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Free Open-Source WhatsApp Business Inbox

Free Open-Source WhatsApp Business Inbox

A real WhatsApp Business inbox you can self-host for free. No per-message fees, no seat limits, no vendor lock-in.

Every WhatsApp Business platform charges you. Per message, per seat, per month. Some start free and quietly introduce pricing once you depend on them. Others are upfront about it: $49/month for three agents, $0.05 per conversation, enterprise pricing on request.

Pons is different. It's a full WhatsApp Business inbox — conversations, media, delivery receipts, multi-user — that's completely free and open source. You pay Meta's own Cloud API fees (which are fractions of a cent per conversation in most markets) and nothing else.

What you actually get

Pons isn't a toy or a weekend project with a README full of "coming soon" badges. It's a working product:

  • Real-time inbox with conversations, contacts, message status (sent, delivered, read)
  • Media handling — images, videos, and documents are automatically downloaded to your storage because Meta's media URLs expire after 5 minutes
  • Multi-tenant — manage multiple WhatsApp Business numbers from one dashboard
  • Team access — invite members with owner, admin, or member roles
  • 24-hour window tracking — see at a glance which conversations are open for free-form messaging and which need templates
  • MCP server — let AI assistants read and send WhatsApp messages through the Model Context Protocol

That last point is what makes Pons unique. No other WhatsApp inbox — paid or free — has native MCP support.

How it compares

There are other open-source WhatsApp projects out there. Here's how they stack up:

| | Pons | Receevi | Whatomate | Evolution API | |:--|:-----|:--------|:----------|:--------------| | Real inbox UI | Yes | Basic | Yes | No (API only) | | Official Cloud API | Yes | Yes | Yes | No (Baileys) | | MCP server | Yes | No | No | No | | Multi-tenant | Yes | No | Limited | Yes | | Team roles | Yes | No | No | No | | Media auto-download | Yes | No | Partial | N/A | | Self-hostable | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | | License | MIT | MIT | AGPL | Apache 2.0 |

Receevi is a clean, minimal webhook receiver. It stores messages and shows them in a UI, but there's no team management, no MCP, and no multi-account support.

Whatomate has a richer UI with templates and contact management, but it's AGPL-licensed (which matters for commercial use) and doesn't support MCP.

Evolution API is powerful but uses Baileys — a reverse-engineered WhatsApp Web protocol. This means your account can get banned. It's also API-only with no built-in inbox UI.

Pons uses the official WhatsApp Cloud API exclusively. No ban risk, no Terms of Service violations, and you get all the business features Meta provides: templates, read receipts, delivery status, and media.

The MCP angle

MCP is what turns Pons from "another WhatsApp dashboard" into something genuinely new. Once connected, your AI assistant can:

  • List your conversations and see who's waiting for a reply
  • Search across all your messages — "find that tracking number someone sent last week"
  • Read full conversation history with a specific contact
  • Send replies — both free-form text and pre-approved templates
  • React to messages with emoji

This works with Claude Desktop, Cursor, OpenCode, ChatGPT, or any MCP-compatible client. You create a scoped API key in Pons, add it to your client's config, and your AI can talk to WhatsApp.

The API keys are scoped for safety: you can create a read-only key for monitoring, a key that can read and write but not send, or a full-access key. This means you can give an AI agent access to read your conversations without worrying about it sending messages on your behalf.

Getting started

  1. Sign in at pons.chat with Google
  2. Create an account with your WhatsApp Business credentials (setup guide)
  3. Set your webhook in the Meta developer console to https://pons.chat/api/webhook
  4. Start chatting — messages appear in real-time

If you want MCP, create an API key and connect your client. If you want to self-host, clone the repo and follow the self-hosting guide.

Why free?

Pons is MIT-licensed. There's no paid tier, no premium features, no "contact sales" button. The hosted version at pons.chat is free to use.

The goal is simple: WhatsApp Business shouldn't require expensive middleware. Meta already provides the Cloud API. You just need something to turn it into a usable product. That's Pons.