Free, unlimited members, the best chat on the internet. No email, no courses, no member export, no gamification without bots. Native paid tiers take 10% and are US-only, so everyone else charges through Patreon, Whop or Memberful.
Membership Stack: Breaking Down Where To Build Your Community
Which community and membership stack is best for you? I break them all down and show you what their sales pages won't say out loud!
Telegram
Free messaging app with groups up to 200,000, broadcast channels, topics, linked Communities and paid channel subscriptions in Telegram Stars. No emails, no courses, no export of contacts.
The Honest Limitation
No member emails, ever. Paid subscriptions are collected in Telegram Stars and paid out in Toncoin, with the app stores' cut and the exchange rate hiding the real fee.
What Telegram actually is
Telegram is a messaging app with over a billion users that happens to have the biggest free group size of anything in this directory. Groups hold up to 200,000 people. Channels broadcast to an unlimited audience. There's no owner fee, no plan to pick, no seat count. If you've been running a community in a Facebook Group or a WhatsApp chat and the walls feel close, Telegram is the obvious next room.
We checked Telegram's FAQ, its blog announcements and its developer docs on 26 October 2026. Here's what it gives you, and the one thing it will never give you.
Pricing: there isn't any
Telegram's FAQ says it plainly: private messaging is free and will stay free, no ads, no subscription fees. Telegram Premium is a user upgrade (bigger uploads, extras like the new rich text editor), priced per region. It isn't a creator plan and you don't need it to run a community. Our pricing field shows $0 because there is no paid plan for you to buy.
The building blocks
- Groups up to 200,000 members, with admins, replies, mentions, hashtags and a public t.me link if you want anyone to find and join.
- Topics split a group into separate threads, each with its own history, media and notification settings. It's the closest Telegram gets to spaces.
- Channels are one-way broadcast to unlimited subscribers. Add a discussion group and you get comments under each post.
- Communities (July 2026) link several groups, channels and bots together so members can see and join the other chats without an invite link, and your whole setup collapses into one item in their chat list. Chats inside a community can be visible to everyone or hidden except to admins and that chat's members.
- Live streams from a channel with unlimited viewers, from your phone or OBS.
- Bots for everything else: welcome messages, moderation, AI summaries, payments.
Paid subscriptions: real, but paid in Stars
Since August 2024 a channel owner can create an invite link with "Require Monthly Fee" turned on. People pay a monthly amount in Telegram Stars to join and stay. The developer docs confirm the mechanics: the only billing period is 30 days, the price is in Stars, and the member is debited automatically every month.
Here's the part to read twice. Stars are bought by your members through Apple or Google in-app purchase (or Telegram's PremiumBot on desktop and web), so the app stores take their cut before a Star ever lands in your balance. You then convert Stars to Toncoin cryptocurrency through Fragment, or spend them on Telegram ads at a 30% subsidy. Telegram says it charges "next to zero commission" on the Toncoin conversion, and that channel owners receive 100% of Stars from Star reactions. It doesn't publish a single percentage for what a creator nets per dollar a member spends, and we couldn't find one on any Telegram-owned page. So our transaction fee field says 0 with this explanation: the fee is hidden in the Star exchange rate and the app-store cut, and your payout is crypto, not a bank deposit. If you want a monthly subscription that lands in Stripe, Telegram isn't that; you pair it with a paywall layer that hands out invite links after payment.
Channels can also sell paid media (photos and videos unlocked with Stars) and accept Star reactions as tips. That's why our "sells standalone products" field says yes.
Getting members in
No CSV upload, no API import of a member list. People join through a link, a public username, or a QR code. That's it. If you have an email list, you email them a link and hope. We put this in the "import your members" bucket with every other chat-first platform: you don't import, you invite.
Getting your data out
Telegram Desktop has Settings > Export Telegram data, which exports chats you choose, including media, as JSON or formatted HTML. It's a personal export, so for a group you admin it gives you the message history with sender names.
What you will never get: member emails. Telegram members are phone numbers and usernames, and Telegram doesn't hand you either as a list. You can see who's in your group; you can't take them anywhere. Our export field says "members, posts and comments" because the message archive with names is real. Our email list sync field says "none" because there's no list to sync.
Where it fits
Telegram is the strongest free option for a large, chatty, global audience, and the cheapest way on earth to test a paid tier (a few taps, no platform fee you can see). It's weak exactly where every chat app is weak: no courses, no feed with staying power, no email, no way to own the relationship. Treat it like the lobby. Keep the door to your email list somewhere Telegram can't delete it.
Known limitation
No member emails, ever. Paid subscriptions are collected in Stars and paid out in Toncoin, with the app stores' cut and the exchange rate hiding the real fee.
Sources we checked
- Telegram FAQ (groups, channels, topics, monetization): https://telegram.org/faq
- Super Channels, Star Reactions and Subscriptions (August 2024): https://telegram.org/blog/superchannels-star-reactions-subscriptions
- Star subscriptions developer docs: https://core.telegram.org/api/subscriptions
- Telegram Stars launch: https://telegram.org/blog/telegram-stars
- Terms of Service for Telegram Stars: https://telegram.org/tos/stars
- Communities and Rich Text Editor (14 July 2026): https://telegram.org/blog/communities-editor-invisible-messages
- Chat Export Tool: https://telegram.org/blog/export-and-more
Pricing Page
Pricing Page
Export Documentation
Export Documentation
Reviews
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Where most communities start and most migrations come from. Free, instant, three billion people already logged in. No way to charge, no email, no export, an algorithm that decides who sees your posts, and features Meta adds and removes on a whim. A shaky place to build. Collect emails at the door or own nothing.
Not a community platform yet, but building toward one. Channel memberships at a 70/30 split, members-only posts and lives, free Courses with PDF attachments, quizzes and polls in the community tab. No email, no export, and the biggest audience on earth.