Telegram (also known as Telegram Messenger) is a cloud-based, cross-platform social media and instant messaging (IM) service. It was originally launched for iOS on 14 August 2013 and Android on 20 October 2013. It allows users to exchange messages, share media and files, and hold private and group voice or video calls as well as public livestreams. It is available for Android, iOS, Windows, macOS, Linux, and web browsers. Telegram offers end-to-end encryption in voice and video calls,[8] and optionally in private chats if both participants use a mobile device.
Telegram also has social networking features, allowing users to post stories, create large public groups with up to 200,000 members, or share one-way updates to unlimited audiences in so-called channels.[9]
Telegram was founded in 2013 by Nikolai and Pavel Durov.[10][11] Its servers are distributed worldwide with several data centers, while the headquarters are in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.[12][13] Telegram is the most popular instant messaging application in parts of Europe, Asia, and Africa.[14][15] It was the most downloaded app worldwide in January 2021,[16][17] with 1 billion downloads globally as of late August 2021. As of 2024, registration to Telegram requires either a phone number and a smartphone or one of a limited number of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) issued in December 2022.[18]
As of March 2025, Telegram has more than 1 billion monthly active users,[19] with India as the country with the most users.
History
Development
Telegram was launched in 2013 by the brothers Nikolai and Pavel Durov. Previously, the pair founded the Russian social network VK, which they left in 2014, saying it had been taken over by the government.[21] Pavel sold his remaining stake in VK and left Russia after resisting government pressure.[22] Nikolai created the MTProto protocol that is the basis for the messenger, while Pavel provided financial support and infrastructure through his Digital Fortress fund.[23] Telegram Messenger states that its end goal is not to bring profit,[24][25] but it is not structured as a non-profit organization.[26]
Telegram is registered as a company in the British Virgin Islands[7] and as an LLC in Dubai.[27][28] It does not disclose where it rents offices or which legal entities it uses to rent them, citing the need to “shelter the team from unnecessary influence” and protect users from governmental data requests.[29] After Pavel Durov left Russia in 2014, he was said to be moving from country to country with a small group of computer programmers consisting of 15 core members.[22][30]
While a former employee of VK said that Telegram had employees in Saint Petersburg,[31] Pavel said the Telegram team made Berlin, Germany, its headquarters in 2014,[32] but failed to obtain German residence permits for everyone on the team and moved to other jurisdictions in early 2015.[31] Since 2017, the company has been based in Dubai.[33] Its data centers are spread across a complex corporate structure of shell companies in various jurisdictions to avoid compliance with government subpoenas.[34][35] The company says this is done “to protect the data that is not covered by end-to-end encryption”. Telegram’s FAQ page says it does not process any requests related to illegal content in chats and group chats, and that “to this day, we have disclosed 0 bytes of user messages to third parties, including governments”.[35] However, according to Pavel, Telegram has disclosed data for 203 legal requests from the Brazilian government from Q1 to Q3 of 2024, and a total of 6,992 legal requests from India, its largest market, during the same period.[36] Users can check how many legal requests from their country have been processed by Telegram using the official transparency bot.[36]
Usage
In October 2013, Telegram announced that it had 100,000 daily active users.[23]
On 24 March 2014, Telegram announced that it had reached 35 million monthly users and 15 million daily active users.[37] In October 2014, South Korean government surveillance plans drove many of its citizens to switch to Telegram from the Korean app KakaoTalk.[32] In December 2014, Telegram announced that it had 50 million active users, generating 1 billion daily messages, and that it had 1 million new users signing up on its service every week,[38] traffic doubled in five months with 2 billion daily messages.[39] In September 2015, Telegram announced that the app had 60 million active users and delivered 12 billion daily messages.[40]
In February 2016, Telegram announced that it had 100 million monthly active users, with 350,000 new users signing up every day, delivering 15 billion messages daily.[41] In December 2017, Telegram reached 180 million monthly active users.[42] By March 2018, that number had doubled, with Telegram reaching 200 million monthly active users.[43]
On 14 March 2019, Pavel said that “3 million new users signed up for Telegram within the last 24 hours.”[44] He did not specify what prompted this flood of new sign-ups, but the period matched a prolonged technical outage experienced by Facebook and its family of apps, including Instagram.[45] According to the US Securities and Exchange Commission, as of October 2019, Telegram had 300 million monthly active users worldwide.[46]
On 24 April 2020, Telegram announced that it had reached 400 million monthly active users.[47]
On 8 January 2021, Pavel announced in a blog post that Telegram had reached “about 500 million” monthly active users.[48] In August, TechCrunch reported that India was Telegram’s largest market, with a 22% share of total installs coming from the region.[49] Telegram then gained over 70 million new users as a result of an outage which affected Facebook and its affiliates on 5 October 2021.[50]
On 19 June 2022, Telegram announced that it had reached 700 million monthly active users.[51][52]
In July 2023, Telegram surpassed 800 million monthly active users,[53] later reaching 900 million in March 2024[54] and 950 million in July 2024.[55] In March 2025, Pavel Durov announced that Telegram surpassed 1 billion monthly active users.
