The 6 best texting apps in 2026

Let's make one thing clear: unfortunately, there's no one best texting app. Unless you absolutely require one or two specific features or are a real stickler for security, the best text message app will be the one that the people you want to text also use. Depending on where you are in the world, that can be iMessage, WhatsApp, Viber, Telegram, LINE, WeChat, or even SMS. If you're looking for some magic WhatsApp alternatives that are a million times better, you're out of luck.

But if, for whatever reason, you do have a choice of which messaging app you can use—or you can convince your friends and family to make the switch—these are the six best texting apps to choose from. (Though, if I could rule the world using benevolent AIs, I'd make everyone use Signal.)

The 6 best texting apps

• WhatsApp for most people

• Viber for an alternative to WhatsApp

• Telegram for logging in from multiple devices

• Signal for security

• Messenger for contacting anyone

• Beeper for pulling everything together

What makes the best texting app?

As a child of the '90s, I've been sending text messages as long as widespread, affordable cell phones have been a thing (and, if I'm honest, a year or two before then). I've also used text messaging apps for professional reasons—both to communicate with my remote colleagues and to review the apps themselves.

Especially after testing all the texting apps out there, I believe the best texting app is the one that people will actually reply to you with. If that's SMS or smoke signals, you have my full permission to use it—as long as you aren't talking about anything super sensitive or sharing anything personal. So when it came to putting together this list, that freed me up to be pretty strict about the requirements for inclusion.

iMessage, SMS, and Android Messages didn't make this list. Nor did Google Meet, Slack, Teams, or any other workspace app. X isn't here either—XChat is just too weirdly implemented. The big reason to use any of those apps is that your friends do.

If, however, you're starting a friend group, desert island colony, or fan club from scratch and you get to pick the tools you use, this is what you should be looking for in messaging apps:

• Availability on both iPhone and Android. And ideally on the web or desktop too. We don't want any green bubble/blue bubble drama here. Text messaging should be about the person, not the device they use.

• Privacy and security. Do you know who can read your SMS messages? Pretty much everyone, and RCS, the improved messaging standard, is still rolling out. The best chat apps all have end-to-end encryption enabled by default, or at a stretch, they allow you to quickly turn it on. There are a handful of circumstances where end-to-end encryption isn't appropriate, like with public group messaging and some kinds of business communications; but across the board, I favored services that cared about your security and privacy.

• No price tag. The best text apps are all free to use for core messaging features. Part of this is because most people aren't prepared to pay for them, but it's also because large corporations actually make surprisingly decent apps sometimes. It also helps that it's easier to convince your friends to sign up for a new service if they don't have to pay. 

• Support for pictures, video, and other multimedia. Text messages are no longer 140 characters long (at least if you're not using SMS). They can be long essays, but also photos, GIFs, voice notes, YouTube links, documents, and lots of other forms of multimedia. If you want to send something over text message, you should be able to—at least as long as it's digital.

• Support for group chat. A lot of text messaging doesn't happen one-to-one. For a free chat app to make this list, it had to be able to support group messaging. To be honest, this requirement didn't exclude many apps as it's a very common feature, but I still felt it needed to be stated.

To put together this list, I tested more than 30 different apps. A lot fell short because they didn't meet the criteria above or because they were just unpleasant to use. I spent time testing and texting in any app that looked like it could be a candidate for inclusion—plus, as I've already said, this is a category I have a lot of experience with, so I'd already spent a lot of time in each of these apps in the past.

And now, on to the apps. 

The best texting apps at a glance

Best texting app for most people

WhatsApp (iOS, iPadOS, Android, Mac, Windows, Web)

WhatsApp pros:

• One of the most popular texting apps in the world

• Nice to use

WhatsApp cons:

• Meta is starting to ruin it

WhatsApp is the undisputed ruler of free mobile messaging in much of the world. Launched in 2009 as a way to send messages over a data connection rather than SMS, WhatsApp was acquired by Facebook (now Meta) in 2014. Since then, the service has grown both its feature set and user base. It now has more than three billion users, and it's easy to see why: it's a shockingly decent service.

WhatsApp is a fully-featured texting platform: you can send every kind of message, make voice and video calls, and do all the things you'd expect of a top-notch texting app. Despite being the most popular messaging service in the world and being owned by Facebook parent company Meta, WhatsApp has end-to-end encryption enabled for all conversations. Everything you send, including file transfers, is fully encrypted. Encrypted messages are even removed from WhatsApp's servers once they're delivered. 

Meta has aggressively rolled out new features over the past few years in an attempt to make WhatsApp even more essential—and to make it make money. The biggest one is Channels, which allow for one-to-many broadcasts. They're where it introduced ads and promoted Channels to follow. Meta also intends to add paid Channel Subscriptions and is testing a paid ad-free WhatsApp Plus subscription. Meta has also integrated Meta AI so you can chat with a bot or use it to generate AI images. It's… kind of annoying and interferes with search. 

A more positive change is that WhatsApp now lets you sign in on multiple smartphones, though one of them will have to be on if you want to use the desktop apps for Windows and Mac, and the web app at web.whatsapp.com. It's also rolling out usernames which will allow you to keep your phone number private.

All in all, WhatsApp continues to tick pretty much every box. Meta has started to add clutter, ads, and other features that, if unchecked, could ruin the app in the next few years. But, at least for now, the core messaging product remains great.

