What Are Telegram Stickers and How Do You Make Your Own?

What Are Telegram Stickers and Sticker Packs?

Telegram stickers are free, high-resolution images grouped into shareable sets, with each sticker mapped to at least one emoji. Telegram launched the open platform in 2015 and now supports three sticker types — static, animated, and video — that creators can mix in a single pack and distribute through a public link.

Sets install in one tap through a unique link, for example t.me/addstickers/UtyaDuck. The platform is genuinely large: Telegram reported over 1 billion monthly active users as of March 2025, and over 3.4 million public sticker sets are catalogued as of June 2026. Custom emoji, sized at 100×100 pixels, joined the system in version 8.9 (August 2022). Open Builders founder Alexander Plotvinov has put monthly sticker volume at over 500 billion sends — the scale that explains why brands and crypto teams now treat stickers as a distribution channel rather than a novelty.

Telegram Sticker Sizes, Formats & Requirements

The @Stickers bot rejects anything that misses the spec, so dimensions and file size matter before you upload. Here's what each format requires:

A white stroke with a soft shadow keeps a sticker legible on both light and dark chat backgrounds — a small detail that separates polished packs from rushed ones.

How Do You Make Telegram Stickers?

Anyone can make Telegram stickers through three official routes: the built-in Sticker Editor inside any chat, the @Stickers bot via the /newpack command, or an external editor paired with the @Stickers upload. None requires a developer account or a review queue, and the whole process takes minutes rather than days.

• Sticker Editor (in-app). Open the sticker panel in any chat, tap the plus icon, and use one-tap background removal to cut a subject from a photo. Add text, drawings, or emoji, then send it or save it to a set.
• @Stickers bot. Send /newpack, name the pack, upload files that meet the spec, and assign an emoji to each sticker. The bot publishes a shareable link and returns usage stats over time.
• External editor. Design statics in Photoshop or GIMP. Animations are stricter — they require the Bodymovin-TG plugin, a fork of Bodymovin for Adobe After Effects, to export Telegram's .TGS format. Encode video stickers as WEBM/VP9, then upload through @Stickers.

One trap: the sticker Import API (v7.8+) creates a new pack on every import. It's a migration tool for other apps, not a way to share an existing set — use the pack link for that.

Best Telegram Sticker Makers and Bots in 2026

The official tools cover most needs, but third-party makers speed up resizing and format conversion. The 2026 options worth knowing:

EzStikerBot is open-source and reports over 2 million stickers created across 50,000+ users — useful if you'd rather forward a finished file to @Stickers than wrestle with dimensions yourself.

How Telegram Sticker Creators Make Money: Stars → Fragment → Gram

Telegram sticker creators earn off-chain Telegram Stars, then convert them to on-chain Gram (prev. Toncoin) through Fragment — Telegram's official bridge. Telegram pays a fixed $13 per 1,000 Stars, enforces a 1,000-Star minimum, and holds earnings for 21 days. Stars and Gram stay separate systems; Fragment is the only link between them.

Here's the part most sticker guides skip. Telegram Stars are an off-chain in-app currency; Gram — the token formerly called Toncoin (TON) — is an on-chain cryptocurrency; Fragment is the one-way bridge that converts one into the other. Conflating them is the single most common error in creator coverage.

The mechanics are documented. Channel owners keep 100% of the Stars earned from reactions. To cash out, a creator needs 1,000 Stars minimum and must wait 21 days after earning them. Telegram's developer config sets the rate at $13 per 1,000 Stars — about $0.013 each — and delivers the payout in Gram through Fragment. From there, the creator moves the Gram to an exchange to reach fiat. There is no direct bank withdrawal.

