Telegram rolls out a new premium subscription tier for $5 a month

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Telegram just launched a premium tier subscription. For $5 a month, you get a whole list of upgrades which include 4GB uploads, faster downloads, and a whole lot more. Plus, that $5 fee helps fund future development at the same time.

So, what are these upgrades? For a start, you get the upload size of your files doubled to 4GB each up from 2GB. That’s nearly a DVD of storage. You also get faster downloads, exclusive stickers, and access to message reactions.

Telegram also says that you don’t have to be a premium subscriber to download those larger files, or to see stickers sent by premium users.

Almost everything that has a limit in the app gets doubled by subscribing. Channel limits double to 1,000, pinned chats also double to 10, and so do public links, now at 20. The same goes for saved GIFs, now up to 400.

The contributions of premium subscribers will help improve and expand the app for decades to come, while Telegram will remain free, independent and uphold its users-first values, redefining how a tech company should operate.

That’s not all. Premium users can write a longer bio and include a clickable link, as well as additional characters to media captions. Other features include voice-to-text, animated profile pictures, and better chat management tools.

That’s a ton of value here from Telegram at $5 a month. On the flip side, the rest of Telegram’s 700 million active monthly users aren’t being left out of the upgrade cycle.

Free-to-everyone improvements include verification badges, better bots, better chat previews and automatic gallery saving on Android, better sharing on iOS, and over 100 fixes and optimizations to the mobile and desktop apps.

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Joe Rice-Jones

Maker, meme-r, and unabashed geek with nearly half a decade of blogging experience at KnowTechie, SlashGear and XDA Developers. If it runs on electricity (or even if it doesn't), Joe probably has one around his office somewhere, with particular focus in gadgetry and handheld gaming. Shoot him an email at joe@knowtechie.com.