In this article
A Premium subscription can be given as a gift and paid for out of a Stars balance rather than a card. Choose a length, choose a person, and it activates on their account without either of you opening a store.
For anybody who has earned Stars inside Telegram, that closes a loop: money that arrived here can be spent on somebody here.
What you will be able to do
- check_circle Gift a subscription from a Stars balance.
- check_circle Pick a length that suits the person rather than the price.
- check_circle Tell when this is the right present and when it is not.
- check_circle Avoid the version of this that is a scam.
The subscription is chosen by length and paid from the balance, with no store in the way.
toll Why paying with Stars is different
Buying a subscription normally means a card or an app store, which is a separate account, a separate payment method and a separate receipt. Paying with Stars uses a balance that is already inside Telegram, so the whole transaction happens where the gift is going.
That matters most for people whose Stars arrived rather than being bought — an author paid by readers, somebody running an app, a moderator who was thanked. For them this is income being spent rather than money being converted, and giving a year of Premium to the person who helped all season is a genuinely good use of it.
It matters less if you would be buying Stars specifically to do this. In that case you are paying for a balance in order to pay for a subscription, and the more direct route is the ordinary one.
When a subscription is the right gift
It is a good present for a particular kind of person, and an odd one for everybody else.
redeem A good present
block A strange one
It suits people who already live in the app and who did something for you. Everywhere else, something less recurring is a better present.
gpp_bad The counterfeit version
Because a real gift arrives without any action from the recipient, every variant that asks for one is fraudulent. The common shapes are a message saying you have been sent a subscription and must claim it, a link to a page where you sign in to collect it, and an offer to sell a subscription cheaply through a bot.
The last one is worth naming clearly. Subscriptions sold at a large discount by a stranger are either stolen — bought with somebody else's card, and removed when that is discovered — or a straightforward way to collect a login code. Either way the thing being sold is not what was advertised.
A genuine gift shows up in the chat as a gift, from somebody you can see, and is already active. There is nothing to claim, no page to visit and no code to enter, which makes the rule easy to hold: if it asks you for a step, it is not a present.
settings Sending one
- Open the gift option from their profile Or from the gifting screen in settings.
- Choose a length, not a price Match it to how long they will use it.
- Pay from the balance No card or store is involved.
- Write a line saying what it is for The message is the part remembered.
- Do not check whether they already subscribe A gift extends an existing one.
- Ignore anything asking you to claim one Real gifts arrive active.
This page spends a balance on somebody else's subscription. The curriculum step is where that balance comes from and what else it reaches: how Stars are bought and earned, and what they can and cannot be turned into.
At a glance
- 1Premium with Stars
Gift a subscription from your Stars balance.
- 2Extends theirs
If they already have Premium, the time adds on.
- 3Nothing to do
Real gifts need no action from the recipient.
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