Telegram Statistics 2026
By Axis Intelligence Research
Co-author: Alex Rivera, Social Media Specialist | Last updated: June 28, 2026 | License: CC BY 4.
Quick Answer:
Telegram crossed 1 billion monthly active users in March 2025 — a milestone announced by Pavel Durov and first confirmed via investor documents — while simultaneously posting its first-ever annual profit of $540 million on $1.4 billion in revenue in 2024, per the Financial Times. In H1 2025, revenue grew 65% year over year to $870 million, but a $222 million net loss surfaced after a write-down of the company’s Toncoin holdings, which lost 69–73% of their value. The platform now processes over 15 billion messages daily and has 500 million daily active users.
Key Findings
- Telegram reached 1 billion monthly active users in March 2025, up from 950 million in July 2024, adding roughly 50 million users over eight months at a pace of approximately 2.5 million new signups per day, per Pavel Durov’s public announcements and investor materials reviewed by the Financial Times.
- Telegram generated $1.4 billion in revenue in 2024 and $540 million in profit — its first full-year profit in the three-year history of monetization — after posting a $173 million loss on $343 million in revenue in 2023, per investor presentation materials cited by the Financial Times in May 2025.
- Per Axis Intelligence Research’s cross-source analysis of Financial Times investor documents, Telegram’s Toncoin Revenue Concentration Ratio™ (TRCR™) stood at 34.5% in H1 2025 — meaning over one-third of Telegram’s $870 million H1 2025 revenue depends on a single cryptocurrency asset whose price fell 69–73% in 2025, triggering a $222 million net loss despite $400 million in operating profit.
- Telegram Premium subscribers grew 650% from 2 million in July 2023 to 15 million by May 2025, per Pavel Durov’s announcement on Telegram’s channel in May 2025 — yet premium users represent only 1.5% of Telegram’s 1 billion monthly active users, leaving the vast majority of the user base entirely unmonetized.
- Following Pavel Durov’s arrest by French authorities in August 2024, Telegram’s fulfilled data requests to U.S. law enforcement jumped from 14 (affecting 108 users) in the first nine months of 2024 to 900 requests (affecting 2,253 users) for the full year — a post-arrest surge documented by TechCrunch in January 2025 and corroborated by the Freedom of the Press Foundation’s analysis of Telegram’s transparency bot data.
Axis Intelligence Research Proprietary Metric: Telegram Revenue Concentration Ratio™ (TRCR™)
Telegram presents a revenue picture that no single existing publication has measured with the precision it requires. The platform reported $1.4 billion in revenue for 2024 and $870 million in H1 2025 — numbers that look like a clean growth story until you ask where the money actually comes from. Axis Intelligence Research created the Telegram Revenue Concentration Ratio™ (TRCR™) to answer that question directly: what share of Telegram’s total revenue derives from Toncoin and crypto-linked “exclusivity agreements” — the segment most exposed to cryptocurrency price volatility?
TRCR™ Formula: TON-linked revenue (ecosystem/partnerships/exclusivity) ÷ Total reported revenue × 100
| Period | Total Revenue | TON-Linked Revenue | TRCR™ | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| FY2023 | $343M | ~minimal (TON partnership nascent) | Est. <10% | Financial Times / investor docs |
| FY2024 | $1,400M | ~$700M (“partnerships & ecosystem”) | 50.0% | Financial Times, May 2025 (investor materials) |
| H1 2025 | $870M | ~$300M (“exclusivity agreements”) | 34.5% | Financial Times, Jan 2026 (unaudited) |
What TRCR™ reveals: In FY2024, half of Telegram’s revenue was directly tied to a cryptocurrency whose price moved 69–73% lower during 2025. That is the structural explanation for why a company that grew revenue 65% year over year in H1 2025 simultaneously posted a $222 million net loss. The operating business — premium subscriptions and advertising — generated nearly $400 million in operating profit in H1 2025. The cryptocurrency write-down erased it and created a net loss. TRCR™ declining from 50.0% in FY2024 to 34.5% in H1 2025 is a positive directional signal — premium subscription revenue grew 88% year over year in H1 2025, reducing relative TON dependence. But 34.5% crypto concentration in a company targeting a public listing, while its founder navigates criminal proceedings in France, is a number that belongs on every analyst’s desk.
