Why limitations exist
Just like any other service, Telegram uses limits to ensure that users follow Fair Usage Policy and to keep the service running.
This table lists the currently known Telegram limits and is being kept up to date.
Accounts
Username (e.g. @cameraman)
5 to 32 characters, starting from 4 characters for NFT usernames
Bio
up to 70 characters; for Premium users - up to 140 characters
First Name length
from 1 to 64 characters
Last Name length
from 0 to 64 characters
Self-destruction period if no activity
1, 3, 6 and 12 months (6 by default)
Spam ban
from 1 day up to forever
Channels and supergroups number you can be member of
up to 500 (including ones you own); for Premium users - up to 1000
Geochats number you can be member of
unlimited
Saved GIFs number
up to 200; for Premium users - up to 400
Video-avatar duration
up to 10 seconds
Group and channel creation
up to 50 in a day
Accounts number (official clients)
up to 3; for Premium users - up to 4-6 (depends on app)
Visible messages number (shared limit between private chats, bots and legacy groups)
unlimited; before 2018 year - up to 1,000,000 visible messages: see https://twitter.com/telegram/status/1060910769410371584
Chats and groups
Participants (limit can be raised)
up to 200,000 but unlimited in Broadcast Groups
Number of admins in groups
up to 50
Number of bots in groups
up to 20
Pinned chats in main list
up to 5 chats or channels + 5 secret chats; for Premium users - up to 10 chats or channels
Group name and description
up to 255 characters
Message editing
in 48 hours after sending; unlimited in Saved and for admins with pinning rights
Photo and video self-destruction
1 to 60 seconds
Recent actions (subscriptions, posts, etc.)
last two days
Mentions number in a single message
up to 50, only first 5 from list will receive notification
Visible messages number in group
1,000,000 last messages
Pinned messages number
unlimited
Number of members to see statistics
at least 500
Username change reservation (time before username will be available for everyone, not just the original owner)
about 15-30 minutes
Group-promoted stickers
groups with 100+ participants
Admin role length
up to 16 characters
Chat title length
up to 128 characters
Converting a supergroup to broadcast group
for chats with 199,000+ members
Read receipts lifetime
up to 7 days since message was sent
Read receipts availability
for chats with 100 members or less, the list of users is only available for the user who sent the message
Voice & Video Chats
Audio Chat listeners
unlimited
Broadcasting video (camera, screen casting)
up to 30 broadcasting users simultaneously
Video broadcast viewers
officially it's stated to be unlimited, in practice, the stream becomes unstable at about 2,000 simultaneous viewers
Scheduled chats
up to 7 days ahead
Channels
Public usernames number for a single account
up to 10 (including groups)
Length of @username
5 to 32 characters
Channel name and description
up to 255 characters
Channel admins number (including bots; you can add a bot to your channel only by making it an admin)
up to 50 accounts
Posts editing
unlimited (if the channel has a discussion group linked, posts older than 2 weeks won't be updated in the chat)
Channel subscribers number
unlimited
Visible subscribers for channel admin
200 people
Channel deletion
channels with more than 1K subscribers can be deleted only with Telegram support
Viewing private channels without joining (for channels with 200+ subscribers)
up to 5 minutes once a day
Inviting users
up to 200 people
Number of subscribers to see statistics
at least 50
Username change reservation (time before username will be available for everyone, not just the original owner)
about 15-30 minutes
Messages
One message length
up to 4,096 characters
Media captions
up to 1024 characters; for Premium users - up to 2048 characters
File size limit
up to 2 GB; for Premium users - up to 4 GB
File name length
up to 60 characters, others will be trimmed out
Video message duration
up to 1 minute
Images and videos in single message (album)
up to 10 items
Scheduled messages number
up to 100 items (per each chat)
Schedule range
up to 365 days
Folders
Folders amount
up to 10 folders; for Premium users - up to 30 folders
Pinned chats in a folder
up to 100 chats; for Premium users - up to 200 chats
People Nearby
Visibility range
about 12 kilometers
Visible users amount
up to 100 people
Visible geochats number
up to 10 closest
Bots
Bots number (created by @BotFather)
up to 20 items
Length of @username for bots
5 to 32 characters
Bot info length (/setabouttext)
up to 120 characters
Bot description length
up to 512 characters
File upload limit without local Bot API server
up to 50 MB
File upload limit with local Bot API server
up to 2000 MB
File download limit without local Bot API server
up to 20 MB
File download limit with local Bot API server
up to 2000 MB
Keyboard buttons number
up to 100 entities
Message markup data e.g. inline buttons
up to 10 KB
Message sending frequency in group chats
up to 20 messages per minute in the same chat
Commands amount (in BotFather)
0 to 100 commands
Command length (in BotFather)
from 1 to 32 characters
Command description length
up to 256 characters, must be non-empty when set via Bot API
Bot /start payload length used in deep linking
up to 64 bytes
Bot alert message length
up to 200 characters
Inline results number
up to 50 items per page
Search
Global search results
Minimal query length for global search
at least 4 characters
Username resolve limit (for both bots and user accounts)
up to 200 usernames daily
Stickers
Added packs number
up to 200 items
Favorite stickers number
up to 5 items; for Premium users - up to 10 items
Stickers in a pack number
up to 120 for static, up to 50 for animated
Sticker size
one side equal to 512px, the other side 512px or less; strictly 512x512 for animated
Animation duration
up to 3 seconds
Sticker file size
up to 512 KB for static, up to 64 KB for animated
FPS
either 30 or 60
Pack name length
up to 64 characters
Pack /addstickers url length
up to 62 characters
Telegraph
Accounts number in @telegraph bot
up to 5 items
Article size
up to 64 KiB
Miscellaneous
Video avatar properties
800x800px, up to 2 MB
Photo resolution when sent with compression
each side should be less or equal to 1280px, else it will be downscaled so the biggest side will be 1280px