Can software patents only be applied for invention patents?

As far as patent application is concerned, software patents belong to method patents, and method patents cannot apply for utility models;

This is because the protection object of the utility model is the product, not the method.

Therefore, only one invention can be applied. Of course, the invention patent requires higher creativity than the utility model, so it depends on whether the applied software is highly creative, so that you can get authorization when examining the invention patent (while the utility model does not conduct substantive examination).