As of March 2025, cloud-based mobile messaging app Telegram reported over *********** monthly active users worldwide. Telegram is a chat app launched in 2013 by the brothers Nikolai and Pavel Durov. The pair had previously founded the Russian social network VK, which they left when it was taken over by the Mail.ru Group. Telegram In 2023, the majority of Telegram’s global audience, was comprised of users aged between 25 and 34 years. Among the reasons to use Telegram, ** percent of the platform’s users reported to learn the majority of the news from Telegram. After the announcement that WhatsApp was going to release a new privacy policy update was met with criticism in 2021, Telegram's audience and popularity spiked, bringing global downloads to *** million. Telegram security criticism Despite claiming to be more secure than other mainstream messengers such as Line or WhatsApp, Telegram has been frequently criticized by industry experts such as German consumer organization Stiftung Warentest or the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). One of the key points of criticism is Telegram’s failure to provide automatic end-to-end encryption (WhatsApp and LINE messenger have end-to-end encryption set up by default).

The largest share of Telegram users as of 2023 was between 25 and 34 years of age, at over ** percent. Users of the messaging app aged younger than 24 years accounted for over ** percent of the user base.

Introduction

Discord vs Telegram Statistics: Discord and Telegram are two of the most popular communication platforms today, each serving different audiences with unique features, strengths, and weaknesses. Discord is an instant messaging and VoIP social platform that allows communication through voice calls, video calls, text messaging, and media sharing. In contrast, Telegram, also known as Telegram Messenger, is a cloud-based, cross-platform messaging service that combines social media and instant messaging (IM).

This article will guide you effectively, as it provides a comprehensive comparison between the two platforms, including features, pricing, user experience, and performance, to help determine which platform best suits community-building tools or fast, secure messaging in 2025.

As of January 2025, monthly active users of Telegram accounted for over ** percent of the global population, marking an increase from the previous year. In total, *** million people used Telegram on average per month.

India was the leading market of Telegram by app downloads. Throughout 2024, Indian users installed the messaging app approximately 100 million times. Russia ranked second, with over **** million downloads over the observed period, while U.S. users installed the app **** million times. Brazil recorded the largest number of downloads among Latin American countries. France and Germany were the leading markets in Western Europe. Telegram usage in India Telegram had the fourth-highest penetration rate among social media platforms in India, following WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook. In the third quarter of 2023, more than ** percent of Indian active social media users reported having used Telegram over the past month. However, user engagement on Telegram in India was significantly lower than on other major networks. On average, Indian users spent *** hours per month on the platform in 2021, which was ** times shorter than on WhatsApp. Growing popularity of Telegram As of July 2024, Telegram had *** million active users around the globe, having multiplied its audience tenfold since December 2014. Telegram recorded a sharp increase in global downloads in the first quarter of 2021, when WhatsApp, its competitor owned by Meta, updated its privacy policy. In March 2022, Telegram further increased its popularity in Russia after Meta platforms Facebook and Instagram were banned in the country. The number of daily active users (DAU) of Telegram nationwide grew by ** percent between January and March 2022.

The Pushshift Telegram dataset is made up of over 27.8K channels and 317M messages from 2.2M unique users. The Pushshift Telegram dataset can help researchers from a variety of disciplines interested in studying online social movements, protests, political extremism, and disinformation.

During the fourth quarter of 2024, mobile messaging market leader WhatsApp reported around 1.13 million downloads from users in the United Kingdom. By comparison, Telegram reported around 1.22 million app downloads during the same period, while instant messaging platform Signal reported approximately 388 thousand app downloads by UK users. Between 2020 and the end of 2023, WhatsApp has consistently amassed more app downloads than competitors Telegram and Signal, but Telegram gained ground among UK users in 2024, with almost two million downloads during the second quarter of the year, compared to the 1.11 million downloads recorded by WhatsApp during the same period.

During a survey conducted in early 2025, 19 percent of respondents who had Telegram installed on their phones said they used the app every day, down from 30 percent a year earlier. Meanwhile, 22 percent of interviewees used Telegram a few times per week. The number of Telegram users worldwide grew almost four times between 2018 and 2022.