Now the number most guides get wrong. You'll see claims that creators "lose ~32% on mobile." That number is a third-party reconstruction (GramBase, 2026), and the framing matters: the 30% cut is an Apple and Google markup baked into the price a fan pays per Star — it is not a deduction from a creator's payout. Telegram itself takes next to nothing on the conversion. The 30% inflates what buyers pay; combined with a small Fragment spread and exchange fees, it widens the gap between what a fan spends and what a creator nets. That's leakage across the chain, not a withdrawal commission. Buy Stars on desktop or via Fragment directly and the gap shrinks to low single digits.

One honest caveat: Telegram's documentation confirms this earn-and-withdraw flow for bots, channels, groups, and mini-apps — there's no official page stating that sticker-pack authors, as a class, earn or withdraw Stars for their packs. Which raises the real question of where sticker money actually comes from.

Track the Gram (prev. Toncoin) price on DropsTab →

The Real Sticker Money: NFT Stickers on TON

The live sticker economy runs on NFT collectibles traded on TON, not native payouts to pack authors. Open Builders, the Notcoin team, launched the first Sticker Store in December 2024 and an official marketplace in April 2025. On-chain data tracks roughly $10.7M in primary sales and $14.8M in cumulative secondary volume across 175 sticker packs as of June 2026.

This is where stickers actually generate revenue today — through tokenized collectibles, not pack royalties. Open Builders (the team behind Notcoin) launched the first Sticker Store alongside DOGS in late December 2024, then rolled out an official marketplace on April 9, 2025.

On-chain data from Dune Analytics put the tradable-sticker market at the following levels as of June 2026:

Independent collections followed. Fuse's sticker drops on TON drew measurable on-chain trading through late 2025:

The distinction to hold onto: Telegram Gifts and Telegram Stickers are separate markets on TON. Gifts are the larger, headline-grabbing economy; tradable stickers are the smaller, sticker-specific slice. Don't read gift numbers as sticker numbers.

How to Download, Search & Export Stickers (incl. WhatsApp)

Telegram's AI sticker search spans over 40,000 official stickers and accepts multi-keyword queries across dozens of languages — type a phrase and it surfaces relevant packs without an exact name.

Exporting to WhatsApp takes a workaround, since WhatsApp has no native import for external stickers and requires the WEBP format. Copy the Telegram pack link, run it through a sticker-downloader bot to pull a ZIP, extract the files, and import them via a bridging app like Sticker.ly. It's manual, but it moves a set across platforms.

Risks & Limitations

Telegram sticker monetization carries real friction: a 21-day hold, a 1,000-Star minimum, no direct bank withdrawal, and exposure to price swings of Gram (prev. Toncoin). Telegram sets the Star conversion value at its own discretion, and unconverted Stars expire after three years. Copyright takedowns also threaten meme- and movie-based packs.

• Fee drag and discretion. The official $13-per-1,000 rate is set at Telegram's sole discretion and can change. The headline "32%" figure, read properly, is buyer-side markup plus chain fees — not a payout cut — but it still means a dollar spent by a fan rarely becomes a dollar earned by a creator.
• Withdrawal friction. A 21-day hold, a 1,000-Star floor, and no direct bank rail stretch the path from earning to fiat across several steps and weeks.
• TON price risk. Payouts arrive in Gram (the token formerly called Toncoin), and Toncoin is volatile. According to DropsTab, TON traded at $1.7 with a $4.58 billion market cap as of June 13, 2026 — roughly 79% below its 2024 high of $8.25. The same Star balance buys far less fiat now than at launch-era prices. Note the naming: following an 81.22% community vote, the token rebranded from Toncoin (TON) to Gram (GRAM) on June 15, 2026 — a display-name and ticker change only, with no token swap, migration, or change to balances; the blockchain itself remains The Open Network (TON).
• Platform dependency. Unconverted Stars are Telegram's property, accounts can be frozen, and Stars expire after three years of inactivity.
• Copyright. Packs built from movie scenes or copyrighted memes face takedown through Telegram's reporting channel — enforcement is reportedly inconsistent, but the exposure is real.

Crypto and token values referenced below fluctuate. This article is informational and not financial advice.