Telegram Premium Is Priced At IDR 75 Thousand Per Month, Can Accommodate 4GB Files

JAKARTA - After announcing Telegram Premium earlier this month, the messaging app has finally launched a paid tier, which gives users access to additional features for $4.99/month.

All of the features are outlined in a post on the Telegram blog, with some of the bigger draws including faster downloads and a larger maximum file upload size of 4GB, which was previously only 2GB, standard.

Premium subscribers will also get double the limit imposed on standard users. Instead of joining up to 500 channels, subscribers are limited to 1,000 channels. The same goes for other features in Telegram, as subscribers can create 20 chat folders with 200 chats each, store up to 10 stickers, pin up to 10 chats, and add a total of four accounts to Telegram instead of the three so far. Premium users can also have a longer bios with a link.

Some of the other perks include access to the Premium sticker library with even more annoying full-screen animations, exclusive emoji reactions, and animated profile pictures.

There's also a text conversion for voicemail if you don't have headphones, in addition to a chat management tool that lets you change the default chat folder. Premium subscription will remove sponsored messages on public channels.

Telegram CEO Pavel Durov's views on the platform's freemium tier have remained unchanged since he first raised the possibility in 2020.

In line with what he said earlier, Durov stated last week that the free features will remain free and the new features will not affect the Telegram experience for non-subscribers. This means free Telegram users should be able to download larger files uploaded by subscribers, as well as see premium reactions or emojis they use.

Durov also promised that Telegram would also not stop developing features for free users, which the platform seems to be following so far.

The latest Telegram update features a verified badge in chats (not just in profiles, search results, or chat lists), gives public groups the ability to enable join requests, and adds a few platform-specific improvements.

Nonetheless, Telegram Premium comes with a lot of features. Many of these will probably appeal to the most active Telegram users — there are now 700 million.