2026-09-21 · 13 min read

Does Telegram delete inactive accounts? Yes, after 18 months

Does Telegram delete inactive accounts? Yes — after 18 months by default, and you set the clock from 1 to 24 months. What's erased, what survives, no warning.

Yes. If you do not come online for 18 months, Telegram deletes your account along with all messages, media, contacts and every other piece of data you store in the Telegram cloud, per Telegram's own FAQ. The 18 months is only a default: you set the period yourself in Settings, and Telegram's apps offer 1 to 24 months. Telegram publishes no advance warning before it fires, and it describes account termination as irreversible.

How long does Telegram wait before it deletes an inactive account?#

Eighteen months of not coming online. Telegram says it plainly, and says it three times.

The FAQ entry on account self-destruction frames it as housekeeping: "Telegram is not a commercial organization, and we value our disk space greatly. If you stop using Telegram and don't come online for at least 18 months, your account will be deleted along with all messages, media, contacts and every other piece of data you store in the Telegram cloud. You can change the exact period after which your inactive account will self-destruct in Settings."

Section 10.4 of the Privacy Policy repeats the same clock as a policy commitment rather than a FAQ answer: "By default, if you stop using Telegram and do not come online for at least 18 months, your account will be deleted." And the stolen-phone FAQ entry confirms it a third time: "inactive Telegram accounts self-destruct automatically after a period of time — 18 months being the default setting."

If you see "6 months" quoted elsewhere, that is one of the selectable options, not the default. Worth knowing where the rule does not live, too: Telegram's Terms of Service contains no inactivity or self-destruction clause at all. The clock exists only in the FAQ and the Privacy Policy.

Can you change the deletion clock, and what are the exact options?#

You can, and this is the part most write-ups get vague about, because neither the FAQ nor the Privacy Policy prints the list. Both only say you can change "the exact period" in Settings.

The list comes from Telegram's own open-source clients. The Android client's privacy settings screen builds six choices and submits each as a day count:

Label you pick	Days sent by Android	Days sent by Telegram Desktop
1 month	30	30
3 months	90	90
6 months	182	180
12 months	365	365
18 months (default)	548	548
24 months	730	720

The right-hand column is not a typo. Telegram Desktop's self-destruction box returns the day values 30, 90, 180, 365, 548 and 720, and labels each one by dividing by 30, so you see the same six month-labels with two different day counts underneath: two days apart at 6 months, ten days apart at 24. That is why secondary articles contradict each other on the fine print.

The six options are a client-side convention, not a rule of the protocol. The API method account.setAccountTTL simply takes a "Time to live in days" value, with one documented error, 400 TTL_DAYS_INVALID. No minimum, maximum or permitted list is published. The accountDaysTTL constructor carries a single days integer — "This account will self-destruct in the specified number of days." So the periods you see depend on which app and which version you are holding.

Where the setting lives: on Android, Settings > Privacy and Security, then the "If away for" row under the "Delete my account" heading; the picker that opens is titled "Account self-destruct," per Telegram's Android string resources. On Desktop the equivalent is "Delete my account" > "If away for...", and the box is titled "Account self-destruction."

What counts as activity — is leaving the app installed enough?#

No. The trigger is coming online, not owning the phone.

The Privacy Policy hinges on the verb — "do not come online for at least 18 months" — and the in-app help text spells out what that means. Android's own string reads: "If you do not come online at least once within this period, your account will be deleted along with all messages and contacts." Telegram Desktop's version of the same line adds groups to the list. A logged-in app on a phone sitting in a drawer, switched off, factory-reset or sold does not check in. The timer keeps running.

Practically, that means a second account you keep "just in case" is on a clock you are not feeding, and a spare phone you charge twice a year is only safe if you actually open Telegram while it is on.

What gets deleted, and what survives?#

The deletion is thorough on Telegram's side and partial everywhere else.

Gone: all messages, media, contacts and every other piece of data you store in the Telegram cloud. Section 10.1 of the Privacy Policy applies the same wording to manual deletion, done at telegram.org/deactivate, and adds that the action "must be confirmed via your Telegram account and cannot be undone."

Not gone: other people's copies. Telegram is explicit that "your contacts will still be able to chat in the groups that you have created, and they will still have their copy of the messages you sent them," and points you at the per-message self-destruct timer if disappearing messages are what you actually wanted. Deleting your account is an account action, not a recall notice.

Orphaned: anything you created. Per the FAQ on deleting your account, "All groups and channels that you've created are orphaned and left without a creator but admins retain their rights." Your community keeps running under its existing admins, with nobody holding the creator seat. If you are the only admin, nobody holds anything.

Can you recover a deleted Telegram account?#

No. Telegram states that "Termination of a Telegram account is irreversible."

Re-registering the same phone number does not restore anything. In Telegram's words, "If you sign up again, you will appear as a new user and will not get your history, contacts or groups back. People, who have your phone number in their contacts, will be notified." You appear in their message list as a fresh, empty conversation sitting next to the old one. The number is the same; the account is not.

Does Telegram warn you before the timer fires?#

Not in any published form — and that is the real difference between Telegram and the mailbox providers people compare it to.

Platform	Inactivity period	Who sets the clock	Automatic or discretionary	Documented advance warning
Telegram	18 months (default)	You, 1–24 months	Automatic self-destruct	None published in the FAQ or Privacy Policy
Google	2 years	Google	"May delete" the account and its content	Notices to the account and its recovery email
Apple iCloud	1 year	Apple	Discretionary — "may terminate"	30 days' prior notice by email
Yahoo Mail	12 months, then 24	Yahoo	Two-stage, automatic	Reminder 90 days before mailbox contents go

Google's inactive account policy defines an inactive account as one "that has not been used within a 2-year period," names December 1, 2023 as "the earliest a Google Account will be deleted due to this policy," and exempts accounts carrying an ongoing purchase, a subscription or a gift card balance. That activity list is narrower than it looks, and the exceptions matter — what actually counts as activity on a Google Account walks through them.

