How to Get a WhatsApp Profile Photo, About Text & Last Seen via API

Published August 23, 2026

A registered WhatsApp number often has a public footprint: a profile photo, an “about” or status line, and presence signals like online/last-seen. For lead enrichment, identity verification, and research, that public profile is valuable — and you can fetch it programmatically.

This guide shows how to pull a WhatsApp number’s avatar, about text, and presence using the profile lookup operations.

The two-step flow

Profile lookups are gated behind a registration check. That keeps things cheap: you confirm the number exists first, then spend enrichment credits only on real accounts.

  1. Check registration with check-exist-by-phone — for registered numbers it returns a userHash identifier.
  2. Fetch profile data by passing that userHash to the profile operations.

Step 1 — Get the userHash

curl "https://api.opendata-api.com/api/project/whatsapp/check-exist-by-phone?key=YOUR_API_KEY&phoneNumber=15551234567"

Copy the userHash from the response.

Step 2 — Fetch profile fields

Profile photo (avatar):

curl "https://api.opendata-api.com/api/project/whatsapp/get-avatar?key=YOUR_API_KEY&userHash=USER_HASH"

About / status text:

curl "https://api.opendata-api.com/api/project/whatsapp/get-about?key=YOUR_API_KEY&userHash=USER_HASH"

Presence / last seen:

curl "https://api.opendata-api.com/api/project/whatsapp/get-presence?key=YOUR_API_KEY&userHash=USER_HASH"

Privacy settings apply. Whether a field comes back populated depends on the account’s own WhatsApp privacy settings — a user who hides their photo or last-seen simply returns empty data for that field.

Use cases

  • Lead enrichment — add a face and context to inbound leads before sales outreach.
  • Identity signals — a real photo and about text help distinguish genuine accounts from throwaways.
  • Activity scoring — presence/last-seen hints at how active (and reachable) a contact is.
  • Business discovery — pair with the business-profile lookup for company details.

Best practices

  • Always check first — don’t call profile operations for numbers that failed registration.
  • Cache userHash so you don’t re-pay for the check on repeat enrichments.
  • Handle empty fields gracefully — hidden-by-privacy is normal, not an error.
  • Stay compliant — only enrich numbers you have a lawful basis to process, and respect WhatsApp’s terms.

Try it

Fetch a profile live on the WhatsApp Number Validation page, or read the get-avatar, get-about, and get-presence references. See pricing for per-request costs.