The Switching Cost Nobody Talks About
Ask someone why they use WhatsApp and the answer is almost always the same: "Because everyone I know is on it." Ask someone why they use Telegram and the answer is almost never that. It is usually something specific. "The groups are better." "I can send files without compression." "The bots are incredible." "The stickers." "The desktop app actually works." Telegram users are evangelists in a way that WhatsApp users are not, because WhatsApp users did not choose WhatsApp -- they inherited it. Telegram users made an active decision to be somewhere different, and they have reasons.
I have been on Telegram since 2019. My family group chat is on WhatsApp. My work is on Slack and Teams. My actual digital life -- the communities I participate in, the news I consume, the files I share with myself across devices, the bots that automate small tasks -- lives on Telegram. I am, in other words, a person who maintains three messaging apps because no single one does everything, and I think that is more common than anyone admits.
This review is not going to be a feature-by-feature comparison chart. Instead, I want to answer a question that has nagged me for years: why does the most feature-rich messenger in existence not have the most users? And is it actually a problem, or does Telegram work precisely because it is not for everyone?
The Power Users: People Who Live in Telegram
There is a category of person for whom Telegram is not just an app but an operating system. These are the people with 20+ chat folders, custom notification sounds per contact, bots that forward messages between channels, and a Saved Messages thread that functions as a personal knowledge base. I am one of them, and I recognize the type instantly.
For power users, Telegram's cloud architecture is the foundation. Every message, every file, every voice note is stored on Telegram's servers and syncs instantly to every device. I use Telegram on my phone, my laptop, my work desktop, and occasionally my tablet. The conversation is always there, perfectly synchronized, with zero delay. There is no "primary device" concept like WhatsApp's clumsy multi-device implementation. There are no backup files to manage. Switch phones? Log in and your entire history appears. This alone is worth switching for if you use multiple devices, and I am amazed more people do not realize how freeing it is.
Chat folders are the organization system that keeps the chaos manageable. I have folders for Work, Friends, News (channels I follow), Tech Communities, Crypto (I observe but do not participate), Bots, and an Archive for groups I have muted but do not want to leave. Each folder shows its own unread count. The effect is like having multiple inboxes instead of one endless list. WhatsApp does not have anything comparable. It is just one long scroll of conversations, and anyone who is in more than 20 active chats knows how quickly that becomes unusable.
The file sharing deserves a paragraph of its own because it is shockingly underappreciated. Telegram lets you send files up to 2 GB each -- 4 GB with Premium. Any file type. No compression on photos if you send them as files. No restrictions. I regularly send myself large project archives, uncompressed photographs, PDF collections, and video recordings by sending them to Saved Messages. It is the fastest cross-device file transfer method I have found, faster and simpler than AirDrop, WeTransfer, or Google Drive for quick transfers. My Saved Messages thread has become, accidentally, a better file manager than most actual file management apps.
The Community Builders: Why 200,000-Person Groups Work
Telegram groups scale to 200,000 members. That number sounds absurd until you see what it enables.
I am a member of a web development community with about 15,000 active participants. In WhatsApp, a group this size would be impossible -- the cap is 1,024 members. Even if it were possible, it would be an unreadable firehose of messages with no way to organize discussions. Telegram's topic-based threading changes this entirely. The group has separate topics for JavaScript, CSS, Backend, Career Advice, Code Review, and Off-Topic. Each topic is essentially its own chat within the group. I follow JavaScript and Career Advice, have notifications on for those topics only, and ignore the others. When I open the group, I see organized discussions rather than noise.
The admin tools match the scale. Permissions can be set per-member: this person can post media, that person can only text. Slow mode forces a cooldown between messages, which prevents a few loud voices from dominating. Anti-spam features auto-remove bots and suspicious accounts. The admin log records every action taken by every moderator, creating an audit trail that keeps the moderation team accountable. Running a large community on Telegram is not easy -- nothing about managing thousands of people is -- but the tooling is better than any other messaging platform provides.
Channels are the other half of the community story. A channel is a broadcast -- one-to-many, like a newsletter but inside Telegram. Some channels have millions of subscribers. I follow about 40, covering tech news, design inspiration, curated link collections, and a few comedians. Channels can have discussion groups attached, creating a pattern where the channel posts content and the linked group hosts discussion about it. It is a media model that lives somewhere between a blog and a forum, and it works remarkably well.