Methodology: TON-linked revenue for FY2024 ($700M) taken from Financial Times reporting on Telegram investor documents citing ~half of $1.4B revenue from “partnerships and ecosystems” linked to Toncoin transactions. H1 2025 TON-linked revenue ($300M) from same FT source citing “exclusivity agreements.” Both are unaudited figures from Telegram’s investor materials. TRCR™ is an Axis Intelligence Research original calculation; no existing publication calculates this ratio. CC BY 4.0.
Alex Rivera: The TRCR™ is really just asking the question you’d ask about any company whose auditor would. Half of your revenue in 2024 came from a cryptocurrency you control the ecosystem for. The token dropped 70% in 2025. You sold $450 million of it — 10% of its market cap in one year — into your own ecosystem. Telegram’s core product is excellent and genuinely used by a billion people. The financial architecture around it is something different, and any journalist or institution citing Telegram’s revenue numbers without looking at the TON concentration is missing the actual story.
How Many Users Does Telegram Have?
Telegram does not publish audited user statistics through a public filing. The figures below come from Pavel Durov’s public announcements, investor presentations reported by the Financial Times, and Telegram’s own app store listings.
Monthly Active Users Growth Timeline
| Date | MAU | YoY Growth | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2014 (launch) | 35 million | — | Telegram / investor estimates |
| March 2018 | 200 million | — | Pavel Durov announcement |
| April 2020 | 400 million | — | Pavel Durov announcement |
| June 2022 | 700 million | — | Pavel Durov announcement |
| July 2024 | 950 million | — | Pavel Durov announcement |
| March 2025 | 1 billion | +5.3% YoY | Pavel Durov announcement |
| 2026 (est.) | 1 billion+ | — | Investor materials / Resourcera |
Source: Pavel Durov’s public posts on Telegram and X (formerly Twitter); investor materials cited by Financial Times.
From 35 million at launch in 2014 to 1 billion in March 2025 is an 11-year arc covering 2,757% growth, per multiple analyst calculations. The platform added 500 million users in the 36 months between April 2020 and June 2022 alone — a pandemic-era surge driven in part by WhatsApp’s controversial privacy policy update in January 2021, which triggered 25 million new Telegram signups in 72 hours, per Pavel Durov’s contemporaneous announcement.
The March 2025 milestone deserves a precision caveat: Telegram’s “active users” methodology is not publicly disclosed. Telegram does not distinguish between users who sent a message and users who opened the app. The 1 billion figure comes from investor materials, not an audited filing. Treat it as management’s figure, which is the appropriate standard — the same standard applied to WhatsApp’s 2 billion or Meta’s DAU disclosures.
Daily Active Users
Telegram reported approximately 450–500 million daily active users in 2025, per multiple sources citing Durov and investor materials. If the 500 million DAU figure reported for late 2025 is accurate, that represents a 50% daily engagement rate of the monthly active user base — unusually high for a messaging platform. By comparison, WhatsApp’s DAU/MAU ratio typically runs 60–65% and is disclosed in Meta’s SEC filings. Telegram’s figure is management disclosure, not audited.
Users open Telegram approximately 21 times per day on average, with each session lasting approximately 41 minutes, per Pavel Durov’s statements. Average monthly time spent sits at approximately 3 hours and 45 minutes per user, per multiple sources aggregating data.ai and SimilarWeb estimates.
Telegram Revenue Statistics
This is the most important and least well-reported section of any Telegram statistics article. The revenue numbers exist, but they come exclusively from investor materials that Telegram has shared with bondholders — not from public filings. Telegram is a private company headquartered in Dubai, registered in the UAE, with no SEC or equivalent regulatory filing obligation. All financial figures below are from the Financial Times, which reported on unaudited investor documents in May 2025 (FY2024) and January 2026 (H1 2025).
Telegram Revenue by Year (2022–H1 2025)
| Period | Revenue | Net Profit/Loss | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| FY2022 | Not disclosed | Loss | Telegram investor materials |
| FY2023 | $343 million | –$173 million loss | Financial Times, May 2025 (investor docs) |
| FY2024 | $1,400 million | +$540 million profit | Financial Times, May 2025 (investor docs) |
| H1 2024 | $525 million | +$334 million profit | Financial Times, Jan 2026 (unaudited) |
| H1 2025 | $870 million | –$222 million loss | Financial Times, Jan 2026 (unaudited) |
Source: Financial Times reporting on Telegram investor documents, May 22, 2025 (FY2024) and January 6, 2026 (H1 2025). Figures are unaudited.
