This week has seen Telegram surpass a rather significant milestone, with the messaging platform now amassing in excess of 700 million monthly active users.

Perhaps more interestingly though, the move could soon see Telegram launch a Premium tier. This according to a report from TechCrunch, with the platform aiming to monetise a significant portion of its growing user base.

At the time of writing, no official pricing for the Premium tier has been noted, but it is believed to be in the region of $5 to $6 (~R80 to R96), which would prove a fairly costly subscription to pay for more casual Telegram users.

In terms of what this Premium tier would be adding to the mix for ~$5, the size of files sent would double from 2GB to 4GB, along with channels available to follow increasing to 1 000 from 500, which is currently available on the free option of Telegram. Added to this would be the ability to create up to 20 chat folders, each containing up to 200 chats.

As TechCrunch also notes, this would be the first time that an instant messaging app would have rolled out a Premium tier, with the likes of WhatsApp, Signal and Facebook Messenger, yet to do so.

Given that Telegram flourished in the wake of the WhatsApp exodus of early 2021, the push for a paid tier might rub some users the wrong way. That said, this is seemingly a move that Telegram super users are asking for.

“After giving it some thought, we realized that the only way to let our most demanding fans get more while keeping our existing features free is to make those raised limits a paid option,” noted founder Pavel Durov earlier this month.

Whether they are willing to pay as much as $6 remains to be seen. Provided all of the core features stay intact on the Free version of the app, the willingness to try out the Premium tier might be there.

For now, it is unclear when the Premium tier will be rolled out, but Telegram is making the necessary preparations.

[Source – TechCrunch]