WhatsApp initially supported four participants in a group video call.
WhatsApp introduced group voice and video calling in July 2018. A user could begin a one-to-one call and add up to three more people, creating a four-person call in total. The feature was rolled out gradually for Android and iPhone users after being announced earlier that year.
The four-person limit was an early launch limit, not WhatsApp’s permanent capacity. WhatsApp later expanded group calls substantially, eventually allowing much larger calls. This creates a common mix-up: a question about the first version of group calling has a different answer from a question about the modern maximum.
Before group calling arrived, WhatsApp had introduced one-to-one video calls in November 2016. The 2018 update therefore extended an existing calling feature rather than launching video calling from scratch. At launch, WhatsApp’s four-person capacity was comparable to some competing consumer video-call services, though later competitors and WhatsApp itself increased their limits.