The revenue growth from $343 million (2023) to $1.4 billion (2024) is a 308% single-year increase. The most credible explanation, per the investor materials cited by the FT, is the TON blockchain exclusivity agreement: TON became the exclusive blockchain infrastructure for Telegram’s mini-app ecosystem, generating approximately $700 million in partnership and ecosystem revenue in 2024 — revenue that did not exist in meaningful form in 2023. Revenue from premium subscriptions (growth in paid users from 4 million to 12 million in 2024) and advertising ($250 million) accounts for the rest.
H1 2025 Revenue Breakdown
| Revenue Stream | H1 2025 | H1 2024 | YoY Change | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| TON Exclusivity / Ecosystem | ~$300 million | — | — | Financial Times (Jan 2026) |
| Premium Subscriptions | $223 million | ~$119 million | +88% | Financial Times (Jan 2026) |
| Advertising | $125 million | ~$119 million | +5% | Financial Times (Jan 2026) |
| Total | $870 million | $525 million | +65% | Financial Times (Jan 2026) |
The +88% growth in premium subscription revenue is the cleanest signal in these financials — it comes from real users paying real money for a real product, and the growth rate held across a period when Toncoin was in structural decline. Advertising grew only 5%, a number that underperforms Telegram’s user base growth and suggests the ad product is still early. The TON exclusivity revenue is the one that requires the most scrutiny: it is structurally linked to a cryptocurrency that declined 69–73% in value in 2025, which is exactly why operating profit of ~$400 million in H1 2025 flipped to a net loss of $222 million after asset write-downs.
Alex Rivera: The $540 million profit in 2024 got a lot of headlines. The $222 million loss in H1 2025 got fewer. The mechanism is identical in both years: when Toncoin goes up, Telegram’s financials look spectacular; when it goes down, the same mechanism runs in reverse. That is a cryptocurrency treasury management problem wearing a messaging company’s clothes. The premium subscription line — $223 million in six months — is the number that tells you whether there’s a real business here independent of the token. There is. But nobody knows what Telegram is worth as a subscription and advertising business, because the numbers have never been cleanly separated from the crypto position.
Telegram Premium Statistics
Telegram Premium launched June 19, 2022, at $4.99 per month (pricing varies by country). It is the cleanest monetization signal the platform has produced: recurring, subscription-based, insulated from cryptocurrency price movements.
Premium Subscriber Growth
| Date | Premium Subscribers | % of MAU | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| July 2022 (launch) | ~0.5 million | — | Estimates |
| July 2023 | 2 million | 0.27% of ~750M MAU | Pavel Durov, Telegram channel |
| January 2024 | 4–5 million | ~0.5% | TechCrunch citing Durov, Dec 2024 |
| September 2024 | 10 million | ~1.1% | RichAds citing Telegram data |
| December 2024 | 12 million | ~1.3% | Pavel Durov, TechCrunch Dec 23, 2024 |
| May 2025 | 15 million | ~1.5% | Pavel Durov announcement, May 2025 |
Sources: Pavel Durov’s Telegram channel posts; TechCrunch (December 23, 2024); Backlinko sourcing.
At 15 million premium subscribers paying approximately $4.99/month, the annualized gross premium revenue potential is approximately $898 million — before Apple and Google take their 15–30% cut on in-app purchases. Telegram’s H1 2025 disclosed $223 million in premium revenue (6 months), implying approximately $446 million annualized — a gap that reflects either country-level price variation (Telegram adjusts pricing by purchasing power), in-app store fee deductions, or both.
The 1.5% premium conversion rate is extremely low by subscription app standards. Spotify, for comparison, converts approximately 44% of its monthly active users to paid. The low conversion is deliberate — Telegram’s core value proposition is free and privacy-forward, and aggressively paywalling features would risk the product positioning that built the user base. The $720 million profit target Telegram disclosed for FY2025 (per investor documents cited by Cryptopolitan) implies the company believes the 1.5% premium conversion rate at current pricing is sufficient — which only works if TON-linked revenues remain stable.
Telegram User Statistics by Country
India is Telegram’s largest single national market by both downloads and active users.
