Quick Answer
How many people use Telegram in 2025?
There are 550 million Telegram users.
In this article, we will uncover how many people use Telegram in 2025 and the app’s market share in the overall messaging market.
Online messaging is an instant, fast, and entertaining way to communicate wherever you are in the world.
However, these platforms also come with privacy concerns that could destroy one’s reputation in an instant.
Telegram knows just the right answer to this. It is considered one of the most secured messaging platforms available worldwide.
How Many People Use Telegram in 2025?
550 million monthly active users and 55.2 million daily active users.
Its usage statistics have grown exponentially since its official launch in 2013, making it hailed as the 7th most-downloaded application in both Google Play Store and App Store in August of 2021.
Today, many people across different regions of the world are on Telegram.
There are many reasons behind its growing user base, particularly due to its security features that protect users’ privacy at all times.
Particularly, it employs end-to-end encryption which prevents third-party applications from generating information from the user.
Thus, this protects their data and seals it securely from hackers.
Telegram’s Number of Users Over the Years
Telegram has always enjoyed a sustained amount of popularity in the years following its launch in 2013.
- 2014 – 35 million users
- 2015 – 50 million users
- 2016 – 80 million users
- 2017 – 150 million users
- 2018 – 200 million users
- 2019 – 300 million users
- 2020 – 400 million users
- 2021 – 500 million users
- 2022 – 550 million users
In October 2021, Telegram reported 70 million new sign-ups in just one day after Facebook’s messenger suffered from an unexpected outage.
All About Telegram
Telegram is a messaging service launched in 2013.
It is a free-of-charge and highly-secured platform which uses the power of cloud computing to access messages using any device, any time, and anywhere.
Similarly, you also access your account using multiple devices at once.
The Telegram app is available for download on iOS, Android, Windows, and Linux operating systems, among others.
Accessing via the web is also permitted.
Despite being founded by a Russian entrepreneur, Telegram is based and registered in the United Arab Emirates under its organization Telegram FZ-LLC.
Its parent company, Telegram Group Inc, is headquartered in the British Virgin Islands.
Telegram and Censorship
Telegram enjoys massive popularity in countries with high censorship such as Russia (see VPN for Russia) and Iran (see VPN for Iran).
This comes as the app comes with a secret chat feature employing end-to-end encryption.
Users may opt to delete their sent messages without traces when they feel like it.
Lastly, Telegram is the only free messaging service that allows users to attach files that are 2GB in size.
Most applications have limited capacity for file attachments, with Skype already leading the race with an allowable 30MB file size max for attachments.
It’s recommended to use Telegram with a proxy (see Telegram proxies) or VPN (see VPN for Telegram) to increase privacy and security even further.
Telegram User Demographics by Region
Undeniably, Telegram has taken the world by storm. With its strong user base of 2022, there is no question about its popularity.
- Asia – 38 million Telegram users
- Middle East, Mediterranean, and Africa – 8 million Telegram users
- Europe – 27 million Telegram users
- Latin America – 21 million Telegram users
Telegram App Downloads
The Telegram app is declared as the world’s 7th most-downloaded application in the non-gaming category for both Android and Apple Users at one point in 2021.
Overall, it holds the 15th spot with the highest number of downloads in all categories, having reached a billion downloads last year.
- 2014 – 100 million app downloads
- 2015 – 130 million app downloads
- 2016 – 180 million app downloads
- 2017 – 250 million app downloads
- 2018 – 340 million app downloads
- 2019 – 515 million app downloads
- 2020 – 840 million app downloads
- 2021 – 1.2 billion app downloads
2020 and 2021 are the Telegram application’s best years so far, having respectively added 325 million and 360 million downloads during those years.
Telegram App’s Ranking in the Social Media Market
Telegram is included among the 10 most popular social media platforms available for global users in 2021.
Here is the list of some of the popular social media sites ranked by their number of audience.
- Facebook – 2.9 billion active users
- YouTube – 2.5 billion active users
- WhatsApp – 2.0 billion active users
- Instagram – 1.4 billion active users
- TikTok – 1.0 billion active users
- Facebook Messenger – 988 million active users
- Snapchat – 557 million active users
- Telegram – 550 million active users
- Pinterest – 444 million active users
The global messaging market is competed against by the world’s top service providers namely WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and Telegram.
Take a look at each of these apps’ market share in 2021.
- WhatsApp – occupies 31% of the overall market
- Facebook Messenger – occupies 7% of the overall market
- Telegram – occupies 4% of the overall market
Telegram vs. WhatsApp
WhatsApp is a clear winner in terms of the total market share, but Telegram has a lot of good points to consider.
Below are some of them:
- Telegram is a clear winner in terms of capacity. As mentioned, it can accommodate up to 2GB-sized attachments, higher than WhatsApp’s maximum allowable attachment size of 100MB. Similarly, a Telegram group chat can recruit up to 200,000 members versus the latter’s 256 max number of members
- Media files sent through Telegram preserve quality as the app allows users to send media either in raw or compressed formats. Users can send any type of file on the platform versus WhatsApp that only allows sending images, videos, and documents
- Telegram can be accessed using multiple devices at the same time. This feature is restricted on WhatsApp which only allows users to login an account one device at a time
Conclusion
There are a lot of people drawn to the app due to its ease of use and top-of-the-line security features.
Not to mention, it is free to download and use!
Go and try it for yourself and experience its convenience. Do not forget to try its secret chat feature (wink)!
There you have the answer to how many people use Telegram in 2025.