How Many People Use Telegram in 2023? 55 Telegram Stats
Written by Brian Dean
Telegram was launched on August 14, 2013, as a privacy-focused, ad-free messaging app. First available on iOS, the alpha version of the Android app was released later that same year.
Telegram brought in approximately 100,000 daily active users in its first year.
Today, it reportedly has more than 550 million monthly active users. Ranked by the number of downloads, Telegram is among the top 10 most popular social networks in the world.
Read on to find all the important Telegram usage statistics for 2023. Here’s a full breakdown of what we’ll cover:
- Telegram Statistics (Top Picks)
- How many active users are on Telegram?
- Telegram app stats
- Where is Telegram based?
- Ranked: Telegram is the 10th most used social media platform worldwide
- Telegram gender demographics
- Telegram popularity in select countries
- Political leaders on Telegram
- Telegram availability by platform
- How many stickers are available on Telegram?
- What are the most popular Telegram channels?
Important Telegram Stats
- Telegram has 550 million monthly active users. An increase of 175% since 2018.
- Telegram was the 7th most downloaded app across iOS & Android in August 2021.
- Telegram has 55.2 million daily active users.
- The average Telegram user spends 2.9 hours on the app each month.
Telegram monthly active users
According to company data, Telegram has 550 million monthly active users as of July 2021. An increase of 10% over the last 6 months.
Over the past 3 and a half years alone, the messenger app added 350 million users to its user base (just over 60% of all existing active Telegram users).
According to Telegram founder Pavel Durov, 25 million new users joined Telegram during a 72-hour surge in January 2021. Which equates to about 8.33 million new signups per day. And more than 100 million new users started using Telegram in January alone.
In fact, Telegram’s user base has been growing at a rate of more than 40% each year since its launch in 2013.
Here’s a full breakdown of Telegram users over time:
| Date | Monthly active users |
|---|---|
| March 2014 | 35 million |
| December 2014 | 50 million |
| September 2015 | 60 million |
| February 2016 | 100 million |
| December 2017 | 180 million |
| March 2018 | 200 million |
| October 2019 | 300 million |
| April 2020 | 400 million |
| January 2021 | 500 million |
| July 2021 | 550 million |
Sources: Statista, Telegram, Statista
Telegram daily active users
According to Apptopia data, Telegram has 55.2 million daily active users across iOS and Android. An increase of more than 30% since November 2020.
As of March 2014, Telegram had a reported 15 million daily active users. An increase from 100,000 daily active users in October 2013.
On October 4th, 2021 during the Facebook and Instagram blackout, Telegram saw an increase of 70 million users onto the platform in one day.
Source: Apptopia, TechCrunch, Telegram
Telegram app download stats
Telegram’s app installs have dramatically increased in 2021. In the first half of 2021, the app had been downloaded a total of 214.7 million times.
According to Sensor Tower data, Telegram was the most downloaded app (combined across the App Store & Google Play) globally in January 2021, with more than 63 million downloads.
As of August 31, 2021, Telegram received a staggering 1 billion downloads and became the 15th app to do so worldwide.
Telegram is the 7th most popular non-gaming app in Google Play, ranked by the number of worldwide downloads.
Ranked by the total number of downloads, Telegram was the 7th most popular mobile app across iOS & Android as of August 2021.
Sources: Sensor Tower, TechCrunch
How much time do Telegram users spend on the app?
The average user of Telegram on Android spends 2.9 hours per month using the app. That’s slightly higher than the 2.7 hours per month that people spend on Facebook Messenger.
Source: Hootsuite
Where is Telegram based?
Telegram’s development team is currently based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. The issuer of the Telegram mobile app is Telegram FZ-LLC, an organization registered in the United Arab Emirates.
The legal address of Telegram’s parent company (Telegram Group Inc.) is located in the British Virgin Islands.
The legal representative for data protection legislation is the company Telegram UK Holdings Ltd, based in the United Kingdom.
