Speech delay or autism????

I have a 20 month old son. I thought he had a speech delay, but I think he may have autism.

He is happy, he is social, he is very engaged. He doesn’t like to play alone, he likes to feed his little sister. He brings us over toys, he shows us things by lifting them up. If his sister does something funny, he’ll copy her, so we look at him instead of her. He does pretend play, he mimics. He’s extremely affectionate, actually pretty clingy.

BUT

He only says 5 words. And my biggest thing is, he doesn’t point. At first I thought it wasn’t a big deal, but after doing a lot of googling, I found out that pointing is the difference between a speech delay and autism. If I told up 2 choices of things, he will reach towards what he wants, but very rarely does an actual point. Everything I read online says not pointing is a huge autism red flag.

He is being evaluated by a EI soon. Waiting for them to call back to set up an evaluation. His pediatrician wasn’t concerned because he scored a 2 on the mchat, which is considered low risk. But I am still concerned because nothing I find online gives me any kind of comfort.

Is this true about the pointing??? Does anyone have any kids that had a speech delay but also didn’t point???