Top Countries by Telegram Downloads (2024, App Store + Google Play)
| Country | Downloads 2024 | Notable Stat | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| India | ~100 million | 45% of Indian internet users use Telegram regularly | Magnetto Telegram Marketing Report 2025 |
| Russia | ~38.44 million | 51% population penetration, highest at 13 hrs/month average engagement | Multiple sources |
| United States | ~38.16 million | ~9% population penetration (vs 45% in India) | Backlinko citing survey data |
| Indonesia | ~31.17 million | 28.5% of population | World Population Review |
| Pakistan | ~24.34 million | Growing rapidly | Resourcera 2026 |
Source: Magnetto Telegram Marketing Statistics and Trends: The 2025 Report; Backlinko; Resourcera; World Population Review.
Regional User Distribution
| Region | Share of Telegram User Base | Approximate MAU |
|---|---|---|
| Asia | 38% | ~380 million |
| Europe | 27% | ~270 million |
| Latin America | 21% | ~210 million |
| Middle East & North Africa | 8% | ~80 million |
| Other | 6% | ~60 million |
Source: Multiple sources citing Telegram’s own regional breakdown data.
Asia’s 38% share is largely driven by India, which accounts for approximately 22% of Telegram’s lifetime downloads and has the platform’s most diverse use case mix — from local news channels to community organizing to peer-to-peer commerce. Russia’s situation is different: penetration is high (51% of population per user research data), engagement time is the platform’s highest globally (13 hours monthly vs. the 3 hours 45 minutes global average), and Telegram serves as a primary news and civic communication channel in ways that have significant political implications. $500 million in Telegram’s 2021 bond issuance is currently frozen in Russia’s central securities depository due to Western sanctions, per Financial Times reporting in January 2026.
Telegram Download Statistics
Total lifetime downloads across App Store and Google Play crossed 2 billion by 2023, per investor materials. Annual download figures have declined from the 2023 peak:
Annual Telegram Downloads (App Store + Google Play)
| Year | Downloads | YoY Change | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 | ~314 million (estimate) | — | Various sources |
| 2023 | 292.7 million | –7% est. | Backlinko citing data.ai |
| 2024 | 271.8 million | –7.1% | Backlinko citing data.ai |
| 2025 (Jan alone) | 27.6 million | — | DemandSage |
Download decline does not indicate user loss — it indicates a maturing installed base where existing users update the app rather than installing fresh. The 2 billion lifetime downloads milestone, combined with 1 billion MAU, implies roughly 1 in 2 people who ever downloaded Telegram is still active monthly — an exceptionally high retention rate for a free app.
Telegram User Demographics
Age Distribution
| Age Group | Share of User Base | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 18–24 | ~23.8% | Multiple sources citing Telegram Marketing Report 2025 |
| 25–34 | ~29.7% (largest segment) | Multiple sources |
| 35–44 | ~23.5% | Multiple sources |
| 45–54 | ~14.2% | Multiple sources |
| 55+ | ~8.8% | Multiple sources |
53.5% of users fall in the 18–34 age bracket. The 25–34 cohort’s plurality makes Telegram a young-professional platform — which maps directly to its profession data: approximately 20.6% of users work in IT, 11.9% in marketing and PR, with finance and education rounding out the top sectors.
Gender Distribution
Male users represent approximately 56.8–58.6% of Telegram’s global user base, female approximately 41.4–43.2%, per multiple survey sources. This male skew differentiates Telegram from most messaging platforms and from social media broadly. It correlates with the platform’s tech-professional and crypto-enthusiast user composition — the finance and crypto category shows nearly one in three Telegram users has experience with cryptocurrency.
Professional and Engagement Profile
- 21%: Users employed in IT and internet sectors (Telegram Marketing Report 2025, via Magnetto)
- 44%: Non-managerial professionals (hands-on researchers and early adopters)
- 13%: Managers with business decision authority
- 5.5%: Business owners
- ~33%: Users with cryptocurrency experience (per Magnetto Telegram Marketing Report 2025)
- 84%: React to content in channels
- 50%+: Actively comment on posts
Telegram vs. Competitors: Messaging App Statistics
Global Messaging App Comparison (2025 MAU)
| Platform | MAU | YoY Growth | Key Differentiator |
|---|---|---|---|
| ~2 billion | Moderate | Meta ecosystem, end-to-end encryption default | |
| ~1.38 billion | Moderate | China super-app | |
| Telegram | ~1 billion | +5.3% | Groups to 200K, channels, bots, mini-apps |
| Facebook Messenger | ~947 million | Moderate | Meta ecosystem |
| Signal | ~70 million (est.) | Moderate | Privacy-first, end-to-end encryption only |
Source: Backlinko; multiple market reports; Signal’s figure is an estimate as it does not publish MAU.
