Timeout or very slow sending of large media messages

When sending large media files (images, videos, audio, voice messages, or documents), the request may take a very long time to complete, return no response at all, or return a Timeout 524 error.

Why this happens

110 seconds is the maximum time Whapi.Cloud waits before responding to a media send or upload request. Processing a large file — uploading, encoding, and delivering it to WhatsApp — takes time proportional to its size and your connection speed. On large files, this can:

• Simply take noticeably longer than a regular text message, or

• In the worst case, exceed the 110-second limit, so your client never receives an HTTP response.

This applies to all media send/upload methods: image, video, audio, voice, document, and file upload.

⚠️ If the 110-second limit is hit, the file may still have finished sending on Whapi's side — you just didn't get the response back in time.

What to do

1. Check WhatsApp itself first. Before retrying, open the connected number's chat (or check the message list via the API) to confirm whether the file actually went out. This avoids sending a duplicate.

2. Try sending with "no_encode": true. This parameter skips Whapi's server-side re-encoding of the file, which often speeds up sending — both for slow transfers and for requests at risk of hitting the 110-second limit.

{
  "to": "14045648921",
  "media": "https://example.com/file.mp4",
  "no_encode": true
}