Turn a phone number into a wa.me click-to-chat link with the first message already written.
A click-to-chat link is the official WhatsApp way to start a conversation with someone who does not have your number saved. The format is wa.me/ followed by the phone number in international style — country code, area code and number, digits only, with no plus sign, spaces, parentheses or dashes — and an optional ?text= parameter carrying a pre-filled message. Opening it on a phone launches the app; opening it on a desktop launches WhatsApp Web or the desktop client. No API, no WhatsApp Business account and no plugin is required.
Getting the number right is where most links break, so this generator normalises it for you: every non-digit is stripped, leading zeros are dropped (the 0 you dial before an area code in Brazil, or the 00 international prefix), and if you already typed the country code it is detected instead of being added twice — with a length check so a Rio Grande do Sul area code of 55 is never mistaken for the +55 country code. Brazilian numbers are validated as 10 or 11 national digits, and each other country in the list has its own expected length. The message is encoded with encodeURIComponent, which is what keeps accents, emojis, ampersands and line breaks (encoded as %0A) intact instead of truncating the text at the first special character.
The result works well as a support button on a site, as the link in an Instagram bio, as the destination of an ad, or printed on a menu or shop window — for that last case, generate a QR code pointing to the same link with the QR code tools on Vai.la. Because wa.me links with a long pre-filled message get ugly fast, shortening the finished link keeps it presentable and gives you a click count for free. Your number and your message never leave this page: the link is assembled entirely in your browser.
https://wa.me/
No. Click-to-chat links work with any WhatsApp account, personal or business, on iOS, Android, WhatsApp Web and the desktop app.
No, and that is the whole point of the link — it opens a conversation with a number the visitor has never saved.
Almost always the country code or a leading zero. The number must be country code + area code + number with digits only — for Brazil that is 55 followed by 10 or 11 digits, with no 0 before the area code.
Yes. Both survive the encoding — line breaks travel as %0A and emojis as percent-encoded UTF-8 — and WhatsApp renders them as typed.
Yes. The text only lands in the input box; nothing is sent until the person taps send, and they can rewrite or delete it first.
No. Normalisation and link building run in JavaScript on your device, and nothing is transmitted or stored.
Vai.la turns any URL into a short link with click statistics, QR Code and your own biolink.
Vai.la is not responsible for how the tools are used or for decisions made based on their results.