.code, error.message);
else console.dir(data.results, { depth: null });

// Node.js 18+, Deno, Bun or the browser console (ES module: save as .mjs or use "type": "module").
const res = await fetch("https://api.mobilevalidate.com/v1/lookup", {
  method: "POST",
  headers: {
    Authorization: "Bearer mv_test_publicSandboxn9ZgneuhR1B9CRfKG3fulym",
    "Content-Type": "application/json",
  },
  body: JSON.stringify({
    numbers: ["+447700900006"],
    checks: ["whatsapp.business"],
  }),
});
console.log(res.status, res.headers.get("x-request-id"));
console.dir(await res.json(), { depth: null });

# pip install mobilevalidate-sdk
from mobilevalidate import MobileValidate

# Omit api_key to read MOBILEVALIDATE_API_KEY from the environment.
mv = MobileValidate(api_key="mv_test_publicSandboxn9ZgneuhR1B9CRfKG3fulym")
result = mv.lookup(numbers=["+447700900006"], checks=["whatsapp.business"])
print(result)

<?php
$ch = curl_init('https://api.mobilevalidate.com/v1/lookup');
curl_setopt_array($ch, [
    CURLOPT_POST => true,
    CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => true,
    CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER => [
        'Authorization: Bearer mv_test_publicSandboxn9ZgneuhR1B9CRfKG3fulym',
        'Content-Type: application/json',
    ],
    CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS => json_encode([
        'numbers' => ['+447700900006'],
        'checks' => ['whatsapp.business'],
    ]),
]);
$response = curl_exec($ch);
echo curl_getinfo($ch, CURLINFO_RESPONSE_CODE), PHP_EOL, $response, PHP_EOL;

package main

import (
	"fmt"
	"io"
	"net/http"
	"strings"
)

func main() {
	body := strings.NewReader(`{"numbers":["+447700900006"],"checks":["whatsapp.business"]}`)
	req, err := http.NewRequest("POST", "https://api.mobilevalidate.com/v1/lookup", body)
	if err != nil {
		panic(err)
	}
	req.Header.Set("Authorization", "Bearer mv_test_publicSandboxn9ZgneuhR1B9CRfKG3fulym")
	req.Header.Set("Content-Type", "application/json")
	res, err := http.DefaultClient.Do(req)
	if err != nil {
		panic(err)
	}
	defer res.Body.Close()
	out, _ := io.ReadAll(res.Body)
	fmt.Println(res.Status, string(out))
}

require "net/http"
require "json"

uri = URI("https://api.mobilevalidate.com/v1/lookup")
req = Net::HTTP::Post.new(uri)
req["Authorization"] = "Bearer mv_test_publicSandboxn9ZgneuhR1B9CRfKG3fulym"
req["Content-Type"] = "application/json"
req.body = JSON.generate({
  "numbers" => ["+447700900006"],
  "checks" => ["whatsapp.business"]
})

res = Net::HTTP.start(uri.host, uri.port, use_ssl: true) { |http| http.request(req) }
puts res.code, res.body

Response (excerpt, test mode: the first item of results):

{
  "kind": "phone",
  "input": "+447700900006",
  "e164": "+447700900006",
  "country": "GB",
  "number_status": "valid",
  "checks": {
    "whatsapp.business": {
      "service": "whatsapp.business",
      "status": "completed",
      "registered": true,
      "attributes": {
        "business": true
      },
      "confidence": "high",
      "confidence_score": 0.99,
      "checked_at": "2026-09-25T14:25:29.519Z",
      "cached": false,
      "age_seconds": 0,
      "billed": false,
      "reason": null,
      "poll_after_ms": null
    }
  },
  "whatsapp": {
    "service": "whatsapp.business",
    "status": "completed",
    "registered": true,
    "confidence": "high",
    "confidence_score": 0.99,
    "checked_at": "2026-09-25T14:25:29.519Z",
    "cached": false,
    "age_seconds": 0,
    "billed": false,
    "reason": null,
    "poll_after_ms": null,
    "business": true
  },
  "test": true
}