The best app for group chats depends on who is in it
WhatsApp, Signal, iMessage, Telegram, Discord or something else? An honest guide to the best group chat app for family, friends, big groups and strangers.
The short answer: the best app for a group chat is the one everyone in the group already has. For most families and friend groups that means WhatsApp, or iMessage if every single person is on an iPhone. If privacy matters more than convenience, use Signal. If the group is large, public or built around a shared interest, Telegram or Discord fits better. And if the group is people you have not met yet, you want a different kind of app altogether, one built around rooms rather than contact lists.
That is the whole answer in one paragraph. The rest of this post is the reasoning, so you can decide for your own group instead of taking my word for it.
I should say up front that I build a chat app, Hashti. It shows up near the end of this post, in the one place where I think it honestly fits. For most of the groups people are trying to start today, it is not the answer, and I will say so.
Start with one question: who is in the group?
People pick a group chat app the wrong way round. They compare features, pick the one with the nicest stickers, and then spend two weeks trying to get their uncle to install it. He never does. The group dies.
So before any features, sort your group into one of four kinds:
1. Family or close friends. Ten to thirty people who already have each other's phone numbers. 2. A private group that cares about privacy. Activists, journalists, a group with family in a country where messages get read, or people who just do not want a company in the middle. 3. A big group or a community. A club, a class, a fan group, a neighbourhood, a few hundred people or more. 4. Strangers with something in common. People you have not met who share a language, a city, a hobby or a question.
Each kind has a different best app. Here is how I think about each one.
Family and close friends: WhatsApp, or iMessage if everyone is on iPhone
For a family group, the winning feature is not a feature. It is that grandma already has it.
WhatsApp is the default across most of the world outside the US, and it is common inside the US too, especially in immigrant families. It runs on iPhone and Android, it has voice and video calls, it handles photos and voice notes well, and messages are end-to-end encrypted by default. The trade-off is that it is owned by Meta and tied to your phone number. Your number is how people find you, and everyone in the group can see it. For a family, that is fine. For a group of people who do not know each other, it is not.
iMessage is the smoothest option when every single person has an iPhone. It is built in, there is nothing to install, and it just works. The moment one person in the group has an Android phone, the experience gets worse for everybody. Apple has added support for RCS, which makes mixed groups less painful than they used to be, but in my experience mixed groups are still where iMessage is weakest. If your group is half Android, do not fight it. Use WhatsApp.
Facebook Messenger is still where some groups live, mostly because everyone already has a Facebook account. It works. I would not pick it for a new group today, but if your group is already there and it is working, moving it is rarely worth the fight.
My opinion: for a family on mixed phones, WhatsApp. For an all-iPhone friend group, iMessage. Do not overthink it.
When privacy is the point: Signal
If the reason you are starting a group is that the conversation needs to stay private, use Signal.
Signal is run by a nonprofit, it is end-to-end encrypted for everything including groups, and it collects as little about you as it can. It has group calls, disappearing messages and the usual basics. It still uses a phone number to sign up, but you can set a username and share that instead of your number, so people in a group do not have to see it.
The trade-off is the same one every privacy app has: fewer people already have it. You will spend the first week getting people to install it. For a group where privacy really matters, that is a fair price.
A note from my own family: a lot of Iranian and Armenian families I know have relatives in places where what you write can matter. If that is your family, think harder about this choice than the rest of the internet tells you to.
Big groups and communities: Telegram or Discord
Once a group gets past a few dozen people, a phone-number chat starts to break. Everyone sees everyone's number, the notifications never stop, and new people cannot see what was said before they joined.
Telegram handles big groups well. Groups can be very large, new members can read the history, you can join with a link, and you can use a username instead of showing your number. It also has channels for one-way announcements. Two honest caveats. First, regular Telegram chats and groups are not end-to-end encrypted by default; only its "secret chats" between two people are. Second, big public groups attract spam, and how well a group is run depends entirely on its admins.