The Developers: Bots and Mini Apps
This is where Telegram leaves every other messenger behind by a distance that is almost unfair.
The Telegram Bot API lets developers build automated accounts that can do nearly anything: respond to commands, process natural language, handle payments, manage group moderation, serve as customer support agents, run polls and quizzes, send scheduled messages, connect to external APIs, and interact with users through rich button-based interfaces. The API is well-documented, supports webhooks for real-time responsiveness, and can be implemented in any programming language. I have built three bots myself -- a reminder bot, a link-saving bot, and a bot that fetches weather data -- and each took less than an afternoon to get working.
Mini Apps pushed the platform further. These are full web applications running inside Telegram, built with standard HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. The Telegram client provides APIs for authentication, payments, and native UI integration, so Mini Apps can accept credit cards, verify user identity, and feel native to the platform. I have seen mini apps for food delivery, ride hailing, e-commerce, cryptocurrency trading, and gaming. The ecosystem is still young compared to WeChat's mature mini-program platform, but the growth trajectory is steep, and the developer experience is substantially better than anything WhatsApp or Signal offers.
For developers and businesses, this programmability transforms Telegram from a messaging app into a platform. You can build an entire customer-facing service that exists entirely inside Telegram -- no separate website, no app store submission, no installation required by the user. That distribution advantage is significant, and it is the reason many small businesses in regions where Telegram is popular (Russia, Iran, parts of Central Asia and the Middle East) run their entire operations through Telegram bots and channels.
The Privacy-Conscious (and the Privacy Confusion)
Telegram has a complicated relationship with privacy, and it is important to be honest about this because the messaging around it is frequently misleading.
Regular Telegram chats are NOT end-to-end encrypted. They are encrypted in transit and at rest on Telegram's servers using a distributed key system, but Telegram can technically access message content. This is a deliberate design choice that enables the cloud sync, search, and multi-device features that make Telegram so convenient. End-to-end encryption is available only through Secret Chats, which are device-specific (they do not sync), support self-destructing messages, and block screenshots and forwarding.
By contrast, WhatsApp encrypts all messages end-to-end by default using the Signal Protocol. Signal itself is the gold standard for private messaging. On pure privacy grounds, both are stronger defaults than Telegram for person-to-person messaging.
But privacy is not only about encryption. Telegram lets you communicate using a username without sharing your phone number. You can set your number to private so that nobody -- not even people who have your number in their contacts -- can see it. You can set messages to auto-delete after a period. You can set your account to self-destruct if inactive. These are meaningful privacy features that WhatsApp, which requires your phone number for everything, does not offer.
The result is a nuanced picture. If your threat model is "I do not want the messaging company to be able to read my messages," Signal is the right choice. If your threat model is "I do not want people I chat with to know my phone number, I want messages that disappear, and I want to control my digital footprint," Telegram offers tools that its competitors do not. Most people's privacy needs fall somewhere between these extremes, and understanding where you fall matters more than the headline "is it encrypted?"
What Premium Gets You (and Whether It Is Worth It)
Telegram Premium costs $4.99 per month and offers a genuinely generous set of upgrades. The highlights: 4 GB file uploads instead of 2 GB. Faster download speeds. Voice message transcription so you can read voice notes instead of listening to them. Up to 20 chat folders with 200 chats each (versus 10 folders with 100 chats). Exclusive stickers, reactions, and custom emoji. A premium badge next to your name. Animated profile pictures.
Is it worth it? For power users who send large files, manage dozens of chats, and receive a lot of voice messages -- yes. The voice transcription alone makes a noticeable quality-of-life difference if your contacts send voice notes frequently. The expanded folder system is essential once you are managing communities, channels, and personal chats simultaneously. For casual users, the free tier is complete enough that Premium feels optional rather than necessary, which is the right balance.
Telegram Business tools, included with Premium, let small businesses display hours, set up automated greetings and away messages, and configure quick replies. It is a lighter version of what WhatsApp Business offers but costs less and does not require a separate app. For solo freelancers and small businesses already using Telegram for client communication, these features formalize what they were doing manually.
Why Telegram Has Not Won
Here is the honest reckoning. Telegram is technically superior to WhatsApp in almost every measurable dimension: larger groups, better file sharing, cloud sync, superior desktop apps, channels, bots, mini apps, chat folders, custom themes, sticker ecosystem, and a development pace that makes WhatsApp's update schedule look glacial. And yet WhatsApp has 2.7 billion monthly users. Telegram has 950 million. The gap is not closing fast.
