Pavel Durov is the founder of Telegram blamed WhatsApp is copying the functionality by publishing a comparative timeline of innovations in the two messengers.
“Few WhatsApp users realize they’re using a clone. Over 80% of its features were copied from Telegram years later”, – noted Durov.
In his post, he listed features that he said first appeared in Telegram — creating channels, editing sent messages, polls, auto-delete, link preview, dark theme. In response, some commentators recalled that a number of features, including voice calls, first appeared on WhatsApp. In addition, the messenger offers end-to-end encryption of messages by default – unlike Telegram.
This is not Durov’s first accusation of plagiarism against WhatsApp – he has been making similar claims since 2014. At the same time, Telegram itself is often criticized for borrowing ideas. At the beginning of his career, Durov created the social network “Vkontakte”, which in terms of idea and design imitated Facebook.
After losing control of Vkontakte, he founded Telegram in 2013 — four years after launching WhatsApp, created in 2009 by Ukrainian-born entrepreneur Yan Kum. In 2014, WhatsApp was acquired by Facebook (now Meta) for $19 billion.
Commenting on Wired in August 2013, Ian Kum stated:
“Pavel Durov only knows how to copy great products like Facebook and WhatsApp; he never had and never will have original ideas.”
In 2018, Koum left Facebook over privacy policy disagreements, and is currently not involved in the development of WhatsApp. Despite the controversy, WhatsApp remains the most popular messenger in the world, with more than 3 billion people using it every month, according to the latest data from Meta. According to Durov, Telegram had more than 1 billion monthly active users as of March 2025.