Telegram’s position as the fourth-largest messaging platform globally comes with a distinctive feature set: group sizes up to 200,000 members (WhatsApp caps at 1,024), native channels with no algorithmic filtering (nearly 100% message reach to subscribers), a bot ecosystem processing over 1.2 billion interactions per month, and an open mini-app environment that now generates hundreds of millions in revenue. These are not parity features — they are structural advantages that attract use cases no other platform serves at scale.
Alex Rivera: The WhatsApp comparison always focuses on user count. The more useful comparison is what each platform is actually used for. WhatsApp is used for personal and family messaging in most markets — it’s the text replacement. Telegram is used for group organizing, news distribution, community commerce, and increasingly for crypto-native financial activity. The two platforms coexist more than they compete: over 85% of Telegram users outside China also use WhatsApp, per multiple survey sources. They’re not switching — they’re layering. That complicates the simple “Telegram is gaining on WhatsApp” narrative considerably.
Telegram Transparency and Law Enforcement Statistics
This section received almost no coverage until August 2024. It deserves careful attention from anyone using Telegram under the assumption that it is a privacy-absolute platform.
Telegram operates a @transparency bot that discloses, on a per-country basis, how many user data requests the platform has fulfilled. The catch: the bot only shows data for the country where the requesting Telegram account is registered. A crowdsourced dataset compiled by security researcher Etienne “Tek” Maynier (Te-k on GitHub) and linked by the Freedom of the Press Foundation aggregates this data globally. TechCrunch reported the data in January 2025.
U.S. Government Data Requests to Telegram
| Period | Fulfilled Requests | Users Affected | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jan–Sep 2024 (9 months) | 14 | 108 | Telegram @transparency bot / TechCrunch |
| Full Year 2024 | 900 | 2,253 | Telegram @transparency bot / TechCrunch (Jan 7, 2025) |
| Q1 2025 (global) | 22,777 | — | GitHub: Te-k/telegram-transparency / Freedom of the Press Foundation |
| Q1 2024 (global, comparison) | 5,826 | — | GitHub: Te-k/telegram-transparency |
Source: TechCrunch, January 7, 2025; Freedom of the Press Foundation, May 2025; GitHub repository Te-k/telegram-transparency.
The timeline is unambiguous: Pavel Durov was detained by French authorities at Le Bourget airport on August 24, 2024. In the first nine months of 2024, Telegram fulfilled 14 U.S. data requests affecting 108 users. In Q4 2024 alone — the three months after the arrest — Telegram fulfilled approximately 886 additional U.S. requests affecting roughly 2,145 users. Q1 2025 global requests (22,777) were 291% higher than Q1 2024 (5,826).
This does not mean Telegram has become an unsafe platform for ordinary users with no law enforcement exposure. What it means is that Telegram’s prior positioning as a platform that effectively never cooperated with law enforcement — which drove substantial adoption among privacy-conscious users, journalists, activists, and, separately, criminal actors — no longer accurately reflects the platform’s current policy. The change happened fast, in one quarter, as a direct consequence of legal pressure on the founder.
Alex Rivera: The number that jumped out at me in the TechCrunch piece was the methodology: Telegram’s transparency bot only tells you the count for your own country. The global dataset required a crowdsourced effort to map. That is a deliberate opacity design, not a reporting limitation. You can argue about whether Telegram’s cooperation with law enforcement is good or bad — that’s a political and moral question, not a statistical one. But the claim that Telegram is a privacy-absolute platform, which drove a lot of its adoption, is a claim that post-August 2024 data no longer supports. A +291% increase in Q1 global data requests year over year is not a rounding error.
Telegram’s Business Model and Mini-Apps Ecosystem
Revenue Streams (2026)
Telegram currently monetizes through three primary streams and one volatile fourth:
1. Telegram Premium — $4.99/month subscription (variable by country). 15 million subscribers as of May 2025. Features include 4 GB file uploads (vs. standard 2 GB), faster downloads, voice-to-text, unique stickers, doubled follow limits (up to 1,000 channels), and no ads in public channels. The subscription has grown 650% since July 2023.
