Telegram (also known as Telegram Messenger) is a Russian-Emirati cloud-based, cross-platform social media and instant messaging (IM) service. It 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, Wear OS, watchOS and web browsers. Telegram offers end-to-end encryption in voice and video calls, and optionally in private chats if both participants use a mobile device.
Telegram also has social networking features, allowing users to post stories, create public groups with up to 200,000 members, and share one-way updates to unlimited audiences in so-called channels.
Telegram was founded in 2013 by Pavel and Nikolai Durov. Its servers are distributed worldwide with several data centers, and its headquarters are in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. It was the most downloaded app worldwide in January 2021, with a billion downloads globally as of late August 2021. , registration to Telegram requires either a phone number and a smartphone or one of a limited number of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) issued in 2022.
Telegram has more than 1 billion monthly active users, 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. Pavel sold his remaining stake in VK and left Russia after resisting government pressure. Nikolai created the MTProto protocol that is the basis for the messenger, while Pavel provided financial support and infrastructure through his Digital Fortress fund. Telegram Messenger denies that its end goal is to profit, but it is not structured as a nonprofit organization.
Telegram is registered as a company in the British Virgin Islands and as an LLC in Dubai.Telegram FZ LLC – Dun & Bradstreet 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. 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.
While a former employee of VK said that Telegram had employees in Saint Petersburg, Pavel said the Telegram team made Berlin, Germany, its headquarters in 2014, but failed to obtain German residence permits for everyone on the team and moved to other jurisdictions in early 2015. Since 2017, the company has been based in Dubai. Its data centers are spread across a complex corporate structure of shell companies in various jurisdictions to avoid compliance with government subpoenas. 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 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". But according to Pavel, Telegram disclosed data for 203 legal requests from the Brazilian government in January to September 2024 and 6,992 legal requests from India, its largest market, during that period. Users can use Telegram's transparency bot to check how many legal requests from their country it has processed.
Usage In October 2013, Telegram announced that it had 100,000 daily active users.
On 24 March 2014, Telegram announced that it had reached 35 million monthly users and 15 million daily active users. In October 2014, South Korean government surveillance plans drove many of its citizens to switch to Telegram from the Korean app KakaoTalk. 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, traffic doubled in five months with 2 billion daily messages. In September 2015, Telegram announced that the app had 60 million active users and delivered 12 billion daily messages.
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. In December 2017, Telegram reached 180 million monthly active users. By March 2018, that number had doubled, with Telegram reaching 200 million monthly active users.
On 14 March 2019, Pavel said that "3 million new users signed up for Telegram within the last 24 hours." 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. According to the US Securities and Exchange Commission, as of October 2019, Telegram had 300 million monthly active users worldwide.
On 24 April 2020, Telegram announced that it had reached 400 million monthly active users.
On 8 January 2021, Pavel announced in a blog post that Telegram had reached "about 500 million" monthly active users. In August, TechCrunch reported that India was Telegram's largest market, with a 22% share of total installs coming from the region. Telegram then gained over 70 million new users as a result of an outage that affected Facebook and its affiliates on 5 October 2021.
On 19 June 2022, Telegram announced that it had reached 700 million monthly active users.
Telegram surpassed 800 million monthly active users in July 2023 and reached 900 million in March 2024 and 950 million in July 2024. In March 2025, Pavel Durov announced that Telegram had surpassed 1 billion monthly active users.
2026 removal from the App Store
On 3 August 2026, Telegram became unavailable for download from the iPhone and iPad App Store. The removal lasted several hours, during which people who had already installed Telegram could continue using it. Telegram subsequently announced that the application had returned to the store. An Apple spokesperson said that the company's review had found content violating its strict guidelines against child sexual abuse material (CSAM). Apple said that Telegram was restored on the same day after its developer removed the content and banned the user who had posted it. Apple did not publicly give further details about the original report, the location of the material on Telegram, or why the entire application was removed before Telegram was contacted.
Telegram criticized Apple's decision to remove the entire application because of material posted by one user. Telegram spokesperson Remi Vaughn said Apple had been wrong to disrupt legitimate communication by the service's users over the actions of a single person. Responding to Apple's explanation on X, Telegram questioned whether Apple would apply the same standard equally to all other applications in the App Store. Telegram also linked to its safety overview, which states that the service removes many groups, channels, and pieces of content that violate its terms of service. Telegram said it had blocked more than 337,900 groups and channels associated with CSAM during 2026 by the time of the incident. That figure has not been independently audited. Epic Games chief executive Tim Sweeney questioned how large-scale communication services could operate if a single user's illegal post was sufficient for an entire application to be removed. He also questioned whether Apple would apply the same standard to its own iMessage service.
On 4 August, Telegram founder Pavel Durov alleged that the prohibited material had been deliberately placed in a public group by a person engaged in what he called "takedown extortion". According to Durov, such attackers demand payment from the administrators of online communities and threaten to plant illegal material and report it to application-store operators if payment is refused. Durov said the person responsible for the incident had inserted AI-modified illegal material by editing an older message in an active group. He said this made the material difficult for ordinary group members to notice and report. Durov also criticized Apple, saying it removed Telegram before contacting the company. He argued that the decision created a systemic risk for any application hosting user-generated content, because coordinated attackers could attempt to cause the removal of legitimate applications or online communities by planting prohibited material. Apple did not confirm Durov's account of the incident.
Features Messaging
To use Telegram, a user must sign up with their phone number or an anonymous +888 number purchased from the Fragment blockchain platform. Changing the phone number in the app will automatically reassign the user's account to that number without exporting data or notifying their contacts. Phone numbers are hidden by default, with only a user's contacts able to see them. Sign-ups can be done only on an Android or iOS device.
Messages users send and receive are tied to their numbers and custom usernames, not the device. Telegram content is synced between users' logged-in devices automatically through cloud storage, except for device-specific secret chats. By default, any account that is inactive for 6 months is deleted, but the period can be shortened or extended up to 18 months. Telegram allows groups, bots and channels with a verified social media or Wikipedia page to be verified, but not individual user accounts.
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 for up to 48 hours; an "edited" icon indicates changes. Messages may also be deleted for both sides without a trace. Users may delete messages and whole chats for both themselves and other participants. Chats can be exported to preserve them via Telegram's Desktop client, but the saved data cannot be imported back into the user's account.
Users can import chat history, including both messages and media, from WhatsApp, Line, and KakaoTalk due to data portability, making a new chat to hold the messages or adding them to an existing one.
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 that typing can be started on a phone and finished on a laptop, for example.
Any message can be translated by opening the context menu. Premium users can translate a 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. Premium users have access to more reaction choices and can leave more reactions per message. Reactions are always on in private chats and can be enabled by admins in groups and channels. Specific reactions can be allowed or excluded. Reaction emoji play an animation with special effects.
Users can also send stickers, which can be static, animated or video. Sticker packs are made by Telegram designers as well as regular users and can be shared via links. They use the WebP 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.