The answer is network effects, and they are brutal. Messaging apps are not like music streaming services or text editors, where you can switch independently. A messaging app is only as useful as the number of people you can reach on it. Your mom is on WhatsApp. Your college friends are on WhatsApp. The plumber who fixed your sink last week is on WhatsApp. Switching means convincing every one of those people to install a new app and use it alongside or instead of the one they already have. The friction is not technical -- it is social.
Telegram's growth has come from specific communities and regions rather than broad consumer adoption. It is dominant in Russia and former Soviet states. It is the primary platform for cryptocurrency communities worldwide. It has massive adoption in Iran, where it serves as a de facto social network. It is growing fast in Brazil and India. But in the markets where WhatsApp or iMessage dominate -- Western Europe, the US, most of Latin America -- Telegram remains a secondary app for most people.
The content moderation issue has not helped. Telegram's hands-off approach to moderation, which stems from Pavel Durov's anti-censorship ideology, has attracted piracy groups, extremist content, and scam operations. Pavel Durov's arrest in France in 2024 over content moderation concerns brought global attention to these issues. Telegram has since increased its moderation efforts, but the perception of the platform as a haven for illicit activity persists in mainstream media, making it a harder sell to average users.
Pros and Cons
Pros
- Cloud sync across unlimited devices with no primary device requirement
- Groups up to 200,000 members with topic threading that actually works for large communities
- File sharing up to 2 GB (4 GB Premium) with no type restrictions and no compression
- Bot platform and Mini Apps create a developer ecosystem that no competitor matches
- Channels provide the best broadcast-to-audience feature in any messaging app
- Chat folders and customization options for people who manage complex messaging lives
- Username system enables communication without revealing your phone number
- Native apps on every platform including Linux, all fast and well-designed
Cons
- Regular chats lack end-to-end encryption -- only Secret Chats provide it
- Network effect means most of your contacts are probably on WhatsApp, not Telegram
- Content moderation reputation makes it a hard sell to privacy-cautious mainstream users
- Voice and video call quality trails behind WhatsApp and dedicated apps
- Feature density can overwhelm people who just want to send messages
- Secret Chats do not sync across devices by design, which confuses users
The Better Product That Cannot Win on Product Alone
The Verdict: 4.4 / 5
Telegram is the VHS/Betamax story of messaging, except both formats are still alive. It is the technically superior product that lost the mainstream race to a simpler competitor with a head start. WhatsApp got to market first, got acquired by Facebook's distribution machine, and locked in billions of users before Telegram had finished building its feature set. The result is a strange status quo where the app with fewer features has more users, and the app with more features has a smaller but more passionate audience.
For the people who use it -- power users, community builders, developers, content creators, people in Telegram-dominant regions -- there is nothing else that comes close. The cloud sync, the groups, the channels, the bots, the Mini Apps, the file sharing, the chat folders, the customization -- the gap between Telegram and everything else is wide and getting wider with every biweekly update. Telegram ships features in two weeks that WhatsApp takes two years to consider.
The 4.4 reflects a platform that does almost everything right as a product but cannot overcome the social dynamics that determine which messaging apps people actually use. The missing 0.6 is not about features Telegram lacks. It is about the encryption default it chose not to implement, the moderation balance it still has not found, and the billions of people it has not yet convinced to install the app. Those are different problems than software quality, and they matter in a category where the best product does not always win. Telegram earns the 4.4 on merit. Whether it earns a place on your phone depends on something merit alone cannot provide: whether the people you want to talk to are already there.
The VHS/Betamax comparison is spot on. I have been trying to get my family to switch from WhatsApp for three years. They use maybe 5% of what WhatsApp offers, and they still will not move. Network effects are the only moat that matters in messaging.
I appreciate the honest encryption section. Too many Telegram fans pretend the lack of default E2E is not a real issue. It is. For casual use, the trade-off is fine. For anything sensitive, it matters. Recognizing that distinction is what makes this review trustworthy.
As a bot developer, the Telegram Bot API is the best-documented, most capable automation platform in any messaging app. I have built customer service systems, order management tools, and scheduling bots. Nothing else comes close for developer experience. The Mini Apps ecosystem is where things get really exciting.