Features
Messaging
To start using Telegram, a user must sign-up with their phone number or an anonymous +888 number purchased from the Fragment blockchain platform.[58][59] Changing the phone number in the app will automatically reassign the user’s account to that number without the need to export data or notify their contacts.[58][60][61] Phone numbers are hidden by default with only a user’s contacts being able to see them. Sign-ups can only be done via an Android or iOS device.[62][63]
Upon signing up, messages sent and received by the user are tied to their number and a custom username,[64] not the device. Any Telegram content is synced between the user’s logged-in devices automatically through cloud storage, except for device-specific secret chats. By default, any account that is inactive for 6 months is automatically deleted, though the period can be shortened or extended up to 18 months through the Settings menu. Telegram allows groups, bots and channels with a verified social media or Wikipedia page to be verified, but not individual user accounts.[65][66]
Messages can contain formatted text, media, files up to 2 GB (4 GB with Premium), locations and audio or video messages recorded in-app. Telegram messages in private chats can be edited up to 48 hours after they were sent with an “edited” icon appearing to reflect changes, as well as deleted for both sides without a trace. Users have the option to delete messages and whole chats for both themself and other participants. Chats can be exported to preserve them via Telegram’s Desktop client, although the saved data cannot be imported back into the user’s account.
Users can however import chat history, including both messages and media, from WhatsApp, Line, and KakaoTalk due to data portability, either making a new chat to hold the messages or adding them to an existing one.[67][68]
As users can be logged into many devices at once, starting to type a message on one of them will create a “cloud draft” that syncs with others, so typing can be started on a phone and finished on a laptop, for example.[69]
Any message in any chat can be translated by opening the context menu. Premium users have the option to translate the whole chat with one click. Users can hide the translate button for messages written in specific languages.
Reactions can be used to respond to a message with emoji, with Premium users having access to more reaction choices and the ability to leave more reactions per message. Reactions are always on in private chats and can be enabled by admins in groups and channels with the ability to allow or exclude specific reactions. Reaction emoji play an animation with special effects when sent.[70][71]
Users can also send stickers, which can be static, animated or video.[72] Sticker packs are made by Telegram designers as well as regular users and can be shared via links. They use the WebP[73] or WebM format and do not require special software to create or upload. Some stickers feature full-screen effects that play out when first sent or when tapped.
Users can schedule messages to send at a particular time or when their conversation partner comes online,[74] as well as choose to send a message “without sound” without a notification. Messages from private chats can be forwarded, with an option to hide the original sender’s identity or to hide captions from media messages. Forwarded messages also maintain reply formatting, able to show which messages in a thread are replying to others. Any user can also send a message to a special “Saved Messages” chat as a form of bookmarking them. The contents of the chat are only visible to the user.
Chats can be sorted into folders to organize them with preset options like “Unread” and “Muted? or custom separations such as “Work” and “Family”. Premium users have the ability to set any chat folder as the default screen in the app while regular users will always see the full chat list when first opening the app.