Apple's iCloud terms, section VII.B, say Apple "may terminate your Account upon 30 days' prior notice via email if (a) your Account has been inactive for one (1) year." Note the "may" — it is a right Apple reserves, not a timer that runs on its own.

Yahoo runs two clocks: at 12 months the mailbox becomes inactive and the emails, folders, contacts and settings are permanently deleted, with a reminder sent 90 days ahead; at 24 months without a sign-in the account itself is scheduled for deactivation and deletion, after which "you will no longer be able to use the email address associated with it."

Line the four up and Telegram is the odd one out twice over. Google, Apple and Yahoo each fix their own period and each warn an email address first; Telegram hands you the dial and warns nobody. It may hold an email address for you — a recovery address if you turned on 2-Step Verification, or a login-code address — but Privacy Policy 3.2 says the recovery address "will only be used to send you a password recovery code" and the login address "only be used to send you authentication codes." Neither is a notification channel. Nobody is going to tap you on the shoulder at month 17.

Does Telegram delete inactive channels or groups?#

There is no published policy saying it does. Telegram's Channels FAQ covers creation, admins, subscribers and message deletion, and says nothing about a channel or group being removed for sitting idle. The only inactivity timer Telegram documents applies to user accounts.

One thing an idle channel can lose is its name. Telegram's username FAQ reserves "the right to recall usernames assigned to unused bots and channels, as well as openly squatted usernames." The channel stays; the public handle may not.

The indirect risk is the one described above: when a creator's account self-destructs, the channel is orphaned and the remaining admins inherit it. A channel whose sole admin goes quiet for 18 months is a channel with no one who can add another admin.

Why is a recycled phone number a bigger risk than the 18-month timer?#

The 18-month clock is predictable. A number that gets handed to a stranger is not.

Telegram is unusually direct about what the number means: "the phone number is the only way for us to identify a Telegram user at the moment. We don't collect additional information about you, so whoever has the number, has the account." Its own mitigation, named in the same FAQ entry, is Two-Step Verification, so that "the phone number alone will not be enough to log in to your account."

This is measured, not theoretical. A Princeton study by Lee and Narayanan (eCrime 2021) sampled 259 phone numbers available to new subscribers at two US mobile carriers and found that 215 of them "were recycled and also vulnerable to at least one of the three attacks," with 171 "vulnerable to account hijackings at six popular websites."

If you know you are giving up a number, migrate before it lapses rather than after. Telegram's change-number flow keeps "all your contacts, messages, and media from the Telegram cloud, as well as all your Secret Chats on all devices," via Settings > tap your phone number > Change Number. Telegram's caveat, in the new-number FAQ entry: "make sure you have access to your connected phone number – otherwise you risk losing access to your account."

If you run a business channel, the thing nobody can reconstruct from the outside is the ownership map: which groups and channels you created, who else already holds admin rights, and which number the account answers to. That is the kind of instruction a scheduled check-in with a named fallback contact is built to hold — you answer on a schedule, and if you go quiet past the grace window, the person you named confirms before your encrypted handoff plan reaches anyone. It carries the instructions and where the credentials live, never the credentials themselves.

What should you do right now — keep the account, or shorten the clock on purpose?#

Seven checks. Five of them live inside Telegram's own settings; the last two are things only you know.

Come online, don't just have it installed. Open Telegram and connect at least once inside your chosen period. An installed-but-offline app does not count.
Read your actual setting, don't assume the default. Settings > Privacy and Security > Delete my account > If away for. You may have changed it years ago.
Pick deliberately. Choose 1 or 3 months if you want a dormant account to clear itself out, or 24 months if you keep a low-traffic account you check twice a year.
Turn on Two-Step Verification. This is Telegram's own answer to the "whoever has the number, has the account" problem.
Change your number before you lose it, not after. The in-app flow carries your cloud data and secret chats across.
List what you own. Which channels and groups you created, who the other admins are, and what should happen if you stop answering.
Add a second admin to any channel where you are currently the only one.

FAQ#

Does Telegram delete accounts after 6 months?#

Not by default. Six months is one of the six selectable periods in the Android client. The default is 18 months, stated in both the FAQ and Privacy Policy 10.4.

Will Telegram email me before it deletes my account?#

Telegram publishes no advance-warning notice in either the FAQ or the Privacy Policy. Any email address it holds for you is limited by Privacy Policy 3.2 to password recovery or login codes. This is where it differs from Google, Apple and Yahoo, which all document a notice before deletion.

If my account self-destructs, can I get my chats back by signing up again with the same number?#

No. Re-registering gives you a new user with empty history, no contacts and no groups, and Telegram notifies anyone who has your number in their contacts.

What happens to a channel I created if my account is deleted?#

It is orphaned rather than deleted. Per Telegram's FAQ, groups and channels you created are "left without a creator but admins retain their rights."

Does the timer apply to secret chats too?#

Telegram does not document what self-destruction does to secret chats specifically. What it does say is that secret chats "are not part of the Telegram cloud" and live only on their device of origin — and that logging out loses them. The change-number flow explicitly carries secret chats across to a new number, which is the safe route if you are switching SIMs.

Can I set a period other than the six offered?#

The API accepts a day count and documents no minimum, maximum or permitted list, so the six labels are a client convention. In practice you get whatever your app version offers, which is 1, 3, 6, 12, 18 or 24 months.