Telegram announced that it has become one of the top-5 downloaded apps worldwide in 2022 and now has over 700 million monthly active users. This growth is solely from personal recommendations – Telegram has never paid to advertise its apps.
As Telegram keeps growing at rocket speed, many users have expressed their will to support our team. Today, we’re launching Telegram Premium – a subscription that lets you support Telegram’s continued development and gives you access to exclusive additional features.
According to Telegram, this will allow them to offer all the resource-heavy features users have asked for over the years, while preserving free access to the most powerful messenger on the planet.
Telegram says that by subscribing to Telegram Premium, users unlock doubled limits, 4GB file uploads, faster downloads, exclusive stickers and reactions, improved chat management – and a whole lot more. At the same time, all existing features that users have come to expect and rely on for nearly a decade remain free.
Moreover, non-premium users will be able to enjoy some of Premium’s benefits: for example, download the extra-large documents and view stickers sent by premium users, as well as tap to increase counters on premium reactions that were already added to a message.
TechCrunch reported that Telegram did not disclose how much it is charging for the premium tier, but the monthly subscription appears to be priced in the range of $4.99 to $6.00.
According to TechCrunch, paying customers will be able to follow up to 1,000 channels, up from 500 offered to free users, and create up to 20 chat folders with as many as 200 chats in each. Telegram Premium users will also be able to add up to four accounts in the app and pin up to 10 chats.
The Verge reported that premium subscribers get double the limits imposted on standard users. Instead of joining up to 500 channels, subscribers are capped at 1,000 channels. Subscribers can create 20 chat folders with 200 chats each, save up to 10 stickers, pin up to 10 chats, and add a total of four more accounts to Telegram instead of three. Premium users also get to have longer bios with a link.
According to The Verge, subscribers also get access to a library of Premium stickers and animated profile pictures. There’s also text for conversion for voice messages in case you don’t have headphones handy. Subscribing to Premium removed sponsored messages in public channels.
To me, it seems like many of the social media apps are competing with each other to attract paying subscribers. I think most people will pick their favorite one and ignore the subscription options on the other apps.