We checked 254,854 Telegram channels. One in five is dead | TGList R&D<br>TGList0<br>Theme<br>☀️ Light🌙 Dark

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TGList indexes 3.1M Telegram channels. For 254,854 of them we hold two timestamps: the date of the last post, and the date we looked. That pair answers a question nobody has answered at this scale — how much of Telegram still publishes anything.<br>19.2% had been silent between three months and a year. 47.9% had posted within thirty days. The median channel had said nothing for 36 days.<br>These 254,854 channels skew large. Their median subscriber count is 6,242, against 624 for the 2.1M channels we have not crawled deeply enough to measure. This article describes big, catalogued, findable channels. The tail below them is deader than what follows, not livelier.<br>Half of Telegram's measured channels had stopped posting<br>254,854 channels, silence measured at the moment of observation

Last post published<br>47.9%<br>Less than 30 days ago

13.3%<br>1 to 3 months ago

19.2%<br>3 to 12 months ago

19.6%<br>More than a year ago

254,854 channels · 6.2B subscriptions

Weighting by audience improves the picture by four points<br>the same channels, counted by subscriptions

Last post published<br>59.9%<br>Less than 30 days ago

10.3%<br>1 to 3 months ago

14.6%<br>3 to 12 months ago

15.2%<br>More than a year ago

Large channels publish more often, so the active share rises to 59.9%. 15.2% of all subscriptions still sit in channels silent for over a year.Channels that pass two years of silence do not return<br>Share of channels still silent after N months<br>all 254,854 measured channels

0%25%50%75%100%061218243036months of silence at the moment we observed the channel<br>Just over half had gone a month without posting. The curve flattens near eighteen months. Past that point the population stops shrinking, because the channels remaining in it have stopped for good.Size protects until a million subscribers, then stops<br>Death rates fall from the small bands up to 100k-1M, where 10.9% are dead. Above a million subscribers they double to 19.6%. The largest channels on the platform die at the rate of channels a hundred times smaller.<br>Death rate by subscriber band<br>share silent over a year

SubscribersChannelsSubscriptionsMedian gapPosted under 30dSilent over 1y40636.9K3.2 yr6.2%70.4%1k-10k159,483685.8M60d40.9%22.9%10k-100k84,9822.4B16d58.7%14.3%100k-1M9,5232.0B5d70.5%10.9%1M+4601.1B13d57.8%19.6%<br>The relationship breaks at the top band. The tap-to-earn section below explains why.English channels die at twice the Russian rate<br>29.7% of English channels were dead, against 13.5% of Russian ones and 9.5% of Ukrainian ones.<br>Death rate by language<br>languages with at least 400 measured channels

LanguageChannelsSubscriptionsMedian gapPosted under 30dSilent over 1yIndonesian1,69235.0M93d38.4%31.3%French2,50549.2M93d37.9%29.9%English48,6321.7B89d37.9%29.7%18 moreChinese12,585295.8M88d39.7%28.0%Portuguese1,95238.5M39d47.6%26.3%Spanish5,951106.2M41d46.6%23.9%Arabic34,560592.0M53d41.7%21.5%ms49214.6M43d45.1%19.3%Amharic2,05049.3M41d44.9%18.7%German1,68425.3M38d45.6%18.6%Italian2,40331.7M24d53.6%17.1%Persian28,995796.0M22d54.1%16.5%Hindi1,04145.0M24d54.4%16.2%Uzbek13,152170.6M20d55.4%15.6%Bengali40711.2M30d50.1%14.5%Russian82,9951.8B25d52.7%13.5%Hebrew50912.3M7d67.0%13.2%Ukrainian (ua)47226.2M6d69.1%13.1%Vietnamese51616.8M16d56.8%13.0%Turkish97019.2M8d63.9%12.3%Burmese3,025130.2M7d66.6%11.3%Kurdish5718.8M29d51.1%10.2%Korean4735.5M7d70.4%9.7%Ukrainian3,05987.9M8d69.1%9.5%<br>Indonesian, Chinese and English lead. Ukrainian, Burmese and Turkish sit at the bottomCrypto is the deadest category and the largest by audience<br>Crypto carries 860.1M subscriptions, more than any other category, and 32.9% of its channels were dead against 7.1% for fashion. Two categories a technical audience is likely to be subscribed to sit near the top: techchannels at 32.1% and AI at 26.9%.<br>Death rate by category<br>categories with at least 500 measured channels

CategoryChannelsSubscriptionsMedian gapPosted under 30dSilent over 1yanime4,13069.2M167d33.7%36.9%announce2,63463.0M174d27.9%36.7%films3,652184.7M106d41.6%35.0%40...