Users have the option to start a one-on-one, end-to-end-encrypted “Secret Chat”,[75] which remains accessible only on the device where it was started and self-destructs upon logging out.[23][76][77] Secret Chats restrict screenshotting from Android devices and warn when one is taken from an iOS device, while also hiding the chat contents from the final image.[78] Secret Chats support perfect forward secrecy and switch encryption keys after a key has been used 100 times or a week has passed.[79][60][61][80][81] Secret Chats are only available on Android, iOS and macOS clients.[82]
Both in Secret and regular chats, messages can self-destruct after they are read, disappearing for all parties after a period set by the user, ranging from 1 day to 1 year.[83][84]
Groups and channels
Telegram users can create and join groups and channels. Groups are large multi-user chats that support up to 200,000 members and can be public or private. Users can freely join public chats and find them using the in-app search function, while private chats require an invitation. They support flexible admin rights and can use bots for moderation to prevent spam and unwanted activity. Groups can be split into topics, effectively creating subgroups dedicated to various subjects with separate settings for each.[85]
Admins can choose to hide the list of members in a group, as well as post anonymously themselves.[86] Similarly, groups and channels can have content protection enabled, which prevents screenshots, forwarding and downloading of media.[87][88] Ownership of channels and groups can be transferred to one of the admins if the owner wishes to give up their rights.
Groups support threaded replies, where bringing up the context menu on a message allows one to open a screen with a thread of replies made to that message and the subsequent ones in the thread. Specific users can be tagged in the group by adding @username to a message, where “username” is that particular user’s username.
Groups and channels also support polls, which can be open or anonymous and can support multiple choices. When forwarded, polls retain the answer data and any votes cast in other chats will count toward the overall total.[89][90]
Channels are one-way feeds where the channel owner or admins can post content while followers can only read, react and comment, if comments have been enabled.[91][92] Channels can be created for broadcasting messages to an unlimited number of subscribers.[93] The list of those who subscribe to a channel can only be seen by its admins. Posting in the channel is anonymous, though admins can choose to add signatures to their posts. Channels offer detailed statistics on view counts, user growth and interactions, also visible only to admins.[94]
Channel owners are able to use Telegram to create giveaways, randomly awarding channel members with prizes such as Telegram Premium subscriptions to their followers, based on certain criteria.[95] Users with a Telegram Premium subscription have a number of “boosts” that they can give to channels, which allow the channel to “level up” and unlock features, such as the ability to customize messages or post stories as the channel.[96]
In December 2019, Bloomberg News moved their messenger-based newsletter service from WhatsApp to Telegram after the former banned bulk and automated messaging.[97][98] Other news services with official channels on the platform include the Financial Times,[99] Business Insider[100] and The New York Times.[101]
Channels have also been used by governments and heads of state. Notable examples include Volodymyr Zelenskyy[102] and Emmanuel Macron.[103] Channels have been used by journalists in oppressive regimes to establish independent news networks.[104]
Telegram Mini Apps
Telegram also provides an open API for the creation of custom bots which can perform various tasks, integrate other services into Telegram chats, or work as mini apps or games.[105][106] Most of them work on the 8XR game engine.[107][108] In July 2024, Telegram Mini Apps reached 500 million monthly active users.[109]
Video and voice calls
Since 2017, Telegram users have been able to initiate one-on-one calls in private chats. Calls are end-to-end encrypted and prioritize peer-to-peer connections. Video calls were introduced in August 2020.[110][111] According to Telegram, there is a neural network working to learn various technical parameters about a call to provide better quality of service for future uses.[112]
Telegram added group voice chats in December 2020[113] and group video chats in June 2021.[114] Group voice and video chats support picture-in-picture video, as well as sharing one’s screen, creating a recording of the call, noise suppression and selective muting.[115][116][117] In channels, users can start a livestream, that is able to integrate with third-party apps such as OBS Studio and XSplit.[118][119]
Once launched, a group voice chat will remain active and open to all group members until an admin specifically closes it.[120]
In April 2025, Telegram launched secure group calls with end-to-end encryption by using blockchain-like encryption technology. Group calls can handle up to 200 participants, and provide voice/video calls and screen sharing.[121]
Privacy and security features
By default, logging into Telegram requires either an SMS message sent to the registered number or a code message sent to one of the active sessions on another device. Users have the option to set a two-step verification password and add a recovery email.[122] In late 2022, options to Sign in with Apple and Sign In with Google or with an email address were added.[123] Whenever a new device successfully logs in to a user’s account, a special service notification is sent and a login alert is displayed in the chat list of their other devices.[124]
In the Privacy and Security submenu of Settings, users have the option to hide their “Last Seen” status,[125] which reflects the last time the user opened a Telegram app. Hiding the status obfuscates the exact time of the user being online and hides the statuses of other people respectively. Similarly, users can hide their phone number and profile photo from people based on categories such as Non-Contacts or by adding exceptions. When a user chooses to hide their profile photo, they have an option of setting an alternative “Public Profile Picture” that will be shown instead.[126]
In the same menu, users can restrict the circle of people who can call them or invite them to groups and channels, while Premium users also have the option to restrict who can send them text and voice messages.[127]
The Devices submenu shows all of the active devices on a user’s account and allows them to remotely log out from those devices.[128]
Data and storage settings
Telegram clients have the ability to turn off media autoplay and automatic downloads for both WiFi and mobile data, adjusting them for media type and size. Auto download settings can also be applied based on chat type such as group, channel or private.
