@Datrueld Hello!
@DrPonka is right about the proxy/tunnel being the likely culprit. You’re not alone here — there are a bunch of threads from the last few days with the exact same CONNECT tunnel failed, response 429 error. It’s a widespread issue hitting self-hosted instances right now.
What’s actually happening is Meta tries to verify your callback URL when you activate the WhatsApp Trigger, but your hosting provider’s DDoS protection or proxy layer is intercepting that request and returning a 429 before it ever reaches n8n. That’s why the error says “CONNECT tunnel failed” even if you’re not using n8n’s built-in tunnel.
If you’re on Hostinger VPS — that’s almost certainly it. Multiple users have confirmed Hostinger’s edge firewall silently blocks Meta’s traffic. One user proved it by checking Traefik logs and seeing zero incoming requests from Meta even though WhatsApp showed blue ticks on the messages.
The workaround that’s working for people is putting Cloudflare in front of your domain with proxy mode (orange cloud) enabled. This masks your server IP behind Cloudflare’s trusted IPs, which bypasses the aggressive DDoS filtering.
Also if you’re still on the default SQLite database with a lot of active workflows, migrating to PostgreSQL can help with dropped webhooks under load. At least one user in the related threads confirmed the issue went away after switching to Postgres.
Quick way to confirm the root cause — copy the workflow to n8n Cloud (even a trial) and test. If it works there but not self-hosted, it’s your hosting infra, not your config.
Related threads with the same issue: