SocialMate for WhatsApp: What It Is and What It Costs

What is SocialMate?

SocialMate is a self-hosted WhatsApp automation app published at socialmate.app. It runs as a desktop app on Windows, macOS or Linux — or headless on a VPS — and sends from your own WhatsApp number, keeping chats and contacts in local storage. Free is $0; Pro is a flat $99 a year or $10 a month.

What it is, precisely

• A desktop app for Windows, macOS and Linux. Install it, link your own number by QR code or pairing code, and send and receive from that number.
• Optionally headless. Since version 2.0 the same build runs on a Linux VPS through Docker or a systemd installer, managed from the same interface in a browser at /admin.
• Local by default. Chats and contacts stay in local storage on your machine. The only routine call to SocialMate's own servers is a licence check, and it carries no message content.
• Flat-priced. Priced per device, not per message.

Scale is why this category exists. The business side of the channel — templates, verification, per-message pricing — is the part that costs money.

How much does SocialMate cost?

Free is $0 forever with no card: one account, 200 messages a day. Pro is $99 a year ($8.25 a month equivalent) or $10 a month, with no per-message fee on any tier. Pro starts at a safe 500 messages a day per account and reaches 5,000 only through High-Volume Mode after 72 hours of warming.

The per-message model

Meta's WhatsApp Business Platform bills by message category — marketing, utility, authentication — and by country, per Meta's pricing documentation. Service messages inside the 24-hour customer service window stay free. Rates change by market and by policy, so model from the live rate card rather than a screenshot.

Resellers add a layer. Twilio's WhatsApp pricing page documents a per-message platform fee on top of Meta's charges. 360dialog, WATI and Respond.io put subscription or seat pricing over the same meter. Check each vendor page for current figures.

The flat-licence model

• Free: $0 forever, no card. One account, 200 messages a day, burst of 3 per 10 seconds.
• Pro Annual: $99 a year, an $8.25 a month equivalent. Pro Monthly: $10 a month, cancel anytime.
• Per account: 500 messages a day at the start; after 72 hours of warming, High-Volume Mode scales to 5,000 a day. Accounts are unlimited on Pro.
• Per device: one licence includes one device; extra machines are added as seats in the account portal.
• No per-message fee on any tier. The licence price is the same at a hundred messages or several thousand.

A 7-day Pro trial is opt-in from inside the app, asks only for an email, and needs no card.

The honest counterweight

A flat licence does not include template approval, a verified display name or Meta's official messaging-limit tiers. A team that needs those should buy the official route.

Do you need Meta approval to automate WhatsApp?

With SocialMate, no. There is no platform relationship to verify: install the app, link your own number by QR code, start at low volume. Meta's Cloud API is the route that requires business verification, a dedicated number and template approval — and its daily ceiling scales in published tiers.

What Meta requires

Meta's messaging-limits documentation sets the ceiling in tiers, starting at 1,000 unique customers per rolling 24 hours and scaling upward, gated by business verification, quality rating and volume. Check that table before relying on a number; Meta has revised it more than once. Separately, Meta's phone-number documentation states that a number registered on the Business Platform cannot run in the consumer WhatsApp app at the same time.

What this route requires

• Install the app and link your number by QR or pairing code. The phone keeps working normally.
• Start at low volume on a warmed number. Warming is not optional.
• Send to people who expect to hear from you.

No Meta Business Portfolio, no display-name review, no template queue.

What happened to the official self-hosted WhatsApp API?

Meta has deprecated its On-Premises API — the last officially supported way to run the WhatsApp Business API on hardware you control. Meta's deprecation notice carries the exact sunset date; check it rather than a screenshot. After that date, "official API" and "messages in Meta's cloud" describe the same deployment.

Why that matters to a buyer

Running Meta's own API on your own server was the one official route that kept messages on infrastructure you control. With it retired, the official path means Meta's cloud by architecture, not by preference. For a team whose constraint is data residency, that closes a door rather than changing a preference.

One policy signal worth knowing

TechCrunch reported in October 2025 that Meta had updated its WhatsApp Business terms to restrict "general-purpose AI assistants" on the platform. That is a reported change, attributed to TechCrunch and not confirmed here as policy text — but it matters to anyone planning to point a general LLM at an official business number.

What this route does instead

SocialMate links your existing number by QR code and stores the conversation locally. It is not the official API, and it does not claim to be.

Is SocialMate affiliated with WhatsApp or Meta?