Cache settings can be changed to automatically clear the cache once it reaches a certain size or a certain time passes. The interface shows users a visual representation of their storage usage and also lets them sort their cached media by size to clear specific items.[129]
Bots
In June 2015, Telegram launched a platform for third-party developers to create bots.[130] Bots are Telegram accounts operated by programs. They can respond to messages or mentions directly or can be invited into groups, and are able to perform tasks, integrate with other programs and host mini apps.[131][132] Bots can accept online payments made with credit cards or Apple Pay.[133] The Dutch website Tweakers reported that an invited bot can potentially read all group messages, when the bot controller changes the access settings silently at a later point in time. Telegram pointed out that it considered implementing a feature that would announce such a status change within the relevant group.[134]
There are also inline bots, which can be used from any chat screen. To activate an inline bot, a user must type the bot’s username and a query in the message field. The bot then will offer its content. The user can choose from that content and send it within a chat.[135] Certain approved bots are also able to integrate into the attachment menu, making them accessible in any chat.[136]
Bots can handle transactions provided by Paymentwall, Yandex.Money, Stripe, Ravepay, Razorpay, QiWi and Google Pay for different countries.[137] Bots power Telegram’s gaming platform, which utilizes HTML5, so games are loaded on-demand as needed, like ordinary webpages. Games work on iPhone 4 and newer, and on Android 4.4 devices and newer.[138]
People can use Internet Of Things (IoT) services with two-way interaction via IFTTT implemented within Telegram.
In April 2021, the Payments 2.0 upgrade enabled bot payments within any chat, using third-party services such as Sberbank, Tranzoo, Payme, CLICK, LiqPay and ECOMMPAY to process the credit card information.[140]
Bots are also commonly used for businesses to communicate with customers as the bot APIs integrate with communication platforms so that Telegram messages can be sent and received in an omnichannelinbox. These platforms also enable businesses to add Telegram chat widget to their websites and gives them the option to automate conversations or let human agents reply. Examples of platforms providing Telegram bot integration include respond.io, Manychat and Trengo. [141]
In February 2018, Telegram launched their social login feature to its users, named Telegram Login. It features a website widget that could be embedded into websites, allowing users to sign into a third party website with their Telegram account. The gateway sends the user’s Telegram name, username, and profile picture to the website owner, while the user’s phone number remains hidden. The gateway is integrated with a bot, which is linked with the developer’s specific website domain.[142]
In June 2021, an update introduced a new bot menu where users can browse and send commands while in a chat with a bot.[73]
In April 2022, bots gained support for customized interfaces and inline page loading. Interfaces can be adjusted to match the app’s theme even if it changes while interacting with the bot.[143]
In October 2024, Telegram added increased messaging limits for bots, allowing bots to send up to 1000 messages per second to their users. Messages beyond the free limit of 30 per second are paid for using Telegram Stars.[144]
Telegram introduced affiliate programs in December 2024, which allow developers to create an affiliate program for their bot or mini app. Any Telegram user can join the affiliate program, and are rewarded for referring others to the bot or mini app by receiving a commission from purchases made by the people they referred.[145]
Stickers, emoji, reactions and effects
Telegram has more than 40,000 stickers. Stickers are cloud-based, high-resolution images intended to provide more expressive emoji. When typing in an emoji, the user is offered to send the respective sticker instead. Stickers come in collections called “packs”, and multiple stickers can be offered for one emoji. Telegram comes with one default sticker pack,[146] and users can install additional sticker packs provided by third-party contributors.
