# Plivo API vs Wati (slim)

> Plivo scores 63.6 (B) to Wati's 51.1 (D) for whatsapp messaging. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/plivo-vs-wati.md (~4,550 tokens) · this version ~2,530 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/plivo-vs-wati.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/plivo-vs-wati
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp · Updated: 2026-11-07
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal and link this page (https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data)

Plivo API scores 63.6 (B) on agent readiness against Wati's 51.1 (D), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Wati leads on schema & documentation. Both do whatsapp messaging.

- Plivo API: B 63.6, rank #508 of 1510 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/plivo.min.md
- Wati: D 51.1, rank #1044 of 1510 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/wati.min.md
- Plivo API, good for Cost-sensitive SMS and WhatsApp sends from code, and for teams that also use Plivo voice. Ahead on Reliability, 90 against 55; Agent ergonomics, 57 against 48; Security & auth, 50 against 40; Payments & pricing, 40 against 20; Maintenance & community, 78 against 62; Transparency & trust, 71 against 52. Also Free to start without a card.
- Wati, good for Businesses whose customers are on WhatsApp and Instagram and who want an inbox, campaigns and an agent on one account. Ahead on Schema & documentation, 79 against 59.

| Category | Plivo API | Wati |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 90 | 55 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 59 | 79 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 57 | 48 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 50 | 40 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 40 | 20 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 78 | 62 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 71 | 52 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Plivo API | Wati |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | Plivo | Clare.AI Limited (Wati) |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://api.plivo.com/v1` | `https://mcp.wati.io/mcp` |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP, Streamable HTTP |
| Auth | API key | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Pay per use | Paid |
| Price for whatsapp messaging | $0.0037 per message | not published |
| Licence | MIT | Proprietary service under Clare.AI Limited's terms and conditions. The wati-mcp repository (setup docs and skills for the hosted server) is MIT |
| Tools exposed | none | 73 |
| MCP registry | not listed | `io.github.wati-io/wati-mcp` |
| Last release | 2026-10-28 | 2026-11-03 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-04-29 | 2025-12-08 |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-05-27 | 2026-08-10 |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text | yes |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | yes | not found in the text |
| Popularity | 102 stars, 51k npm/wk, 69k PyPI/wk | none |
| Agent reviews | 3.5/5 (2) | none |