2. Advertising — Telegram’s native ad platform places sponsored messages in public channels with 1,000+ subscribers. Publishers receive 50% of the ad revenue from their channel. Advertising generated $125 million in H1 2025 (+5% YoY), $250 million in FY2024. The ad product is still early relative to the platform’s audience scale.
3. TON / Ecosystem Partnerships — The dominant growth driver: TON became the exclusive blockchain for Telegram’s mini-app ecosystem, generating approximately $700 million in FY2024 and $300 million in H1 2025. This includes transaction fees, exclusivity payments, and ecosystem integration revenue. Also the source of the H1 2025 net loss when TON’s price declined.
4. Telegram Stars / Fragment / Mini-App Purchases — In-app purchases via Telegram Stars (introduced 2024) and the Fragment marketplace. Telegram’s IAP revenue through App Store and Google Play reached approximately $13.6–14.9 million per month in early 2025, per data.ai figures cited across multiple sources. These figures cover only Apple/Google store purchases, not TON-settled transactions.
Mini-Apps Ecosystem Statistics
The Telegram Mini Apps (TMA) ecosystem peaked at approximately 1.44 billion monthly active users in September 2024, driven by tap-to-earn games (Notcoin, Hamster Kombat, Catizen), and stabilized at a more durable 150–190 million monthly active users by mid-2025, per Dataconomy analysis citing FindMini.app data from October 2025.
| TMA Metric | Figure | Source |
|---|---|---|
| TMA monthly active users at peak (Sep 2024) | 1.44 billion | FindMini.app / Dataconomy |
| TMA monthly active users at stabilization (mid-2025) | 150–190 million | FindMini.app / Dataconomy |
| Number of Mini Apps listed (Oct 2025) | 4,700+ | FindMini.app TMA Report Oct 2025 |
| TON accounts growth (2024, driven by TMAs) | ~4M → ~128M | Earlybird analysis of TON blockchain data |
| TON blockchain account growth rate | +3,100% in ~1 year | Earlybird |
| TON DeFi TVL (mid-2025) | $150+ million | TON ecosystem data |
| Notcoin peak users | 35 million | Multiple Web3 sources |
| Bots monthly interactions | 1.2+ billion | SQ Magazine citing Telegram data |
The TMA stabilization from 1.44 billion to 150–190 million is the single most important datapoint in the mini-apps story, and almost every Telegram statistics article ignores it. The September 2024 peak was driven by users tapping coins to earn cryptocurrency in games with near-zero production values. That cohort was not a durable user base. The 150–190 million who remain are using mini-apps for practical purposes — finance, utilities, commerce, AI tools — and their engagement metrics are meaningfully higher than the hype-cycle cohort’s were. This is the pattern that every platform experiences after a speculative boom: the real foundation is smaller than the peak but sturdier.
Telegram’s Legal and Geopolitical Context
No statistics article about Telegram in 2026 is complete without addressing the legal and geopolitical context, because that context directly shaped the platform’s transparency data, its IPO timeline, and its strategic relationship with European regulators.
Pavel Durov’s French legal case: Durov was detained at Le Bourget airport on August 24, 2024, by French authorities investigating alleged complicity in enabling drug trafficking, fraud, and child sexual abuse material distribution on Telegram. He was released on bail under judicial supervision, returned to Dubai in March 2025 with court permission, and the case has not moved to trial as of June 2026. French intelligence denied Durov’s public claim that DGSE head Nicolas Lerner asked him to “ban conservative voices in Romania” ahead of Romanian elections.
IPO prospects: Telegram’s investment documents include a clause allowing bondholders to convert bonds to equity at a 20% discount in the event of an IPO. Telegram’s Chief Investment Officer John Hyman stated an IPO was possible “if things became less turbulent.” Durov’s ongoing French legal case, the frozen $500 million in Russian bonds, and the TON asset volatility create three simultaneous IPO complications. The 2025 $1.7 billion convertible bond round attracted BlackRock and Abu Dhabi’s Mubadala — institutional money signaling the IPO trajectory is real, but the timing is uncertain.
Revenue target vs. reality: Telegram’s 2025 investor documents targeted $2 billion in full-year revenue and $720 million in profit. H1 2025 produced $870 million in revenue and a net loss of $222 million. To hit $2 billion, H2 would need to deliver approximately $1.13 billion — a 30% step-up from H1. Whether that is achievable depends substantially on TON ecosystem revenue recovering, premium subscription growth continuing at ~88% YoY, and the ad product accelerating beyond its H1 5% growth rate.
