Telegram Stars explained: price, gifts, and what a Stars row on a panel means
Telegram Stars are the app's paid gift currency. Here is what they cost, what they can buy, and what a panel is actually selling when it lists a Stars row.
Telegram Stars are the in-app currency Telegram sells for money and lets users spend on digital goods: gifts to other users, paid posts and media in channels, purchases inside mini apps, and subscriptions. They are not a star rating and they are not a review. When a panel lists "Telegram Stars", it is offering to send that gift currency to a public username or channel, priced per unit like any other row.
What Stars cost
Telegram sells Stars through the app stores and through its own web store in fixed packs. The price per Star falls as the pack grows. Buying through the web store is cheaper than through iOS or Android because the app-store commission is skipped. Exact pack prices change by country and are shown in the purchase screen, so we do not quote them here. Anything you read on a third-party page is a snapshot.
Two things stay constant:
- A Star has no fixed exchange rate to a currency. Telegram sets the pack price.
- Channel owners who receive Stars can withdraw them, at a rate Telegram publishes inside the app, after a holding period.
What Stars can buy
- Gifts. Animated gifts sent to a user or a channel. Some are limited editions and can later be converted into collectibles.
- Paid content. A channel can lock a post or a media item behind a Stars price.
- Mini app purchases. Games and bots inside Telegram charge in Stars.
- Subscriptions. Channels can sell monthly access priced in Stars.
- Boosts and reactions with Stars. A Star reaction is a paid reaction under a post, separate from the free emoji reactions.
What a Stars row on an SMM panel means
An SMM panel is a store that sells social counters at a rate per 1,000. For Stars, the unit is usually one Star, and the row promises to gift that many Stars to the target you paste. On the live catalog the Telegram Stars table held 661 rows across the panels we index at the last sync, with the cheapest public rate printed at $0.0324 per 1,000 units. Read that carefully: the cheapest row on any table is often a minimum-quantity or test row. Sort, then read min and max before you assume a row can take your order size.
What the row needs is a public username or a public post link. A panel does not need your bot token, your wallet, or your password to send Stars, and any form that asks for one of those is not a Stars service. The free explainer on Telegram Stars covers the link format.
Stars versus Premium versus boosts
These three get mixed up on panels because all three are Telegram's own paid products:
| Product | What it is | What it changes |
|---|---|---|
| Stars | Gift currency | Sends value to a user or channel |
| Premium | Monthly subscription for one account | Unlocks features on that account |
| Boosts | Premium users assign a boost to a channel | Raises the channel's level, unlocks stories and colours |
A Stars row does not raise your member count. A boost row does not raise it either. If the metric you want is members, the subscribers table is the page to compare, and it is a different product with a different retention question.
Where to actually buy Stars
For your own account, the app or Telegram's web store is the direct route. For gifting at scale, some sellers of Telegram accounts and Premium also sell Stars; our sibling site tgfather.com is one of them. smmdir does not sell Stars, does not take the order, and lists panel prices only so you can compare before you go to the panel.
Three questions to ask before ordering a Stars row
- Is the target public? A private channel cannot receive catalog gifts.
- Does the row say the gift type? Some rows send the cheapest gift, some send a specific one. The description should say.
- What is the start time? Stars rows are usually fast, but a "0 to 1 hour" start with a 24-hour completion is common.
The catalog refreshes every hour. Prices in this article were checked on the sync stamped at the bottom of the page and will drift.