Highlights:
- Telegram Premium users will have exclusive stickers, emoticons, higher limit for chats, media, and file uploads.
- Non-premium users will not need to subscribe to access unique Premium stickers, emoticons, and documents sent to them, according to Telegram founder Pavel Durov.
- Telegram has 500 million monthly active users at the moment.
Telegram founder Pavel Durov recently took to the platform to reveal Telegram’s future and the launch of Telegram Premium, a premium subscription service. The premium version of the popular messaging service will be available later this month, according to Durov, and will allow Telegram to be funded “primarily by its users, not advertisers.”
The feature-rich instant messaging platform, which also allows users to make voice and video calls and send large files, will remain free for most users, according to Durov, who stressed that only power users who want more features and larger capacities will have to subscribe in Telegram Premium.
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In the blog post, Durov said, “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.”
Telegram was founded in 2013 and has been free for all users for the past nine years, but according to Durov, adding new features and functionality to Telegram for all users would make the platform’s server and traffic costs “unmanageable.”
While we don’t yet know what perks Telegram Premium will have over the ordinary app, Durov does state that the subscription plan will “allows anyone to acquire additional features, speed and resources.”
According to previous reports, the subscription would offer special animated stickers, emoticons, and a large file-sharing limit. Telegram Premium users will also be the first to access new platform features.
Premium features such as sending extra-large documents, media, and stickers will be available solely to paid subscribers, but non-Premium users will be able to view these documents, media, and stickers if a Premium user sends them.
Telegram founder Pavel Durov had stated in 2021 that the company was working on ways to show ads to users in public channel posts. According to the company, its ads would be small posts with a character limit of 160. Furthermore, they will not feature external links, but will instead direct the user to a specific Telegram channel.
Telegram’s premium plan will begin at $4.99 (₹ 387), according to Bleeping Computer. While Telegram has not yet formally announced the plan, but it is expected be revealed when the subscription service launches later this month.
Telegram Premium is already available in beta for Android, although you cannot subscribe to it at the moment.
