Telegram Premium is rolling out for $4.99/month with bigger files, new stickers, more

Ben Schoon | Jun 20 2022 - 7:34 am PT

After years of being completely free, Telegram is officially rolling out its Premium offering with a $5/month price tag.

Telegram Premium is the first paid way to use Telegram, and it rests on delivering new features that free users don’t get access to. The upgraded service costs $4.99 per month in the US.

Starting with features that boost the utility of Telegram, the paid subscription doubles limits, speeds up downloads, and allows for bigger files. Premium subscribers can upload and share files up to 4GB in size. Those files can also be shared with users without Premium.

New limits under the Premium subscription include joining up to 1,000 groups/channels, pinning up to 10 chats in the main list, getting up to 20 “t.me” personalized links, and saving up to 400 GIFs in the “Favorite GIFs” feature. Up to 10 stickers can be saved in the “Favorite Stickers” section as well.

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.

A potentially powerful feature of Telegram Premium is also the ability to have the app automatically transcribe audio messages with a text readout.

On the fun side of the paid offering, there are a bunch of exclusive stickers, and many of them support huge full-screen animations. There are also unique message reactions, animated profile pictures, special app icons, and no ads in public channels.

There’s also the ability to sort chats in folders, which sounds glorious.

A key thing to remember with Telegram Premium, though, is that free users aren’t losing anything. All existing features work as usual, and Telegram will continue to add new ones. The latest updates for all users include requests to join public groups, verified badges for groups and channels, improvements to bots, better chat previews on Android, automatic media saving on Android, and better sharing on iOS.

Along with detailing its paid offering, Telegram has also taken the opportunity to announce that it has 700 million active users. Premium is available starting with Telegram v8.8.1 on Android, and is rolling out gradually to everyone.