Max jumps on leaderboard as Telegram overtakes WhatsApp as Russia’s most popular messenger

Telegram has overtaken WhatsApp to become Russia’s most popular messenger this year, amid growing restrictions on each of them in the past few months.

Moscow’s suppression of global messaging platforms accused of failure to meet its demands is affecting rankings in the market, with the state-backed Max catching up with the leaders.

Telegram takes the lead as WhatsApp loses almost 15 million Russian users

Telegram became the most used messaging service in Russia this past January but started losing audience the following month, when Russian regulators began slowing down its traffic.

Pavel Durov’s platform replaced the longtime leader WhatsApp in the first weeks of the year, according to the media communications and marketing solutions provider Okkam.

Its calculations, based on data compiled by the tech and media research company Mediascope, were quoted by the Russian edition of Forbes on Wednesday.

The survey covers users of the mobile and desktop versions of the applications over the age of 12 who visited them at least once a month.

According to the study, Telegram had 95.978 million active users in January 2026, while WhatsApp registered 89.418 million.

In February, Telegram’s user base shrank by 286,000 to 95.692 million. During the same period, WhatsApp saw a much larger decline, down by 9.1 million to 80.301 million users.

Analysts believe, however, that Telegram’s reign won’t last too long, amid indications that the privacy-oriented messenger may be fully blocked like WhatsApp next month.

Meanwhile, the government-approved alternative, Max, was the only one in Russia’s top three to increase its users, which reached 77.561 million, the Forbes article highlighted.

WhatsApp was still topping the chart last year, with 94.470 million users in December, when Telegram had 93.637 million, the Russian business news outlet Frank Media also noted.

Will Russia manage to impose Max on its citizens?

The latest user data comes out after the Russian authorities took a series of steps to limit access to both Telegram and WhatsApp in the past weeks and months.

In August, Russia’s telecom watchdog Roskomnadzor (RKN) partially restricted voice calls through the two apps, citing their growing use by fraudsters and extremists as an excuse.

In early February, the government agency, which also acts as a media censor, began slowing down Telegram, threatening to impose “sequential restrictions,” if the messenger does not comply with regulations regarding content moderation and other requirements.

Current legislation, most notably the so-called “landing law,” obliges internet platforms with more than 500,000 daily users to open a Russian office and store user data locally, which Telegram hasn’t done so far.

Also last month, RKN removed WhatsApp’s domain from its DNS servers, effectively blocking access to Meta’s messaging service. The U.S. tech giant, which also owns Facebook and Instagram, has been labeled an “extremist organization” in Russia.

Media reports, quoting a post by the Telegram channel Baza, revealed later that Roskomnadzor is preparing to begin fully blocking Durov’s messenger on April 1. The RKN neither confirmed, nor denied.

In the meantime, Moscow has been pushing Max, the state-authorized messenger developed by the Russian social media network VK.

Telegram’s owner Pavel Durov alleged that Russia’s main motive for restricting competitors is to force its citizens to “switch to a state-controlled app built for surveillance and political censorship.”

Before the latest crackdown, Russian authorities had already blocked other popular apps such as Signal, Discord and Viber by the end of 2024.

Forbes.ru quoted industry watchers who predict Telegram’s user base will continue to decrease in the coming in the days to come, until Max eventually occupies the top spot.

According to Leonid Konik, partner at Comnews Research, Telegram will repeat WhatsApp’s fate with some delay. Part of its users will move to Max, others will stay by employing acceleration tools, which will make them appear as foreign subscribers, and some will switch to less known alternatives.

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