Source: Telegram
Ranked: Telegram is the 10th most used social media platform worldwide
According to Statista data, Telegram is the 10th most used social media platform worldwide, with 550 million active users.
Source: Statista
Telegram gender demographics
Telegram’s user base consists of 41.4% female users and 58.6% male users.
Source: Hootsuite.
Telegram popularity in select countries
Here’s the ranking of the Telegram app in the iOS App Store under the “social networking” category by country:
| Country | Rank in country among social networking apps |
|---|---|
| Australia | 4 |
| Brazil | 1 |
| Germany | 1 |
| India | 2 |
| Malaysia | 1 |
| Netherlands | 2 |
| Russia | 1 |
| United Kingdom | 2 |
| United States | 2 |
Source: SimilarWeb
Telegram users in Russia
According to TechCrunch, Telegram has been downloaded 100 million times in the app’s lifetime. This accounts for 10% of Telegram’s total downloads.
A Deloitte survey found that 50% of Russians had installed Telegram on their mobile device (a 40% increase vs 2019). By comparison, WhatsApp had been installed by 88% of respondents.
Sources: Telegram, Vedomosti, TechCrunch
Telegram users in India
The Telegram app has been downloaded 220 million times in India since August 2021, which accounts for 22% of all worldwide Telegram downloads.
Source: TechCrunch
Telegram users in Indonesia
According to Sensor Tower data, the Telegram app has been downloaded 80 million times in Indonesia, which represents 8% of the total worldwide share.
Source: TechCrunch
Telegram users in the US
According to Pavel Durov, the US represents less than 2% of Telegram’s global user base, with less than 10 million US users accessing Telegram on a monthly basis.
Source: Telegram
Political leaders on Telegram
We’ve listed popular political leaders with channels on Telegram, based on subscriber count.
With that, here’s a table that contains the full data:
| Political leader | Number of subscribers |
|---|---|
| Jair M. Bolsonaro (President of Brazil) | 1 million |
| Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (President of Turkey) | 277,300 |
| Shavkat Mirziyoyev (President of Uzbekistan) | 181,100 |
| Andrés Manuel López Obrador (President of Mexico) | 136,000 |
| Abiy Ahmed Ali (Prime Minister of Ethiopia) | 137,400 |
| Volodymyr Zelensky (President of Ukraine) | 51,700 |
| Lee Hsien Loong (Prime Minister of Singapore) | 19,600 |
Telegram availability by platform
The Telegram app is available to download in 155 countries (out of 175 countries).
Android users in all 155 of these countries are able to install Telegram from the Play Store.
In the Windows Store, the Telegram app is available in 52 countries (out of 109 countries where Windows Store currently operates).
Source: Appfigures
How many stickers are available on Telegram?
Stickers is a feature on Telegram where users can add graphical elements to conversations.
There are over 20,000 stickers on Telegram.
Source: Telegram
What are the most popular Telegram channels?
The most popular Telegram channels are related to Telegram itself, while the second most popular category is about cryptocurrencies.
Here’s are the 10 most popular Telegram channels right now:
| Channel name | Number of subscribers |
|---|---|
| Telegram Tips | 7.5 million |
| Telegram News | 6.3 million |
| Bollywood HD Movies Latest | 4.1 million |
| Proxy MTProto | 3.3 million |
| Crypto Trading Bitcoin | 2.9 million |
| Bitcoin News Crypto and Technical Analyst | 2.8 million |
| F*CKTS | 2.1 million |
| Movies Temple | 2.1 million |
| Amir Tataloo | 1.9 million |
| MyPoroxy | 1.8 million |
Source: Telegram Analytics
Conclusion
That’s it for my list of Telegram user stats.
Telegram is one of those apps that shares very limited data. So I did my best to find stats that were scattered among news articles and founder interviews.
Now I would like to hear your thoughts:
Do you think Telegram will continue to grow? Is there anything, in particular, you’d like to see added to this Telegram stats page?
Go ahead and leave a comment below right now.