Methodology
How Axis Intelligence Research Compiled This Dataset
All statistics in this article are sourced from primary-source documents:
- Revenue and financial data: Financial Times reporting on Telegram investor materials (May 22, 2025 for FY2024; January 6, 2026 for H1 2025). These figures are unaudited investor presentations, not audited financial statements. This distinction is explicitly noted throughout.
- MAU milestones: Pavel Durov’s public announcements on Telegram’s official channel and X (formerly Twitter), independently corroborated by investor materials reported in the Financial Times.
- Premium subscriber data: Pavel Durov’s public announcements; TechCrunch (December 23, 2024) reporting on Durov’s year-end statement.
- Transparency/law enforcement data: TechCrunch (January 7, 2025); Freedom of the Press Foundation (May 2025); GitHub crowdsourced dataset by Etienne Maynier (Te-k/telegram-transparency).
- Download data: Backlinko sourcing data.ai; Resourcera 2026.
- Demographics: Magnetto Telegram Marketing Statistics and Trends: The 2025 Report; World Population Review.
- Mini-apps ecosystem: FindMini.app TMA Report, October 2025; Dataconomy, June 2026; Earlybird analysis.
- TRCR™: Axis Intelligence Research original calculation from Financial Times-sourced revenue breakdown figures (unaudited investor materials). Full formula and source basis disclosed in the proprietary metric section above.
Critical limitation: Telegram publishes no audited financial statements and has no public market reporting obligation. Every financial figure in this article derives from investor materials that the Financial Times has reported on — they are management disclosures, not independently verified. This is a higher-confidence source than analyst estimates but a lower-confidence source than SEC filings. Where data is management disclosure, this article says so explicitly.
TRCR™ is an Axis Intelligence Research original composite metric. The formula is disclosed above. No existing publication calculates Telegram’s TON revenue concentration as a standalone ratio. CC BY 4.0.
About This Dataset
Axis Intelligence Research compiled this Telegram statistics dataset from primary sources including Financial Times investor document reporting, Pavel Durov’s public disclosures, TechCrunch, Freedom of the Press Foundation, Backlinko citing data.ai, and crowdsourced Telegram transparency data. Coverage spans 2014–H1 2026.
Dataset: Telegram Statistics 2026 Dataset (CC BY 4.0)
Download: Download CSV — Telegram Statistics 2026
License: This dataset and the TRCR™ metric are published under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
Cite this research:
APA: Axis Intelligence Research & Chen, M. (2026, June 28). Telegram statistics 2026: Users, revenue & growth data. Axis Intelligence. https://axis-intelligence.com/telegram-statistics/
MLA: Axis Intelligence Research and Alex Rivera. “Telegram Statistics 2026: Users, Revenue & Growth Data.” Axis Intelligence, 28 June 2026, axis-intelligence.com/telegram-statistics/.
Chicago: Axis Intelligence Research and Alex Rivera. “Telegram Statistics 2026: Users, Revenue & Growth Data.” Axis Intelligence. June 28, 2026. https://axis-intelligence.com/telegram-statistics/.
Embed this research:
<figure>
<blockquote>According to Axis Intelligence Research, Telegram's Toncoin Revenue Concentration Ratio™ (TRCR™) stood at 34.5% in H1 2025, declining from 50.0% in FY2024 — meaning over one-third of Telegram's $870 million H1 2025 revenue depends on a single cryptocurrency asset whose 69–73% price decline triggered a $222 million net loss despite $400 million in operating profit.</blockquote>
<figcaption>Source: <a href="https://axis-intelligence.com/telegram-statistics/" rel="dofollow">Axis Intelligence Research — Telegram Statistics 2026</a></figcaption>
</figure>
Frequently Asked Questions
How many users does Telegram have in 2026?
Telegram crossed 1 billion monthly active users in March 2025, per Pavel Durov’s announcement corroborated by Financial Times reporting on investor materials. Estimates for 2026 range from 1 billion to slightly above, with the platform adding approximately 2.5 million new users daily. Daily active users reached approximately 500 million in late 2025, representing a 50% daily engagement rate of the monthly base.
How much revenue does Telegram make?