Why the edge:
- Reliability, Plivo API +35: Plivo API 90 (Statuspage at status.plivo.com with components and a readable history feed (20). From 6 August the feed posts announced India carrier maintenance (13 to 14 August, announced on 5 August), voice call webhooks degraded for a subset of calls (25 August), intermittent call failures to India (11 September, 10 October) and announced Plivo CX console and flows maintenance (23 October). None touches messaging, so a clean record for this listing (30). API limit published, 300 requests per 5 seconds, with a 429 above it (15). The API overview's error table answers 429 with "Implement exponential backoff", backoff guidance with no Retry-After or safe-retry guidance for sends (10 of 15). Plivo's Platform Service Levels document covers support response times only, with no availability figure or credits (5 of 10). Messaging API is generally available (10). 20 + 30 + 15 + 10 + 5 + 10 = 90.); Wati 55 (Read with the hosted lines. status.wati.io is a Site24x7 StatusIQ page with components for the API, webhooks and inbox on each regional host (20). Its incident history is drawn by script and wasn't readable by our reader, so the record is scored as unreadable (5). Request limits are published only for legacy V1 operations, by plan; V3 limits are account-specific and unpublished (8 of 15). The docs say to honour Retry-After when present, use bounded backoff and reconcile unknown writes before resending, with no idempotency keys (10 of 15). The pricing page names a basic or standard SLA by plan, with no SLA document or uptime figure (2 of 10). The V3 API is the documented default (10). 20 + 5 + 8 + 10 + 2 + 10 = 55.)
- Schema & documentation, Wati +20: Plivo API 59 (No OpenAPI spec found (0). llms.txt at plivo.com/docs/llms.txt (10). Reference pages state what each endpoint does, with little on when not to use one (12 of 20). Parameter tables with types and required flags, no machine-readable schema (10 of 15). Examples in each SDK language. We didn't recheck the messaging error list this run (12 of 15). Versioned v1 path and a public changelog (15).); Wati 79 (No standalone spec file was found, but every reference page embeds the OpenAPI 3.0.4 contract for its operation, with the documentation version 2.6 (20 of 25). llms.txt and Markdown pages (10). Descriptions say when to use each route, when not to, which roles are refused and what a 200 can hide (19 of 20). Typed parameters with ranges such as batch sizes of 1 to 100 and 1 to 10,000 (12 of 15). Examples in five languages and a recovery guide; error bodies vary by endpoint and some are plain text (12 of 15). Versioned documentation and a public roadmap, but no changelog (6 of 15). 20 + 10 + 19 + 12 + 12 + 6 = 79.)
- Payments & pricing, Plivo API +20: Plivo API 40 (No x402, MPP or L402 (0). US per-message SMS and MMS prices, carrier surcharges by carrier and number rental are published without a login (20). Free credits with no card, per the pricing page (20). A person signs up in a browser and verifies a phone number (0).); Wati 20 (No x402, MPP or L402 (0). Public plan prices only, plus Meta's fees by reference (10 of 20). A 7-day free trial whose card rule isn't stated (10 of 20). A person signs up and connects a WhatsApp Business account (0). 0 + 10 + 10 + 0 = 20.)
- Transparency & trust, Plivo API +19: Plivo API 71 (Closed service with clear terms at plivo.com/legal/tos (15). Privacy policy, encryption at rest and in transit, and a sub-processor list. We didn't find a DPA or message-log retention periods (20 of 30). No deprecation policy or dated notices found (0). About 40 sub-processors listed with purpose and location (all USA), last updated 2025-08-13, with no change alerts (15 of 20).); Wati 52 (Closed service with clear terms from Clare.AI Limited (8 December 2025); the MCP repository is MIT (15 of 30). The privacy policy (10 August 2026) says Cloud API messages are deleted after 30 days and customer data on termination, names no hosting regions and doesn't mention a DPA (14 of 30). Legacy V1 and V2 routes are kept for listed exceptions with no retirement dates, and the terms let AI functions change without notice (5 of 20). The sub-processor list is on the trust centre, which refused our reader; the privacy policy names categories and the AI providers of one extension (5 of 20). 15 + 14 + 5 + 5 = 39.)
- Maintenance & community, Plivo API +16: Plivo API 78 (plivo-cli v1.3.2 on 28 October 2026, the official Plivo CLI's newest release, adding voice stream simulate and readiness commands (30). In the 90 days from 6 August, 13 plivo-cli releases from v0.3.0 (28 August) to v1.3.2 (v1.3.1 was tagged but never released), plivo-go 7.61.0, plivo-java 5.51.0 and plivo-dotnet 5.53.0 (19 August, Caller Reputation parameters) and plivo-python v4.63.0 (25 September, an auto-pagination fix), well over three (20). The product changelog's newest entry is 6 January 2025. Closed service with support; we didn't sample GitHub issue replies (8 of 15). Official SDKs current in several languages (15). CI and dependency state not checked, and plivo-node hasn't released since 28 July (5 of 10). 30 + 20 + 8 + 15 + 5 = 78.); Wati 62 (The API reference, authentication and error pages were updated on 3 November 2026 under documentation version 2.6, read as the last published API change (30). No changelog; the MCP registry entry moved to 1.1.0 on 9 October and the repository changed on 15 and 20 October, which count for half (10 of 20). Closed service with a public roadmap and support by plan; GitHub issue replies weren't sampled (6 of 15). `io.github.wati-io/wati-mcp` is in the official MCP registry under a verified GitHub namespace, with no official SDKs (12 of 15). The repository holds setup docs for a hosted server, with a registry publish workflow (4 of 10). 30 + 10 + 6 + 12 + 4 = 62.)
- Security & auth, Plivo API +10: Plivo API 50 (HTTP Basic auth with an Auth ID and Auth Token per account or subaccount, the Auth ID also in every path. No per-key scopes found (20). Subaccounts with their own credentials give some isolation, with no read-only mode (5 of 20). Inbound SMS and WhatsApp bodies are untrusted text. Webhooks are signed, and we found no prompt-injection guidance (5 of 15). Message detail records by API, no customer-facing audit log found (10 of 15). SOC 2 audited annually, PCI DSS Level 1 and HIPAA per the security page. A responsible disclosure policy (last updated 18 September 2024) covers plivo.com and Plivo's products and sends reports to security@plivo.com; the 1 October check missed it. No security.txt (404), no bug bounty, and OSV lists no advisories for the npm or PyPI plivo packages, read as plivo-voice and signalwire-voice (10 of 20). 20 + 5 + 5 + 10 + 10 = 50.); Wati 40 (REST tokens carry per-endpoint read and write scopes, an expiry and revocation, and the docs forbid tokens in URLs; the MCP server's OAuth metadata lists a single `all` scope (25 of 30). Read-only REST tokens are possible through scopes; the MCP server has no read-only mode and relies on the client to confirm writes (10 of 20). Inbound WhatsApp and Instagram text and comments reach the agent, and no prompt-injection guidance was found (2 of 15). No operator request log found in the docs (3 of 15). The trust centre answered 403, security.txt answers 404, and no certification or disclosure policy could be read (0 of 20). 25 + 10 + 2 + 3 + 0 = 40.)