How Does Telegram Make Money? The Ledger, Line by Line

Telegram makes money from Premium subscriptions, sponsored messages and crypto-linked exclusivity deals, plus smaller platform fees. Financial Times reports put first-half 2025 revenue at $870 million, yet the company booked a net loss near $222 million after writing down its Toncoin. Those figures are unaudited.

This page reads Telegram the way a marketer sizing up the platform would read any supplier: what comes in, what is left, and what is owed. If you want income routes for your own channel or bot, those are different questions. Here we only look at how Telegram makes money as a company.

One limit shapes everything below. Telegram is private and wholly owned by Pavel Durov, so it isn't obliged to publish its accounts. Nearly every number reached the public through Financial Times reports on investor documents, or through Durov's own posts. When we checked the coverage on 3 November 2026, we read mostly second-hand relays of the FT and found no full-year 2025 result. Treat all of it as press-reported, not as audited accounts we checked.

How much money does Telegram make each year?

Two rows deserve suspicion. For 2023, outlets reading the same FT material print different losses, $173 million after tax and $259 million, and we couldn't reconcile them from the coverage. For 2024, Durov's December post only said revenue passed $1 billion, with no accounts attached. So the $1.4 billion comes from a presentation made to people being asked to buy bonds. For the audience side of this ledger, our Telegram user statistics by country apply the same doubt to the user numbers.

What is the Telegram revenue model, line by line?

When we added the three published lines for this page, they came to $648 million of $870 million. That left $222 million with no label in anything we read. By coincidence it matches the reported net loss almost to the dollar. Don't merge them: one is unexplained income, the other is a bottom line. So how does Telegram generate revenue in that unlabeled quarter? The sources we read don't answer that.

How does the Telegram app make money from Premium?

Premium launched on 19 June 2022, and Durov said subscribers tripled to 12 million during 2024. No later count turned up, so dividing revenue by subscribers would mix periods. His stated preference, per TechCrunch in 2022: "Telegram should be funded primarily by its users, not advertisers." Part of each sale can leak out, since Telegram's Premium FAQ says buying through @PremiumBot is cheaper because it avoids Apple and Google fees.

For a marketer, the useful detail sits in the same FAQ: Premium subscribers don't see sponsored messages, so the people paying Telegram directly drop out of ad reach. Paying users also get the tools in Telegram Business features and costs, including away messages and auto replies. To reach those subscribers, you need a route they chose, such as channel and list broadcasts.

How does Telegram make money from the ads you see in channels?

Telegram's ad platform allows 160 characters and a Telegram link, and says private chats and contact lists aren't used for targeting. The creator rewards terms set the channel owner's share at 50%, which Telegram can change. The coverage doesn't say whether $125 million is counted before or after that share, so don't double or halve it. If you plan to buy, read official CPM and minimum budget figures and paying for ads in TON or euros first.

Plenty of ad money never reaches this line. Paid posts bought from channel admins settle with the admin, and the same goes for most of the channel, group and bot promotion routes and for third-party mini app ad networks. Those deals carry their own risk, because a channel's size may be bought. Check channel analytics and free stats tools, and see what $3 per 1,000 subscribers buys or what an SMM panel price list offers before you trust a member count.

Why was a third of revenue tied to exclusivity deals?

Crypto outlets link them to Toncoin, and the timing fits: early in 2025 Telegram made the TON chain exclusive for mini apps. Coin sales are a separate flow. Telegram told investors it had sold more than $450 million of Toncoin, and ForkLog counted $244 million sold in 2024. The coverage doesn't say how much of that reached the revenue line. Holdings fell to $787 million at the end of June 2025, from $1.3 billion a year earlier. Since the 1 June 2026 announcement, the coin is called Gram, though the network keeps the TON name. If your own audience is crypto-native, crypto marketing by launch stage covers the buyer side.

Telegram revenue and profit: why did a record half end in a loss?

Follow the first half of 2025 down the page. Revenue was $870 million. Operating profit, before crypto-related losses, was close to $400 million. Net result: a loss of about $222 million, which the FT coverage attributes mainly to Toncoin's fall. The coin lost around 69% during 2025, per CoinGecko data cited there.

Between operating profit and net loss, then, sits a gap of roughly $620 million. That's our subtraction, and it will also contain items such as interest and tax, so don't call all of it a coin write-down.

Now run the comparison the headlines skip. A year earlier, Telegram earned $525 million in revenue and reported a $334 million net profit. Revenue then grew 65% and the bottom line went the wrong way by more than half a billion dollars. Nothing about advertisers or subscribers explains a swing that size. So when someone asks whether Telegram makes money, three different answers are all true:

• Revenue tells you about demand, and it is rising.
• Operating profit tells you the business covers its running costs, which a tiny staff makes easier.
• Net income mostly tells you what a volatile coin did on the balance sheet date.

The $720 million profit forecast for 2025 is the number we'd quote least. It was made in May 2025, before the half that closed in a loss, and we found no reported outcome for the year. Durov's end-2024 figure of over $500 million in cash, excluding crypto, is older but says more about whether the lights stay on.

Are bonds revenue, and how much debt is there?

The trail, as reported: $1 billion plus $150 million in March 2021, $330 million in March 2024, then $1.7 billion in May 2025 at a 9% coupon, due June 2030, with more than $950 million of 2026 bonds swapped in. Wikipedia records Durov announcing the 2021 bonds fully repaid in March 2026. By our arithmetic, 9% on $1.7 billion is about $153 million a year if all of it stays outstanding. About $500 million of Telegram bonds are reportedly frozen in Russia's central depository under Western sanctions, which affects those holders rather than Telegram's income.

What do Stars and collectible usernames add?

The official pages only show mechanics. Under the Stars API documentation, channel owners receive 100% of Stars from paid reactions, and Stars spent on ads get a 30% discount. Fragment charges a 5% platform fee on each collectible sale. One guide claims a 30% cut on paid posts; we couldn't confirm that on an official page, so it stays out of our table.

What is Telegram revenue per employee?

The inputs are soft. Durov told Tucker Carlson about 30 engineers run the company, and ForkLog's FT summary cites about 50 staff, also per Durov. Engineers aren't all staff, and contractors may sit outside both counts, so the true figure may be lower.

Where does your budget sit outside Telegram's books?

Organic channel work costs time rather than fees: eight built-in subscriber routes, tracked invite links, moderated channel comments and scheduled posts. The broader DM marketing and affiliate options sit in the same column.

Direct messages sit there too, and sponsored messages can't touch them, because Telegram keeps ads out of private chats. Start with how DMs reach people and the mutual contacts restriction. Learn the flood wait and daily limits before any volume, along with what gets senders banned. Then compare cold DM against automation and Telegram DM against email. People shopping for tools can read the mass DM definition, bulk sending by audience, five sender tool types, app, bot or managed service, our services comparison and sender buying criteria. Be wary of shortcuts: a free member adder and accounts sold for bulk sending both bring problems of their own.

Telegram Mass DM sits in that outside column as well. It offers a mass DM bot, a sender with pacing controls and managed campaigns, and the five-step process, per-campaign plans and safety and targeting FAQ are public. Telegram Mass DM works with opt-in or relevant audiences, and the platform decides what gets delivered.

Our recommendation: treat Telegram as a company with real income and opaque books, and don't let either fact drive your budget. Run one small official ad test and one opt-in message test, compare the cost per real conversation, and only then commit money. Re-read the profit numbers when a full-year 2025 report appears, not before.

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