No. SocialMate is independent software. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or partnered with WhatsApp or Meta, and it is not the official WhatsApp Business API or a Business Solution Provider. It cannot offer template approval, a verified display name or Meta's messaging-limit tiers.

What independence buys, and what it costs

• Buys: no Meta billing relationship in the path, so no per-message charge to pass through, and no approval queue before the first message.
• Costs: everything only Meta can grant. If your operation needs template-level analytics or a verified display name, this is the wrong tool, and the Cloud API comparison page says so plainly.

The one thing that leaves your machine

Chats and contacts never do. The only routine call to SocialMate's servers is a licence check, made roughly every 12 hours and on every launch, and it carries no message content. A network blip never demotes a paying customer — the app only drops to Free after about two days of running without reaching the licence server. On the headless VPS build, storage is your volume, on your server, behind your admin login.

Will automating WhatsApp get my number banned?

Bans are possible on every unofficial route, including SocialMate, and no tool can make a number unbannable. Risk responds to number age, warming, pacing, message variance and whether recipients expect to hear from you. SocialMate reduces those factors. It does not remove enforcement.

What risk actually responds to

• Number age and history. A new number has none. High-Volume Mode unlocks only after 72 hours of warming.
• Pacing. Identical intervals are not human. The burst ceiling is 3 sends per 10 seconds on Free and 5 on Pro; per-number rate limits, randomised delays, jitter and Safe/Balanced/Fast profiles break the pattern.
• Message variance. The same text to fifty contacts is a fingerprint. The duplicate-content guard blocks identical text or images to many contacts; High-Volume Mode is the only override, deliberately.
• Cold outreach. Messaging strangers is the highest-risk behaviour available, and SocialMate scores it explicitly.
• Recipient behaviour. Blocks and reports are the strongest signal of all. No engine manufactures consent.

What SocialMate changes, and what it does not

It changes mechanics: a real typing indicator and read receipts before replying, an adaptive throttle that slows as risk climbs, live 8-factor risk scoring, cold-outreach detection, and risk-based auto-resume for accounts that were cooled. It cannot change outcomes. WhatsApp can still disable a number, and if it does, your chat history stays on your disk while the number does not.

The framing that matters

SocialMate's own terms describe it as "not a bulk-messaging, broadcast, or spam platform", and that is accurate. The job is a batch: many individual, personalised messages to people already waiting on you — they ordered, they booked, they asked. Unsolicited bulk messaging is the fastest route to a ban, and no pacing profile makes it safe.

Evolution API, WAHA and SocialMate: what is the difference?

Evolution API and WAHA hand you an unofficial WhatsApp protocol client and usually a Dockerfile. SocialMate runs the same self-hosted economics with the anti-ban engine, GUI, storage, scheduling and upgrades already built. Both routes are unofficial, and both carry ban risk. The difference is the operating layer above the protocol.

What the open-source route gives you

Evolution API is an open-source REST API for WhatsApp, Docker-first and not made by Meta; it manages instances, sessions and webhooks capably. WAHA is the same shape with multiple engine options. Baileys is a TypeScript library, not a product at all.

You get a protocol client. You do not get the layer above it: anti-ban design, a GUI, an archive with full-text search, scheduling and queues, or upgrades and schema migrations across versions. For a team that wants a protocol to build on, that is a fair trade, honestly stated.

What SocialMate ships on top

• An anti-ban engine. Randomised delays and jitter, pacing profiles, per-number rate limits, session warming, a real typing indicator and read receipts before replying, an adaptive throttle, a duplicate-content guard, and live 8-factor risk scoring with cold-outreach detection.
• A desktop app with zero DevOps. Docker is an option, not an obligation: version 2.0 also runs headless on a VPS with a browser admin console.
• A local HTTP API that runs on Free. Read endpoints and plain text send cost nothing on any tier; 9 of the 35 webhook events are free. Pro adds media, polls, locations, contact cards, group operations, the smart queue, scheduled messages, the named tunnel and Agent Memory.

The full side-by-side lives on the self-hosted comparison page, and What Is Evolution API? The Open-Source WhatsApp API, Explained Honestly covers the open-source option without the marketing.

Does SocialMate work with n8n and MCP?

Yes, natively on both. A first-class n8n community node (n8n-nodes-socialmate, MIT, version 2.7.0) provides action and trigger nodes, and a native MCP server exposes 44 WhatsApp tools to Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor and Cline. Both sit on a local HTTP API that runs on Free.