How high is the brand awareness of Telegram in the United States?When it comes to messenger users, brand awareness of Telegram is at ** percent in the United States. The survey was conducted using the concept of aided brand recognition, showing respondents both the brand's logo and the written brand name.How popular is Telegram in the United States?In total, ** percent of U.S. messenger users say they like Telegram. However, in actuality, among the ** percent of U.S. respondents who know Telegram, ** percent of people like the brand.What is the usage share of Telegram in the United States?All in all, ** percent of messenger users in the United States use Telegram. That means, of the ** percent who know the brand, ** percent use them.How loyal are the users of Telegram?Around ** percent of messenger users in the United States say they are likely to use Telegram again. Set in relation to the ** percent usage share of the brand, this means that ** percent of their users show loyalty to the brand.What's the buzz around Telegram in the United States?In February 2024, about ** percent of U.S. messenger users had heard about Telegram in the media, on social media, or in advertising over the past three months. Of the ** percent who know the brand, that's ** percent, meaning at the time of the survey there's little buzz around Telegram in the United States.If you want to compare brands, do deep-dives by survey items of your choice, filter by total online population or users of a certain brand, or drill down on your very own hand-tailored target groups, our Consumer Insights Brand KPI survey has you covered.

TeleScope is an extensive dataset suite that comprises metadata for about 500K Telegram channels and downloaded message metadata from all 71K public channels within this 500k channels accounting for about 120M crawled messages. In addition to metadata, TeleScope suite provides enrichments like language detection and active periods for each channel and telegram entity extracted from messages. It also comprises channel connections and user interaction data built using Telegram’s message-forwarding feature to study multiple use cases including information spread and message-forwarding patterns. The dataset is designed for diverse applications, independent of specific research objectives, and sufficiently versatile to facilitate the replication of social media studies comparable to those conducted on platforms like X (former Twitter).

Further information on the content of the files can be found in the file TeleScope_readme_v1-0-0.txt (see 'Technical Report').

keywords: Computational Social Science; Information Science, Web and Social Media; text analysis; text processing; text communication; social media; Online discourse; Information Dissemination; Information Analysis

The largest share of Telegram users as of 2023 were employed in the IT and Internet sector, at about 21 percent. Users of the messaging app with occupation in the production industry accounted for over seven percent of the user base.

Nearly one-third of Telegram users in Russia were Moscow residents, as of 2023. Saint Petersburg accounted for the second-largest share of the instant messaging app users in the country, reaching about 12.6 percent.

This dataset comprises 195,567 message IDs shared by 6,802 unique Telegram users on 25 pro-Bolsonaro public Telegram groups during August 2022, when the presidential campaign for the 2022 Brazilian elections started.

The message ID provided by Telegram API is unique only for the group or channel where it was posted. For this reason, the dataset provides the message ID and the group username (@).

According to Cognitive Market Research, the global Mobile Messaging Service market size will be USD 102584.2 million in 2024. It will expand at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 16.20% from 2024 to 2031.

North America held the major market share for more than 40% of the global revenue with a market size of USD 41033.68 million in 2024 and will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 14.4% from 2024 to 2031.
Europe accounted for a market share of over 30% of the global revenue with a market size of USD 30775.26 million.
Asia Pacific held a market share of around 23% of the global revenue with a market size of USD 23594.37 million in 2024 and will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 18.2% from 2024 to 2031.
Latin America had a market share of more than 5% of the global revenue with a market size of USD 5129.21 million in 2024 and will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 15.6% from 2024 to 2031.
Middle East and Africa had a market share of around 2% of the global revenue and was estimated at a market size of USD 2051.68 million in 2024 and will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 15.9% from 2024 to 2031.
The software category is the fastest growing segment of the Mobile Messaging Service industry

Market Dynamics of Mobile Messaging Service Market

Key Drivers for Mobile Messaging Service Market

Increased adoption of smartphones and mobile internet drives the market growth 

As more people around the world gain access to affordable smartphones and mobile data, they increasingly turn to mobile messaging apps (like WhatsApp, Telegram, WeChat, or Signal) for daily communication. These apps often offer free, instant, and multimedia-rich messaging, which is especially appealing in regions where traditional SMS or calling may be expensive or unreliable. For instance, in India, the rapid rise in smartphone usage and low-cost internet provided by companies like Reliance Jio led to an explosion in WhatsApp users. By 2023, WhatsApp had over 500 million users in India alone, becoming the country’s primary communication platform for personal, business, and even government messaging services.

