Telegram is among the top 5 most downloaded apps in the world and now this messaging app will launch a paid subscription plan for its users this month, founder Pavel Durov said. Telegram paid subscription

Users who will opt for Telegram Premium will get a higher limit for chats, media and file uploads, Durov said in a blog post.

The messaging app, along with messaging tool Signal, have seen an increase in users following privacy concerns with larger rival WhatsApp, owned by Meta Platforms Inc. Telegram currently has 500 million monthly active users.

Pavel Durov said the move to offer a paid subscription was to ensure that Telegram remains funded primarily by its users and not advertisers.

Since the day Telegram was launched almost 9 years ago, we’ve been giving our users more features and resources than any other messaging app. A free app as powerful as Telegram was revolutionary in 2013 and is still unprecedented in 2022. To this day, our limits on chats, media and file uploads are unrivaled.

Pavel Durov said:  “And yet, many have been asking us to raise the current limits even further, so we looked into ways to let you go beyond what is already crazy. The problem here is that if we were to remove all limits for everyone, our server and traffic costs would have become unmanageable, so the party would be unfortunately over for everyone.

After giving it some thought, we realized that the only way to let our most demanding fans get more while keeping our existing features free is to make those raised limits a paid option. That’s why this month we will introduce Telegram Premium, a subscription plan that allows anyone to acquire additional features, speed and resources. It will also allow users to support Telegram and join the club that receives new features first.

Not to worry though: all existing features remain free, and there are plenty of new free features coming. Moreover, even users who don’t subscribe to Telegram Premium will be able to enjoy some of its benefits: for example, they will be able to view extra-large documents, media and stickers sent by Premium users, or tap to add Premium reactions already pinned to a message to react in the same way.

While our experiments with privacy-focused ads in public one-to-many channels have been more successful than we expected, I believe that Telegram should be funded primarily by its users, not advertisers. This way our users will always remain our main priority.” Telegram paid subscription