A paid Telegram Premium subscription is now officially coming to the popular cross-platform messaging service. After a little over a month of beta testing, Telegram CEO and founder Pavel Durov has announced via his own Telegram Channel that the new Telegram Premium paid service will offer advantages like "additional features, speed and resources." That includes things like extra-large stickers and larger documents. Existing Telegram users that don't want any of the changes shouldn't need to worry, as Durov says that "all existing features remain free," with new features still planned for us freeloaders. Pricing and availability for the new subscription are still unknown.

Rumblings of Telegram's planned monetization have been circulating since 2020, when Durov outright said that the company's current plans weren't sustainable and that paid features would be coming, targeting business and power users. But the company's first strategy to get in the green was rolling out ads last year.

More recently, Telegram has been spotted testing upcoming reaction emoji and stickers as a branded Telegram Premium feature, showing the sort of path that Telegram Premium would take, delivering new functionality for those willing to cough up the dough. Telegram's former slogan "free forever" was also recently changed to "free unlimited cloud storage for chats and media" in the code for an upcoming app version, a change that Durov's announcement today confirms.

Text of the full announcement.

In his post to his own Telegram Channel, Durov says that Telegram Premium will be a subscription plan. Benefits weren't directly listed outside nebulous terms like "additional features, speed, and resources" and that subscribers could join a club "that receives new features first." He states that free customers can still view extra-large documents, media, and stickers sent by Premium users, meaning those features are clearly among those included with Premium.

Previous leaks indicate that the benefits of Telegram Premium include a 4GB upload size, faster download speeds, no ads, unique reactions, premium stickers, animated avatars, a profile badge, and other enhancements. Durov did not mention pricing for Telegram Premium today, but leaks indicated it could be $4.99 a month. Again, all existing features will remain free, and Durov confirms that not all future features will be locked behind a paywall.

Telegram Premium features spotted in beta include new stickers and custom avatars, depicted above.

Durov did not mention in his announcement when the new subscription service would be available. Android Police has reached out to Telegram for a complete list of features included with the subscription, as well as a date for availability and final pricing, but the company didn't immediately respond for comment.

As part of the rationale behind rolling out a paid subscription, Durov claimed that demand for higher limits on chats, media, and files would have made traffic and hosting costs unmanageable for the service, but making it a paid option opens the door for those that need it, and the company would prefer to be "funded primarily by its users, not advertisers," to ensure they remain the priority.

Reaction responses to Durov's announcement seem generally positive — more thumbs up and celebration emoji than thumbs down.

Telegram was recently accused of providing customer data to German authorities despite insisting in the company's own FAQ that "to this day, we have disclosed 0 bytes of user data to third parties, including governments." From 2018 to 2020, Telegram was blocked in Russia when the company was unwilling to hand over encryption keys to that government. At the time, Durov said that was a violation of user privacy, and Telegram ultimately returned to the market with no reported change in customer privacy.