The Global Proliferation of Smartphone Usage to Boost Market Growth

The market for mobile messaging services is expanding due in large part to the increase in smartphone adoption. Mobile messaging services are becoming more widely available to more people as cell phones are cheaper and easier to obtain, especially in developing nations. The increasing number of users on messaging apps like WeChat, Telegram, and WhatsApp is a result of their widespread acceptance, which raises user engagement. Additionally, smartphones have improved features like voice, video, and multimedia messaging, which boost communication in general. Furthermore, messaging apps are made more user-friendly and effective by the advancement of sophisticated smartphone technology like fast internet and potent CPUs. As a result, the market for mobile messaging is growing as a direct result of rising smartphone usage worldwide.

Growing Need for Instant Communication to Drive Market Growth

The mobile messaging service market is growing due in large part to consumer demand for instant communication. A growing number of people and businesses are turning to messaging apps like WhatsApp, Messenger, and Telegram because they need rapid, effective, and real-time communication solutions in today's hectic world. Instantaneous phone or video calls, message exchanges, and material sharing are all made possible by these technologies, which improve communication efficiency and speed. Instant messaging is being used more and more by organizations as a flexible means of communication since it offers an efficient avenue for teamwork, marketing, and customer service. More market expansion for mobile messaging services is being driven by consumers' desire for instant communication and the ease of being able to access them on their phones.

Restraint Factor for the Mobile Messaging Service Market

Data Privacy and Security Concerns Will Limit Market Growth

The market for mobile messaging services is being held back by serious worries about security and privacy. Users are becoming more and more concerned about data breaches, unlawful access, and the exploitation of their data as messaging platforms handle sensitive personal and corporate ...

In November 2024, users worldwide spent an average of over **** hours per month using the messenger app Telegram. Users in Russia spent almost ***** hours on average using the popular social and communication app, while users in Singapore spent around **** hours monthly on the app.

To research the illegal activities of underground apps on Telegram, we have created a dataset called TUApps. TUApps is a progressively growing dataset of underground apps, collected from September 2023 to February 2024, consisting of a total of 1,000 underground apps and 200 million messages distributed across 71,332 Telegram channels.
In the process of creating this dataset, we followed strict ethical standards to ensure the lawful use of the data and the protection of user privacy. The dataset includes the following files:
(1) dataset.zip: We have packaged the underground app samples. The naming of Android app files is based on the SHA256 hash of the file, and the naming of iOS app files is based on the SHA256 hash of the publishing webpage.
(2) code.zip: We have packaged the code used for crawling data from Telegram and for performing data analysis.
(3) message.zip: We have packaged the messages crawled from Telegram, the files are named after the names of the channels in Telegram.
Availability of code and messages
Upon acceptance of our research paper, the dataset containing user messages and the code used for data collection and analysis will only be made available upon request to researchers who agree to adhere to strict ethical principles and maintain the confidentiality of the data.

The largest share of Telegram users as of 2023 were earning between 61 and 150 thousand Russian rubles per month, at about 17.3 percent. Users of the messaging app with income level ranging between 201 and 300 thousand Russian rubles monthly accounted for 6.4 percent of the user base.

The Sartorius Scale Monitor software has three goals. First, the software communicates with Sartorius scales that support the SBI protocol to query and convert the scale values in real-time, monitoring the calculated values and triggering an alarm in case of an unexpected event. The second goal is to provide the user with a web-based interface that provides alarm settings and an overview of the measured and calculated values. The third goal deals with notifying the user about alarms that occur. Here, a Telegram bot was integrated that provides all user information and interactions in a group channel. The bot can inform the users about the current status, as well as about occurring alarms, in addition, simple user interaction with the bot is possible to set the alarms on or off. The integration with the Telegram bot requires an existing bot and a Telegram channel.

Russia had the largest share of internet users aged 16 to 64 years who used Telegram among European countries, at **** percent in the third quarter of 2024. In Turkey recorded a usage rate of **** percent.