Telegram surpassed WhatsApp for the first time in terms of traffic

At the beginning of 2023, their share exceeded 60-80% of the total.

• Vimpelcom (Beeline brand) reported that WhatsApp has neither an increase nor a decrease in traffic. At the same time, Telegram’s traffic volume surpassed WhatsApp’s last year and continues to grow.
• MTS noted that Telegram’s share is now around 80%, it bypasses WhatsApp in terms of user activity, but WhatsApp is the leader in terms of numbers.
• A Megafon representative said that Telegram has maintained its leadership in traffic since March 2022. In the last two weeks of December, its share of total traffic in messengers was 61%, in WhatsApp – 28%. In January 2023, Telegram’s share was already 62% compared to 27% for WhatsApp.
• Tele2 confirms that Telegram has become the fastest growing messenger, its audience among Tele2 subscribers has increased by almost 50% over the year. Telegram’s share in terms of traffic is now about 75% of the total volume, which exceeds WhatsApp by 4-5 times.

The Russian Association for Electronic Communications (RAEC) also believes that by 2023 Telegram will overtake WhatsApp in terms of the number of users in Russia. Mediascope has calculated that Telegram’s audience is growing 5 times faster than WhatsApp’s audience.

Reasons: due to the large number of channels, Telegram becomes a full-fledged means of communication, it is also a great advertising resource, a source of income for bloggers and influencers. At the same time, from March 1, foreign couriers will have their ability to “transfer payment documents and personal data when providing services” limited.

WhatsApp indicators in Russia remained practically unchanged during the year: in 2022, the service was used by an average of 70.4 million users in the Russian Federation per day, and in January 2023 – 76 million people.

In November 2022, a global outage in WhatsApp caused Telegram’s daily audience in Russia to increase to 50 million users.