Sticker sets installed from one client become automatically available to all other clients. Sticker images use WebP file format, which is better optimized to be transmitted over the internet. The Telegram clients also support animated emoji.[73] In January 2022, video stickers were added, which use the WebM file format and do not feature any software requirements to create.[147]
In August 2019, Telegram introduced animated emoji,[148] larger versions of familiar emoji with unique animations. In September 2021, Telegram added interactive emoji, a type of animated emoji which also play a fullscreen effect in the chat.[149] These kinds of effects were later used for Premium Stickers in June 2022[150] and for message effects in May 2024.[151]
In August 2022, Telegram launched an emoji platform where users could upload their own custom emoji, either in animated or static versions.[152] While any user can upload custom emoji to the platform, the use of custom emoji in chats is only available to users with Telegram Premium.[153]
Reactions were first added to Telegram in 2021[154] and expanded to include more emoji options for Premium users.[150] In September 2022, Telegram gave free users access to dozens of reactions, even some that were only previously available to Premium subscribers. In order to accommodate the new reactions, the reaction panel was expanded and redesigned.[70]
People Nearby and Groups Nearby
People Nearby can help users meet new friends by turning on phone GPS location and opting-in contacts and through Groups Nearby people can create a local group by adding location data to groups.[155][156]
In 2024 the “people nearby” and “groups near me” features were removed, which Durov said had “issues with bots and scammers”.[157]
Stories
Similar to other social platforms, Telegram users can post stories, a type of short-form content. Telegram stories have several distinctive features, like a dual-camera mode, extra privacy settings, the ability to edit stories after posting them, as well as to rewind and fast-forward them while watching.[158][159][160]
Premium features
Telegram Premium was launched on 19 June 2022 with regional pricing.[51][52] The optional paid subscription gives users increased limits in the app, such as larger file uploads, faster download speeds, unlimited voice message transcription,[161] as well as numerous other increases such as the number of pinned chats and folders. Premium users have access to extra stickers, emoji, reactions, and customization features like a special badge and the ability to change the look of their messages in chats. Premium users get access to additional settings, like instant chat translation, and the ability to restrict who can send them text and voice messages.[162][163]
As of 2023, Telegram Premium can be acquired via in-app purchases facilitated by Apple and Google, directly via Telegram’s @PremiumBot, or with cryptocurrency on the Fragment platform.[164] Users are able to purchase a subscription for themselves, or purchase a subscription for someone else to send as a gift. Premium subscriptions can also be won through official Channel Giveaways, in which Telegram channels pre-purchase a specific number of Premium subscriptions that are randomly given away to their subscribers.[165]
Related platforms
People can use their Telegram accounts to author articles on Telegraph – a minimalistic text editor and publisher. While articles on Telegraph can be published anonymously, tying them to one’s account allows one to check their view count and edit them later. Telegraph natively supports Instant View, a feature which lets users read full articles in the chat with no load time and without opening an external browser.[166][167][168]
When an article is first published, the URL is generated automatically from its title. Non-Latin characters are transliterated, spaces are replaced with hyphens, and the date of publication is added to the address. For example, an article titled “Telegraph (blog platform)” published on 17 November would receive the URL /Telegraph-blog-platform-11-17.[166]
Text formatting options are also minimal: two levels of headings, single-level lists, bold, italics, quotes, and hyperlinks are supported. Authors could upload images and videos to the page, with a limit of 5 MB, however, it has been disabled since September 2024.[169] When an author adds links to YouTube, Vimeo, or Twitter, the service allows you to embed their content directly in the article.[170]
In February 2018, Telegram launched their social login feature to its users, named Telegram Login. It features a website widget that could be embedded into websites, allowing users to sign into a third party website with their Telegram account. The gateway sends users’ Telegram name, username, and profile picture to the website owner, while users’ phone number remains hidden. The gateway is integrated with a bot, which is linked with the developer’s specific website domain.[171]
In July 2018, Telegram introduced their online authorization and identity-management system, Telegram Passport, for platforms that require real-life identification.[172] It asks users to upload their own official documents such as passport, identity card, driver license, etc. When an online service requires such identification documents and verification, it forwards the information to the platform with the user’s permission. Telegram stated that it does not have access to the data, while the platform will share the information only with the authorized recipient.[173] However, the service was criticised for being vulnerable to online brute-force attacks.[174]
In December 2020, Telegram launched a Bugs and Suggestions platform,[175] where users can submit bug reports and suggestion cards for new features. Others can then vote and comment on the cards.
