The founder of Telegram, Pavel Durov, has made a statement accusing WhatsApp of copying features, presenting a timeline of their emergence in both messaging platforms on his X page.

"Few WhatsApp users realize they are using a copy. Over 80% of its features have been borrowed from Telegram – years later" – Durov wrote.

In his post, he mentioned the ability to create channels, edit sent messages, conduct polls, auto-delete messages, link previews, and even a dark mode. In response, commentators pointed out that some features, like voice calls, appeared in WhatsApp earlier, not to mention end-to-end encryption, which is still not the default in Telegram.

This is not the first time Pavel Durov has accused WhatsApp of copying Telegram's features; he has been making such claims since 2014. While Durov's projects are difficult to label as original, he completely copied the idea and design of Facebook for his social network 'VKontakte'. After losing control over it, he launched Telegram in 2013, just four years after WhatsApp was founded by Ukrainian entrepreneur Jan Koum in 2009, which was later purchased by Facebook for $19 billion in 2014.

In a comment to an unnamed Russian magazine in August 2013, later quoted by Wired, Koum stated: "Pavel Durov can only copy great products like Facebook and WhatsApp; he has never had and will never have original ideas".

In 2018, Koum left Facebook due to disagreements over user data privacy and is currently not involved in the development of WhatsApp.

Nevertheless, WhatsApp remains the most popular messaging app in the world, with over 3 billion active users monthly, according to Meta. According to Durov, as of March 2025, Telegram had over 1 billion active users monthly.