The API is not a Pro feature

Read endpoints and plain text send work on every tier, alongside quoted replies, reactions, mark-as-read and the typing indicator — which produce no chat bubble, cost no message budget and do not raise the risk score. Of the 35 webhook events, 9 are free. Pro adds media send, polls, locations, contact cards, group operations, the smart queue, scheduled messages, the named tunnel and Agent Memory.

n8n: the memory angle

Install n8n-nodes-socialmate from n8n Community Nodes. The credential is scope-aware, isolated per account (this, selected, or all). Every operation is exposed to n8n's AI Agent as a callable tool when N8N_COMMUNITY_PACKAGES_ALLOW_TOOL_USAGE=true, so an agent can send, read, look up contacts and queue batches of personalised messages on its own. Get AI Context is the operation that earns its place: one call returns a whole conversation, role-mapped and token-windowed, replacing the fragile n8n memory node. Hub at /docs/n8n.

MCP: three steps, and the one people miss

1. Switch on the local API server in the app under API & Integrations. It is off by default, and forgetting this is the number-one reason MCP tools appear not to work.
2. Create an API key there (it looks like sm_<random> and is shown once).
3. Point the client at the server: npx -y socialmate-mcp with SOCIALMATE_API_KEY and SOCIALMATE_BASE_URL (default http://127.0.0.1:3456). Keep the -y, or npx can block on an install prompt inside a client with no terminal to answer it.

MCP is request/response with no inbound push, so an agent acts when asked; drive auto-replies from the n8n Trigger or a webhook. None of this is AI generation on SocialMate's side. Replies, summaries and triage generated by SocialMate remain coming soon. Your model is the brain; SocialMate is the hands and the memory.

How do you confirm you are on the right SocialMate site?

Everything official lives at socialmate.app, and licence keys are activated inside the installed app rather than typed into a website. The free tier is $0 forever with no card, and the 7-day Pro trial is opt-in from inside the app, so evaluating the software exposes no payment details.

Where each thing lives

• Product site and downloads: socialmate.app
• Documentation, API reference, n8n hub and MCP guide: socialmate.app/docs
• Pricing and the Free versus Pro split: socialmate.app/pricing
• Licence and device management: your account portal, reached from socialmate.app
• Comparison pages: socialmate.app/compare/

Three questions that settle it

1. Does the site ask for a licence key before you have installed anything? It should not. Keys are pasted into the app's "Already purchased?" box, which activates Pro in place.
2. Is there a free tier you can run first? There should be. SocialMate Free is $0 forever, no card, one account.
3. Can you read the API documentation before paying? You can. The docs are public, and the local HTTP API runs on Free.

If you arrived searching for socialmate.studio: this product is published at socialmate.app, and this page makes no claim about who operates the .studio domain. Install the app, link a number, send a few messages to people who are expecting them, and read the risk score afterwards.

Route	Pricing model	Setup and approval	Where conversations live	Ban / account risk
WhatsApp Cloud API (Meta direct)	Per message by category and country on Meta's rate card, per Meta's pricing documentation; service messages inside the 24-hour window are free	Meta Business Portfolio verification, a dedicated number, template approval for outbound	Meta's cloud	Official route. Risk shows up as template rejection and quality-rating pressure rather than a protocol ban, but enforcement is real
Twilio WhatsApp	Meta's per-message fees plus a per-message Twilio platform fee, documented on Twilio's WhatsApp pricing page	Twilio onboarding plus Meta business verification	Twilio and Meta	Same platform restrictions as the Cloud API
360dialog or WATI (BSP)	Subscription or seat fee layered over Meta's per-message fees; see vendor pricing	BSP onboarding plus Meta business verification	Vendor cloud and Meta	Same platform restrictions as the Cloud API
Evolution API or WAHA (open source)	No licence fee. Open-source projects. You pay for the server and your build time	None. Unofficial protocol, Docker-first, and everything above the protocol is yours to build	Your server	Unofficial. Ban risk is real, and pacing, monitoring and mitigation are yours to build
SocialMate	Flat licence per device: Free $0; Pro $99/year ($8.25/mo) or $10/month. No per-message fee. One device per licence, seats for extra machines	None. Your own number links by QR code; no Meta verification, no approval step	Local storage on your machine, or your VPS volume	Unofficial. Bans remain possible. The anti-ban engine reduces risk; it does not eliminate it