In October 2024, Telegram launched a verification platform, called Telegram Gateway, allowing third-party services to authenticate their users by sending verification codes via Telegram.
Architecture
Privacy
For encrypted chats (branded as Secret Chats), Telegram uses a custom-built symmetric encryption scheme called MTProto. The protocol was developed by Nikolai Durov and other developers at Telegram and, as of version 2.0, is based on 256-bit symmetric AES encryption, 2048-bit RSA encryption and Diffie–Hellman key exchange.[75][177]
MTProto 1.0 was deprecated in favor of MTProto 2.0 in December 2017, which was deployed in Telegram clients as of v4.6.[177]
Version 2.0 was proven formally correct in December 2020 by a team from the University of Udine, Italy. The team reviewed the protocol after realizing that they could only find in-depth verifications done of version 1.0, where most criticisms were levied. They used ProVerif, a verifier based on the symbolic Dolev-Yao model. In the published paper, they “provide a fully automated proof of the soundness of MTProto 2.0’s protocols for authentication, normal chat, end-to-end encrypted chat, and re-keying mechanisms with respect to several security properties, including authentication, integrity, confidentiality and perfect forward secrecy…MTProto 2.0 is assumed to be a perfect authenticated encryption scheme (IND-CCA and INT-CTXT).”[177][178]
However, the team also stated that because all communication, including plaintext and ciphertext, passes through Telegram servers, and because the server is responsible for choosing Diffie–Hellman parameters, the “server should not be considered as trusted.” They also concluded that a man-in-the-middle attack is possible if users fail to check the fingerprints of their shared keys. Finally, they qualified their conclusion with the caveat that “properties need to be formally proved in order to deem MTProto 2.0 definitely secure. This proof cannot be done in a symbolic model like ProVerif’s, but it can be achieved in a computational model, using tools like CryptoVerif or EasyCrypt.”
Servers
As with most instant messaging protocols, apart from XMPP, Telegram uses centralized servers. Telegram Messenger LLP has servers in a number of countries throughout the world to improve the response time of their service.[179] Telegram’s server-side software is closed-source and proprietary.[6] Pavel Durov said that it would require a major architectural redesign of the server-side software to connect independent servers to the Telegram cloud.[180]
For users who signed in from the European Economic Area (EEA) or United Kingdom, the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) are supported by storing data only on servers in the Netherlands, and designating a London-based company as their responsible data controller.
Clients
Telegram has various client apps, some developed by Telegram Messenger LLP and some by the community. Most of them are free and open-source and released under the GNU General Public Licence version 2 or 3. The official clients support sending any file format extensions. The built-in media viewer supports common media formats – JPEG, PNG, WebP for images and H.264 and HEVC in videos in MP4 container and MP3, FLAC, Vorbis, Opus and AAC for audio. This enables the building of clients for non-traditional platforms like KaiOS (supported by Telekram)[184], or S30+/Mocor Feature phones (still in development).
In 2021, the Telegram team announced a direct build of its Android app. Telegram for Android is available directly from the Telegram website.[185] It is automatically updated and will most likely get new versions faster than the apps in the Play Store and App Store.[186] A distinctive feature of this version is the ability to view channels/groups on a specific topic without censorship, which cannot be viewed from an app distributed from Google Play or the Apple Store due to their policies.
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