A messenger built for speed, privacy and every device you own. This page explains how the pieces fit together: cloud chats, secret chats, limits, clients and what happens to your data.
Telegram is a free cloud-based messaging app used by hundreds of millions of people around the world. It runs on Android, iPhone, iPad, Windows, macOS, Linux and directly in your browser, and every version of the app talks to the same cloud account. A conversation you start on your phone at breakfast is already waiting on your desktop when you sit down at your desk — no cables, no exports, no "sync" button. Install it once, sign in with your phone number, and your chats, media and files follow you.
Telegram has its own global data centre network with distributed clusters spread across several continents. Messages are delivered through the closest available node, which is why a short text usually lands on the other side in less time than it takes to blink — even when the recipient is on the other side of the planet. Media is optimised on the fly: photos are cached in several resolutions, videos stream while downloading, and files resume automatically after a dropped connection.
Every normal Telegram chat is a cloud chat. It is stored on encrypted servers so that it can be restored on any new device, and only you can read it. Secret Chats are different: they are end-to-end encrypted, device-to-device, never touch the cloud, and can be set to self-destruct after a chosen time. Group chats and channels use the cloud model because they need to work for thousands of members at once; secret chats are for one-to-one conversations that should leave no trace anywhere.
You can send files up to 2 GB each, keep unlimited media in the cloud, join groups with up to 200,000 members, create channels with unlimited subscribers and pin as many chats as you like. There is no fee for any of it, no advertising in your private conversations and no "premium" wall in front of basic messaging.
Telegram publishes an open API and ships open-source clients for every major platform. That is why there are dozens of independent apps, bots and integrations — from weather bots in your group to full-scale business tools. Anyone can build a bot in an afternoon and put it in front of an audience of millions.
On a phone, the Android and iOS apps are the primary clients. On a computer, the desktop app for Windows, macOS and Linux offers the most comfortable way to work with many chats at once, while Telegram Web runs instantly in any modern browser without installing anything. All of them are free and all of them use the same account, so you can mix and match freely. Full list of clients is on the Apps page.
Yes. All core features — messaging, calls, groups, channels, file sharing and cloud storage — are free and have no usage caps. There are no ads in private chats or group conversations.
A phone number is used once to verify that you are a real person. After registration you can set a username so that people can reach you without ever seeing your number, and you can hide the number from everybody in the privacy settings.
A group is a conversation: every member can post, reply, react and see the member list. A channel is a one-to-many broadcast: only the owner and chosen administrators post, while subscribers read. Both support unlimited media and can be public with an @username.
Yes. You can be signed in on any number of phones, tablets and computers simultaneously. Messages are stored in the cloud, so history appears on a new device immediately after sign-in, and you can end any session remotely from the Active Sessions screen.
Each file can be up to 2 GB. Photos and videos are compressed for fast sending by default, and you can always send the original file instead. Everything you send stays available in the cloud for as long as you need it.
The protocol is designed to survive poor networks: it uses encrypted transport, adaptive reconnection and a distributed server pool. Where a direct connection is unavailable, the apps can route traffic through built-in proxy support, including MTProto proxies and SOCKS5.
Pick the client that matches the device in your hand: Android, iPhone or iPad, desktop, or the web version. Sign in with your number, confirm the code, and you are in. Everything else — themes, folders, notification rules, privacy — can be tuned later from Settings.