How to confirm you are on the right SocialMate site and evaluate it safely

1. Check the domain Confirm the page is on socialmate.app. Documentation sits under socialmate.app/docs, pricing under socialmate.app/pricing, and comparison pages under socialmate.app/compare/.
2. Download the free app before paying anything Free is $0 forever with no card: one WhatsApp account, 200 messages a day. You do not need to enter payment details to find out whether the software works.
3. Link your number and read the risk score Pair by QR code or pairing code, send a few messages to people who are expecting them, and watch the live risk score. Warm a new number before raising volume, and only then consider High-Volume Mode.
4. Start the Pro trial only if you need Pro features The 7-day trial is opt-in from inside the app, asks only for an email, and needs no card. A purchased licence key is pasted into the app's "Already purchased?" box and activates Pro in place.

Frequently asked questions

What is socialmate.studio?

It is a domain-shaped query, not a second product. The WhatsApp automation app called SocialMate is published at socialmate.app: a self-hosted desktop app for Windows, macOS and Linux, optionally headless on a VPS, that uses your own WhatsApp number under a flat licence with no per-message fee. This page makes no claim about who operates the .studio domain.

How much does SocialMate cost?

Free is $0 forever with no card: one account, 200 messages a day. Pro is $99 a year ($8.25 a month equivalent) or $10 a month, cancel anytime, with no per-message fee. Pro starts at 500 messages a day per account and reaches 5,000 only through High-Volume Mode after 72 hours of warming.

Is SocialMate affiliated with WhatsApp or Meta?

No. SocialMate is independent software. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or partnered with WhatsApp or Meta, and it is not the official WhatsApp Business API. It is not a Business Solution Provider, so it cannot offer template approval or Meta verification.

Do I need Meta Business verification to use SocialMate?

No. There is no platform relationship to verify. Install the app, link your own number by QR code, and start at low volume on a warmed number. Business verification is a requirement of Meta's own Cloud API, whose daily ceiling scales in published tiers from 1,000 unique customers per rolling 24 hours upward.

Can I keep using my existing WhatsApp number in the normal app?

Yes. SocialMate links your number as a linked device by QR or pairing code, so the phone keeps working as it does now. This differs from Meta's Cloud API, where, according to Meta's phone-number documentation, the registered number cannot be used with the consumer WhatsApp app at the same time.

Is SocialMate a bulk messaging tool?

No. SocialMate's own terms describe it as "not a bulk-messaging, broadcast, or spam platform", and that is accurate. It is built for batches of individual, personalised messages to people already waiting on you. Identical text to many contacts is blocked by the duplicate-content guard.

Does SocialMate have an API?

Yes, a local HTTP API with x-api-key authentication and outbound webhooks, and it runs on Free: read endpoints and plain text send cost nothing on any tier, and 9 of the 35 webhook events are free. Pro adds media send, polls, locations, contact cards, group operations, the smart queue, scheduled messages, the named tunnel and Agent Memory.

Does SocialMate work with n8n?

Natively. Install the n8n-nodes-socialmate community node (MIT, version 2.7.0) for a scope-aware credential, an action node and a trigger node. Every operation is usable as an n8n AI-Agent tool, and Get AI Context returns a role-mapped, token-windowed transcript that replaces a fragile memory node.

Can Claude Desktop or Cursor control WhatsApp through SocialMate?

Yes, through the native socialmate-mcp server and its 44 tools. Switch on the local API server first, since it is off by default and the most common reason tools fail to appear, then create an API key and point the client at npx -y socialmate-mcp with your key and base URL.

What happens if my number gets banned?

A ban can happen on any unofficial route and no tool can prevent or reverse one. What self-hosting changes is custody: your chat history, contacts and message cache sit on your own disk, so the record survives a disabled number. Recovery depends on WhatsApp's process, not on SocialMate.

Is there a free trial of Pro?

Yes, a 7-day Pro trial. It is opt-in from inside the app, asks only for an email, and needs no card. It is bound to the machine and limited to one per machine. At expiry nothing is deleted, and everything restores instantly on upgrade.

What is the difference between Evolution API and SocialMate?

Evolution API is an unofficial, Docker-first REST API that hands you a protocol client and leaves anti-ban, GUI, storage, scheduling and upgrades to you. SocialMate runs the same self-hosted model with that operating layer already built, as a desktop app or a headless VPS install. Both are unofficial and both carry ban risk.