No in whatsapp you can’t limit requests to only your contacts. It’s only with groups. I’ve checked and googled.

I’ve had way more scam calls, groups and texts on whatsapp than on Telegram.

So I definitely don’t understand why anyone would like whatsapp.

With Telegram you can easily limit any communication requests to only come from your list of contacts while that is impossible with WA. The only way you can get out of getting scam calls is by turning on “mute unknown calls” and “limit groups to contacts” but the calls will still pop up and you will still get chat requests so you will have to block and delete each one of them manually.

Instead of just limiting all communication to your contacts like on telegram.