Discord is the best tool I know for a real community with structure. A server can have many channels, so the people who want to talk about one thing are not drowning in the other. It has voice channels you can drop into and out of, roles and permissions, and bots for moderation. It started with gamers and it shows, but plenty of study groups, clubs and creator communities run on it now. The downside: it is a lot for a casual user, and it is overkill for ten friends planning dinner.
GroupMe deserves a mention because it is still common in American colleges and churches. It is simple and it works on any phone. It is not where I would start a new community, but if your school or team already uses it, use it.
My opinion: a community that wants to grow and organise itself, Discord. A big group that mostly wants one fast stream of messages and announcements, Telegram.
Strangers with something in common: you want rooms, not a group
This is the one most people do not notice is a different problem.
Every app above assumes you already know who you want to talk to. You add them. You share a link with them. But a lot of people searching for a group chat app are really looking for a group that already exists: other Armenian speakers, people learning Spanish, people in their city who like the same music, people up at 2am who want to talk.
For that, a contact-list app is the wrong shape. You need rooms: named, topic-based places you can find and walk into, without first knowing anybody inside. That used to be what chat rooms were. Most of them died, and the ones that are left are often unmoderated and full of spam.
This is the part of the problem I built Hashti for. It is a chatroom app: public rooms with names and topics that you can browse and join, plus private chats, calls and a walkie-talkie for when you would rather talk than type. It is free and it is 18+. It is out on the App Store now; the Android version is still in a closed test, which matters a lot if half your people are on Android.
The part that makes rooms with strangers bearable is the safety model, so I will be specific about it. Before someone can host a room, speak in a voice room or message people they are not connected to, they check their identity once against a government document. The photo is deleted after the check; a fingerprint of the document stays, so the same document cannot open a second account. Twelve verified reports closes an account for good. The full detail is on how Hashti keeps rooms safe. I think that is the right trade for talking to strangers. Some people will find the ID check too much, and that is a reasonable view.
There is one more feature that changes who can be in a room: live translation into 29 languages, so someone writing in Persian and someone reading in English can be in the same conversation. That one is part of Hashti Plus, which costs money; everything else in the app is free. The app's own menus are in English today. A Farsi version is being built.
When Hashti is the wrong pick: if your group is your family, your friends or your team, do not use Hashti for it. Use WhatsApp, iMessage, Signal or Discord. Hashti is for finding people, not for organising the ones you already have.
A quick way to decide
If you skimmed to here, this is the version I would give a friend:
- Everyone already has it? Use that. Seriously.
- Family on mixed phones: WhatsApp.
- All iPhones, casual: iMessage.
- Privacy matters: Signal.
- Big group, lots of announcements: Telegram.
- A community with topics and voice hangouts: Discord.
- People you have not met yet: a room-based app, with real moderation.
Things that matter more than the app
Whatever you pick, a few things decide whether a group chat survives:
Someone has to be in charge. Every group that lasts has at least one person who adds people, removes the spammer and says "let's move this to a call." Pick that person on day one.
Mute is a feature, not an insult. Tell people it is fine to mute the group. A group where everyone feels obliged to read every message is a group people quietly leave.
Do not put your number in a group of strangers. If an app makes everyone's phone number visible, it is a family app. Use it for family.
Move when it stops working, not before. Switching apps is expensive. Do it once, for a real reason, and bring the group's most stubborn member along first. If they move, everyone moves.
The honest bottom line
There is no single best app for group chats. There is a best app for your group, and nine times out of ten it is the one your group is already on. Pick by the people, not the features. Use Signal when privacy is the point, Discord when it is a community, and a room-based app when the people you want to talk to are people you have not met yet.
Hashti is free, and it is 18+. Hashti Plus — live translation, writing help and catch-ups — is $4.99 a month or $39.99 a year, and nothing else costs anything. How rooms work is on the rooms page, and how reports and the ID check work is on the safety page.