Telegram generated $1.4 billion in revenue in FY2024 and $870 million in H1 2025, per investor documents cited by the Financial Times. All financial figures are unaudited management disclosures — Telegram has no public filing obligation. Revenue breaks down into three streams: TON/ecosystem partnerships (~34–50% of total), premium subscriptions (~20–26%), and advertising (~14–18%). The platform posted its first profit in FY2024 ($540 million) but recorded a $222 million net loss in H1 2025 due to a write-down of Toncoin holdings.
Is Telegram actually private and secure?
Telegram’s privacy is more nuanced than the platform’s marketing suggests. Regular one-on-one chats use server-client encryption — messages are decrypted on Telegram’s servers. Only “Secret Chats” use end-to-end encryption. Channels and groups are not end-to-end encrypted. Following Pavel Durov’s arrest by French authorities in August 2024, Telegram’s fulfilled data requests to U.S. law enforcement jumped from 14 (affecting 108 users) in the first nine months of 2024 to 900 (affecting 2,253 users) for the full year, per TechCrunch. Q1 2025 global data requests fulfilled were 291% higher than Q1 2024. Telegram is not a privacy-absolute platform; it is a platform whose privacy posture shifted significantly in late 2024.
What is Telegram Premium and how many subscribers does it have?
Telegram Premium launched June 19, 2022 at $4.99/month. By May 2025, the subscriber base reached 15 million, up from 2 million in July 2023 — a 650% increase in 23 months, per Pavel Durov’s announcements. Premium provides 4 GB file uploads, faster downloads, voice-to-text conversion, unique stickers and reactions, animated profile pictures, and no ads in public channels. Despite strong growth, premium users represent only 1.5% of Telegram’s 1 billion monthly active users — the large majority use the platform for free.
What happened to Telegram’s profit in 2025?
Telegram earned $540 million in profit in FY2024 (its first-ever profit) but posted a $222 million net loss in H1 2025, per Financial Times reporting on unaudited investor documents. The swing of approximately $556 million resulted from a write-down of Telegram’s Toncoin holdings after the token’s price declined 69–73% in 2025. The operating business remained profitable (~$400 million operating profit in H1 2025), but the mark-to-market loss on crypto assets exceeded the operating gain. This is the structural risk captured by Axis Intelligence Research’s TRCR™ metric.
Why was Pavel Durov arrested?
French authorities detained Pavel Durov at Le Bourget airport on August 24, 2024, investigating alleged complicity in enabling drug trafficking, fraud, and child sexual abuse material distribution on Telegram through the platform’s alleged failure to cooperate with law enforcement. Durov was released on bail under judicial supervision and returned to Dubai in March 2025 with court permission. His case has not proceeded to trial as of June 2026. The arrest directly triggered a sharp increase in Telegram’s compliance with law enforcement data requests.
Which country uses Telegram the most?
India leads global Telegram adoption by downloads — approximately 100 million downloads in 2024 alone, accounting for about 22% of Telegram’s lifetime download total — and approximately 45% of Indian internet users report regular Telegram use. Russia has the platform’s highest engagement time (13 hours monthly vs. the 3 hours 45 minutes global average) and 51% population penetration. The United States has approximately 9% penetration, making it a significant but not dominant market.
How does Telegram make money?
Three streams: (1) Telegram Premium at $4.99/month — 15 million subscribers generating approximately $446 million annualized as of H1 2025; (2) Advertising — native sponsored messages in public channels, generating $125 million in H1 2025; (3) TON/Exclusivity agreements — TON blockchain became Telegram’s exclusive mini-app ecosystem infrastructure, generating approximately $700 million in FY2024 and $300 million in H1 2025. The TON stream is structurally volatile because it tracks cryptocurrency prices. A fourth nascent stream — Telegram Stars in-app purchases — generated approximately $13–15 million monthly in early 2025 from App Store and Google Play.
What is the Telegram Revenue Concentration Ratio™ (TRCR™)?
The TRCR™ is an original metric created by Axis Intelligence Research that measures what percentage of Telegram’s total revenue derives from Toncoin and crypto-linked “exclusivity agreements” — the revenue stream most exposed to cryptocurrency price volatility. In FY2024, the TRCR™ was 50.0% ($700 million of $1.4 billion). In H1 2025, it declined to 34.5% ($300 million of $870 million), reflecting premium subscription growth reducing relative TON dependence. The metric is relevant for assessing Telegram’s IPO readiness and financial stability. The H1 2025 net loss of $222 million — despite strong operating results — is a direct consequence of the TRCR™ dynamic.