Telegram Premium members: what they are and whether to pay extra

What Telegram Premium is

Telegram Premium is a paid subscription that Telegram launched in June 2022. Everything that was free before stays free, and Premium adds extras for the person who pays. The Telegram Premium FAQ lists them: 4 GB uploads instead of 2 GB, faster downloads, voice-to-text, custom emoji, extra reactions, animated profile pictures, no ads and doubled limits, such as room to join 1,000 channels.

Telegram's help pages give no single price. What you pay depends on your country and on where you subscribe. Subscribing through Telegram's own @PremiumBot is cheaper than going through Apple or Google, since no app store fee is added, and a yearly plan costs less than paying month by month. When Premium launched, 9to5Mac reported a price of $4.99 a month. Prices may have changed since.

Two of those extras touch a channel owner directly. Premium subscribers get boosts, which the next sections cover. They also don't see the sponsored messages Telegram places in large public channels. If your channel earns a share of Telegram's ad revenue, Premium subscribers add no ad views, although promotions you post yourself still reach them.

When a subscription ends, Telegram takes the extras away, and the badge disappears with them.

How to tell whether an account has Premium

Telegram puts a Premium badge, a small star, next to the name of every subscriber, and the subscriber can't switch it off. Anyone who sees the badge knows the account pays for Premium, but not how it subscribed or how much it spent. Subscribers can also set an emoji status next to their name, which Telegram lists as a Premium feature.

Where other people notice the badge depends on the kind of chat. In a group, members can open the member list and see who has it, unless the owner of a large group has hidden the list so that only admins can see it (Telegram FAQ). A channel shows visitors its subscriber count and a view counter on each post, with no subscriber list to scroll through. To someone deciding whether to join, a channel with Premium subscribers looks the same as one without them.

Admins see a little more. Telegram's help pages don't describe a list of your Premium subscribers, but the Boosts screen (Profile > Statistics > Boosts on a channel, or Boost Group in a group's profile menu) shows an approximate number of Premium subscribers and their share of the total. Telegram's API documentation describes this estimate and says only admins receive it. The same screen shows the level, the boost count, your boost link and the accounts currently boosting you.

The rules are in Telegram's Premium terms. A subscription the user buys includes four boosts. A gifted subscription gives the person who receives it one boost and gives the person who sent it three. Someone who wins Premium in a channel giveaway gets no boosts at all, because the four boosts from that subscription go to the channel that ran the giveaway.

Each user decides where their boosts go. They can spread them across four channels or put several on one. After assigning a boost, the user has to wait out a cooldown before moving it to another channel (Telegram API: boosts). How many boosts each level takes depends on the size of the channel or group.

The level lists come from the Premium FAQ, and the booster permissions from Telegram's February 2024 update that brought boosts to groups.

Why premium members cost more

Every Premium subscription is paid for by someone: the account holder, a friend who gifted it, or a channel that gave it away. A seller who promises Premium accounts has to cover that cost, so premium packages are priced above ordinary members.

How the accounts got Premium decides what they can do for you. Under the boost rules above, an account that bought its own subscription has four boosts, an account that was gifted Premium has one, and an account that won it in a giveaway has none. A batch of premium members can arrive with nothing to boost your channel with, even if every account shows the badge.

Duration is the other question. Public price lists from SMM panels often sell premium members in packages tied to a number of days, anywhere from 7 to 365, and the listings rarely say what the days measure. It could be how long the accounts stay in your channel or how long they keep Premium. Once a subscription ends, the badge goes and the account carries on as an ordinary member.

Those two questions come on top of the usual ones, such as whether people use the accounts and whether the seller refills members who leave. Our guide to real and fake Telegram members goes through those labels.

What sellers mean by premium post shares

Telegram counts how often each channel post is shared, which means forwarded to another chat. Admins of channels above a certain size see the average shares per post in the channel's statistics, and the statistics for a single post list the public channels that forwarded it (Telegram API: statistics). When a seller sells post shares, it adds to that count.

The word premium has no Telegram meaning in this phrase. A seller may mean the forwards come from Premium accounts, or only that it's a pricier package. Ask which one, and ask where the forwards go. Forwards into public channels are listed by name in your post statistics, and forwards into private chats aren't. Shares from accounts that never read your channel raise the number without sending readers back to you.

Treat "premium views" and "premium reactions" the same way. Premium users can react with any custom emoji and add up to three reactions to one message, so a seller may mean reactions like those. Ask before you pay.

What Telegram's rules say

Telegram's terms of service ask users not to spam or scam others, and they don't mention buying members. Two other Telegram documents go further.

The Premium terms cover giveaways. A channel that gets people to join through a giveaway that is later refunded through a bank or another third party can be closed, or given a scam label and removed from search, and Telegram may remove the subscribers gained that way.

The Content Creator Rewards terms apply if your channel earns money from Telegram's ad revenue share or from Stars. Telegram can deduct rewards it ties to invalid activity. The terms define that to include activity bought to inflate ad payouts and any fake or simulated activity, whoever is behind it. In serious cases Telegram can stop paying rewards, or close the channel and the account.

Premium doesn't protect an account either. The Premium FAQ says subscribers get no special treatment, and an account banned for breaking the rules loses Premium without compensation.

No seller can promise how Telegram will treat a channel. If your channel earns money from Telegram, read the rewards terms before you add members or engagement from any seller, us included.

When ordinary real members are enough

Most people who look for premium members want a channel or group that looks established. Visitors judge that from the subscriber count and the views on your posts, and Telegram's EU guidance says global search ranks channels and groups by subscriber count. A real account without Premium counts the same as one with it in both places.

Premium only makes sense when you want what boosts bring: channel stories, more custom reactions, a group emoji pack or voice-to-text for your members. Even then, Telegram has its own routes to boosts:

• Share your boost link with subscribers who already have Premium. It looks like t.me/yourchannel?boost, and you'll find yours on the Boosts screen.
• Run a giveaway. The channel gets four boosts for every Premium subscription it gives away, and they stay for as long as those subscriptions last (Telegram blog).
• Gift Premium to friends. Each gift gives you three boosts to put on your own channel or group.

SMM-World doesn't sell Premium accounts. Our Telegram members are real accounts for raising the subscriber count, and you can order any amount from 100 to 200,000. Members are added over hours or days to the public link you paste, and anyone who leaves within 90 days is replaced automatically under the refill guarantee. For a group, the group members order works the same way.