Telegram
Maximize your messaging experience with efficient communication, speedy delivery, and optional end-to-end encrypted Secret Chats. Engage in unlimited channels and groups up to 200,000 members. Enhance chat management and media sharing with Telegram Premium and its exclusive benefits. All core features remain free.
Cost / License
- Freemium (Subscription)
- Proprietary
Application types
Platforms
- Mac
- Windows
- Linux
- Online
- Android
- iPhone
- Android Tablet
- HUAWEI AppGallery
- iPad
- Apple Watch
- Android Auto
- Linux Mobile
- Android Wear
- PortableApps.com
- FreeBSD
- Apple Car Play
Features
Properties
- Lightweight
- Free Speech
- Support for Themes
Features
- Encrypted Chat
- Stickers
- Chat Bot
- Large File Transfer
- End-to-End Encryption
- Video Calling
- Multi Device Support
- Channels
- Dark Mode
- Bots
- Share Videos
- Secret chats
- Cloud based
- Integrated File Sharing
- Folders
- Animated stickers
- Private Chat
- Persistent History
- Custom themes
- Voice messages
- Multiple languages
- Video Conferencing
- Public groups chat
- VoiP Calls
- Encrypted calls
- Search by tags
- Two-factor Authentication
- Multiple Account support
- Self Destructing Messages
- Portable
IFTTT Integration- Cloud Sync
- Instant view
- Chat organizer
- Chat history
- Auto-delete
- Messages in cloud
- Built-in Photo editor
- Voice Chat
- Based on phone number
- Customizable Themes
- Custom Backgrounds
- Sync Contacts
- Hide chat
- Progressive Web App
- Contact Folders
- Cross-Platform
- Cloud platform
Android Auto integration- Support for GIF
- Text messaging
- Encrypted VoIP calls
- Private messaging
- Push to talk
- Anonymous Secure Filesharing
- GPS Location Tracking
Telegram News & Activities
Recent News
- Maoholguin published news article about Telegram
Apple temporarily removes Telegram from the App Store over child sexual abuse materialApple briefly removed the Telegram app from the Apple App Store worldwide on Monday night after fin...
- Maoholguin published news article about Telegram
Russia charges Telegram CEO Pavel Durov with terrorism, issues global warrantRussia has charged Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov with facilitating terrorism and placed him ...
- Fla published news article about Telegram
Telegram adds rich text editor with tables, AI content, and moreTelegram has added a rich text editor that supports tables, headings, inline media, lists, AI-gener...
Recent activities
blainehines added Telegram as alternative to ETHOS Chat- Owengraven liked Telegram
- jtn0626 reviewed Telegram
Good alternative to WhatsApp in my opinion
- Hakmansun rated Telegram
- dataplexlabs liked Telegram
djeel added Telegram as alternative to Murmur | Voice Chat
Featured in Lists
Must have
A list of interesting and open source [Android](/software/android/) apps.
Must have Mac Apps 2019
What is Telegram?
Telegram is a messaging app created by former 
VK creators with a focus on speed and security. It’s superfast, simple and free. It is like SMS, but more powerful.
You can send messages, photos and videos to people who are in your phone contacts (and have Telegram). You can also create groups for up to 200000 people or channels for unlimited subscribers.
Your chats are not encrypted by default, which enables other people to see what you are writing. You can enable a "Secret Chat" to enable end-to-end encryption.
Telegram offers a Premium plan too: by subscribing to Telegram Premium, users unlock doubled limits, 4 GB 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. There are different prices for the Premium subscription based on your country, also if you buy it via the @premiumbot you don't have to pay the app store fees.
Telegram's security model has received notable criticism by cryptography experts. They criticized the general security model of permanently storing all contacts, messages and media together with their decryption keys on its servers by default and by not enabling end-to-end encryption for messages by default.
Telegram's client-side code is open-source software, whereas its server-side code is closed-source and proprietary. The service also provides public APIs with which developers can access the same functionality as Telegram's official apps to build their own messaging applications.
Telegram also provides a bot API for programmers to create different kinds of Telegram bots. Bots are simply Telegram accounts operated by software – not people – and they'll often have AI features. They can do anything – teach, play, search, broadcast, remind, connect, integrate with other services, or even pass commands to the Internet of Things.
Telegram information
Developed by
Telegram FZ-LLC Licensing
Proprietary and Freemium product.Pricing
Subscription ranging between $4 and $6 per month + free version with limited functionality.Rating
Average rating of 3.8Alternatives
318 alternatives listedNews
45 news article related to TelegramSupported Languages
- English
- Arabic
- Belarusian
- Catalan; Valencian
- Dutch
- French
- German
- Indonesian
- Italian
- Korean
- Malay
- Persian
- Polish
- Portuguese
- Russian
- Spanish
- Turkish
- Ukrainian
- Uzbek
AlternativeTo Categories
Social & Communications, Security & Privacy, Office & Productivity, File Sharing, Video & Movies, Travel & Location, Remote Work & EducationApple AppStore
- Updated
- 4.01 avg rating
Comments and Reviews
Excellent messenger for those who always want to be in touch .
While the client itself is open source, there are a lot of parts of telegram that aren't. It is not possible to look through the whole process of one client writing another. I think to make that problem more clear telegram should actually be put in the category Free and not open source.
I'm questioning the "Open source" as well. Even the client isn't really "Open source" any more at least not the one they are using. The provide an open source code base on Github but you can tell by there releases and updates that they themselves are not using it in a very open manner.
Thanks for changing the label to Free, I think at least for now it fits way better than Open Source. Anyways we will see on their website they are claiming that eventually they want to make everything open source even though I doubt it.
they can't put their encription code open source, so exept this is opensource
Thanks for changing the tag to free, I think it has the correct labeling now.
ups, I didnt noticed it, Im new in this site and Im trying to understand it, so please be patient
From the Telegram FAQ:
Q: Why not open source everything? All code will be released eventually. We started with the most useful parts — a well-documented API that allows developers to build new Telegram apps, and open source clients that can be verified by security specialists.
Well, nice that they want to do it at some point, but as for now, the security-critical parts are not open source. As long as that is the case, the tag should be free not open source.
I totally agree to Johannski. All code will be released eventually is wishy-washy.
Good alternative to WhatsApp in my opinion
personally love it. basically whatsapp alternative. if it were decentralized like matrix then i doubt i could find people because it would make things more complicated for ordinary people. where i live, this service is most popular following whatsapp. the main reason i use telegram is because it allows custom clients, that alone is enough.
people complains about privacy and transparency, but look at other services, are those as popular as this? people around me never even heard of matrix. i hope telegram stays the way it is and not complicate for ordinary
supporter before the 1B users
This app is amazing in every way except for one frustrating dev choice: no automatic, default end-to-end encryption. The Secret Chats that use them suck. So basically, you are crossing your fingers that Telegram doesn't decide to look at your messages.