messaging

Messaging apps

Best overall⁴⁾: Telegram! Telegram is the best messaging app, but not the most secure⁵⁾. It is the most feature rich, has the most luxurious apps across all platforms, beautiful animations, and generally is wonderful. The app to copy. Suddenly gained a reputation for hosting white supremacist content, so now using Telegram is socially problematic. Voice calls are garbage quality.
- Added garbage AI editing to the compose box, which is terrible.
Most secure⁶⁾: Signal. That's all. Phone number identity⁷⁾ sucks. Sluggish. Feels terrible to use. Missing a ton of features other apps have, like sharing sticker sets, nice animations, easy cross-platform device sync, and things of that nature.
Second most secure: WhatsApp. Kinda bad. Sluggish. Poor features. Phone number identity sucks. Sluggish. Founders promised “no ads, ever.” In 2025, it got ads.
- Apparently, group containers trivially defeat the encryption claims by allowing other Meta/Facebook apps to read the app data in plaintext.
- Instagram, which had encrypted DMs, removed them. Will WhatsApp remove encryption next?
Discord: Slowly becoming the QQ of the west in every meaning of the word. Insecure. Only thing that makes it noteworthy is that everyone is using it. Totalitarian moderation system⁸⁾ bans you for saying “im 12” as a joke. Voice calls are pretty good quality. At this point, even paid users are forced to accept their “quests” which are interactive ads that reward an in-app currency for participating in ads. Not sure how they got away with this. Linux screensharing doesn't work without extra work.
LINE: “Letter Sealing” security is ok⁹⁾. Functionally, security defeated by various backup systems like LYP backup. Has ads in Japan (even with LYP). Sluggish at times, but generally okay if you only care about mobile. No Linux client.
- I Hate LINE.
- Seriously, LYC¹⁰⁾ or whoever you are, please explain to me why LINE in Japan has like 9 billion ads even if you pay for LYP Premium?
- Using LINE outside of Japan is kind of great because it has no ads.
  - BUT, if you do this, you can't buy LYP Premium which is actually pretty good, because it gives you fancy features like cloud backups that are easy to use and original quality photos.
iMessage: Only secure if all of your friends have Advanced Data Protection enabled, which they don't¹¹⁾. Screws up contact photos and contact data more often than not. Frequently sends messages from the wrong source. Routine cause of confusion. Sluggish. You can't search inside individual chats. You can't archive chats.
WeChat: hands-down best automatic translation feature ever. Only app that makes communicating in foreign languages easy. Impossible to use with anyone outside of China who doesn't have Chinese friends, due to requiring existing users to invite new users. Risk of account bans for foreigners who invite problematic users.
Wire: Bad. Sluggish.
Viber: Bad. Sluggish.
Facebook Messenger: Middling feature set.
QQ: China only. Kinda overloaded app. Kind of sluggish. Overall nice social features. Very well-built.
Google chat products: Likely to shut down, get merged, or rebranded. Functionally dead post-Hangouts and Google Talk.
Slack: The best work chat app.
Microsoft Teams: If anyone forces you to use Microsoft Teams, I'm sorry.
KakaoTalk: So I haven't used KakaoTalk.
IRC: Lol. Missing almost any modern features.
Matrix: Unstable, doesn't work reliably, servers are either paid or non-performant.
- One of my friends, who self-hosts a Matrix server, invited me to a Matrix chat, only to miss my first four messages due to decryption failure(!) in 2026(!)
Instagram: Insecure. Very fluid, though. Middling feature set. One of the only apps to ever remove E2EE messaging by force from the entire userbase. Demoted to last place based on principle. No web/desktop client at all.

Serious Recommendations

You want the most fluid app with the most features and no security: Telegram.
You care about security and you know that the chat experience will suck: Signal.
You care about security a little bit less and you have European friends: WhatsApp.
You have friends on Discord: Discord.
You have friends in China: WeChat.
You live in China: QQ.
You live in Japan and/or have friends that live in Japan and/or you want a pretty fluid app with moderately good security: LINE.
You are addicted to Instagram and/or have friends from Taiwan: Instagram
You live in Korea, wish you lived in Korea, or you're learning Korean: KakaoTalk.
You hate your friends: iMessage OR Microsoft Teams.
You hate your coworkers: Microsoft Teams.

Mandatory Apps

China: WeChat.
Korea: KakaoTalk.
Europe: WhatsApp.
America: iMessage.
Russia: Telegram.
Taiwan: LINE.
Japan: LINE.
Korea: KakaoTalk.
Anywhere with Chinese friends: WeChat.

⁴⁾

Just because it's the best doesn't mean you should use it.

⁵⁾

Server can read all messages unless you use 'secret chats', which have not been broken, but are a custom type of encryption many people have expressed skepticism over.

⁶⁾

Signal and WhatsApp use the Signal protocol, aka the Axolotl Ratchet, which is the most advanced encryption scheme that exists for messaging.

⁷⁾

They added a workaround that allows you to use a display name, but this doesn't actually let you create an account without a real phone number, so it's still annoying.

⁸⁾

You would actually expect this type of behavior from WeChat or QQ, but surprisingly, neither of those services will ban you for jokingly saying “im 12”.

⁹⁾

Functionally it's E2EE but the backup mechanisms are not well-documented or known secure.

¹⁰⁾

Line Yahoo! Japan Corporation aka A Holdings? Formerly Z Holdings? Naver? SoftBank?

¹¹⁾

If disabled, your contacts are leaking your chats to the server.

Table of Contents

Messaging apps

Serious Recommendations

Mandatory Apps