MTS, Beeline, MegaFon, and T2 will stop counting traffic from the Max messenger toward mobile internet packages starting August 1. The digital ministry said the service will be usable "even if gigabytes run out," Meduza reported.
VK, which owns the messenger, confirmed the agreement with operators to zero out traffic. Max's CEO Farit Khusnoyarov noted that "tens of millions of users" won't have to worry about tariffs and limits: access to the messenger will remain "regardless of the state of the tariff plan and balance." The conditions apply when the subscriber is in the operator's home network.
According to The Moscow Times, representatives of the messenger and operators also signed the agreement. Beeline said Max is becoming part of the state's digital infrastructure. The messenger is already on the list of mandatory apps for pre-installation on smartphones, integrated with Gosuslugi, and state, educational, and building chats are being migrated to it. Civil servants and budget-sector workers must fully switch to Max for work communication by 2030.
According to Mediascope, in June 2026, 86.2 million people used Max, making it the top messenger by monthly audience reach, surpassing Telegram. Meanwhile, Russia is tightening control over foreign messengers: Viber is blocked, voice calls in Telegram and WhatsApp are restricted, and access to them since spring 2026 has been possible only through proxy services and VPNs, The Moscow Times writes.
In early June, Max was removed from the App Store — Apple cited international sanctions. After the European Union imposed sanctions on VK and its subsidiary that developed the messenger, Google also removed it from its store.