If you're using WhatsApp for business, Zapier's WhatsApp Business integration lets you automate multi-step communication workflows across your entire tech stack. For example, you can use AI to automatically classify message intent, send personalized replies, and route conversations to the right team when human input is needed.

WhatsApp price: Free

Best WhatsApp alternative

Viber (iOS, Android, Mac, Windows)

Viber pros:

• As feature-packed a texting app as you could ever need

Viber cons:

• Busy

• Public groups can be wild

Viber is another solid all-around messaging app, with millions of users across the globe. It's more chaotic than WhatsApp, but it offers the same core messaging features. I personally can't stand the app, but it does the job it sets out to do, and it's a usable WhatsApp alternative if you want to avoid Meta.

End-to-end encryption is standard in all Viber one-on-one and group chats. Channels and Communities, however, aren't end-to-end encrypted (as it would then be impossible for new members to see the chat history). It's a small security sacrifice in the name of offering a better service. In addition to free voice and video calling to other Viber users, a service called Viber Out enables you to call any mobile or landline in more than 50 countries as much as you like for $5.99 per month. It's like Skype, except it still exists.

One mature feature that Viber has that WhatsApp is trying to get to take off is Communities—essentially large group chats with strangers that you can join or start. These public chats can have an unlimited number of members and feature robust controls for admins to moderate their chats. You can find Communities based on things like location, hobbies, and favorite teams. Think Reddit, but more like a group chat. (Fair warning: if you live somewhere where Viber isn't the dominant chat app, expect these groups to be filled with conspiracy theories, scams, MLMs, and other wildness.)

Where Viber falls well short is in the busyness of the whole app. With sticker stores, all the different kinds of chats, some AI bots, and even the occasional ad, it's a less fulfilling experience than WhatsApp—especially if you aren't making use of its unique features like Viber Out.

Viber price: Free; Viber Plus costs $1.99/month and removes ads, adds a few non-essential features, and includes live chat support

The best texting app for logging in from multiple devices

Telegram (iOS, Android, Web, Mac, Windows, Linux)

Telegram pros:

• A solid, fully-featured texting app

• You can use it on multiple platforms without workarounds

Telegram cons:

• Encryption situation isn't as good as end-to-end

Telegram was one of the original messaging apps that emphasized the importance of security, although it takes a slightly different approach to encryption so that it can store your conversations on its servers. While security experts have expressed their concerns with it if you want to keep your communications safe from governments and espionage agencies, it does allow you to log in from multiple devices including through the desktop apps, without the workarounds that WhatsApp requires. The founder is currently under investigation in France related to criminality on the platform and these kinds of security concerns continue to plague Telegram, so be warned. It's also in the middle of a crypto push, but I found it easy to ignore.

Otherwise, Telegram offers the features you'd expect from a WhatsApp alternative: you can use it to make voice and video calls, and send text messages, photos, videos, and files to other Telegram users. You can even create group chats with a whopping 200,000 participants or channels with an unlimited number of subscribers. If you want end-to-end encryption, you can use secret chats for one-to-one conversations—but you have to enable this for each chat.

Telegram's supergroups (the ones with up to 200,000 members) and channels, where you can broadcast one-way messages to an unlimited audience, are, in my experience, a lot more popular than Viber's alternatives. Some channels have millions of members. Though with that said, the same caveats as with Viber apply: if you aren't in a region where Telegram is the dominant messaging platform, the public groups can be wild and unusable.

Telegram also has an open API, which means users are free to build their own apps for use with the service. It's a popular way to build an AI bot with OpenClaw. It also means you can integrate Telegram with Zapier, so you can create smart, multi-step workflows that keep you in the loop and help you respond faster. For example, when new messages come in, you can use AI to analyze for sentiment, highlight the most urgent ones, and send a timely response. Learn more about how to automate Telegram.

Finally, Telegram has a paid plan called Telegram Premium for roughly $4.99/month (it depends on your location and mobile app platform), which removes the few non-intrusive ads, doubles limits for things like file uploads (from 2 to 4 GB) and the number of groups you can join (from 500 to 1,000), and adds a few features like AI. It's not essential at all, but if you use Telegram all the time, it might be worth considering.

Telegram price: Free; Premium from $4.99/month

Best texting app for security

Signal (iOS, Android, Mac, Windows, Linux)

Signal pros:

• The nicest, most secure, best overall texting app (can you tell I love it?)

Signal cons:

• Convincing people to switch is still a challenge

Signal is one of the cleanest-looking and most functional texting apps—almost everything is kept to a single screen. Other than selecting from one of three themes or choosing a background, there's little in the way of customization available. It's frequently recommended as a WhatsApp alternative; while chatting, you'll even notice WhatsApp-style double ticks to denote message status. Signal also includes voice and video calling with other Signal users. These chats are end-to-end encrypted just like other messages sent via the app.

You can send text, photos, videos, documents, and voice messages to individual or group conversations. The app uses end-to-end encryption to secure all messages sent via the service (in fact, the encryption protocol it developed is also used by WhatsApp and Messenger), with the option of setting expiration dates for each conversation. Once your messages expire, they're no longer recoverable. There's also a handy "Note to Self" contact for you to store your thoughts.

Signal added Stories a few years ago (end-to-end encrypted, of course), but it doesn't really change the overall experience of using the app.

While you need a phone number to sign up to Signal, you don't have to share it with other users, which offers another bit of privacy. You can download a desktop app for Windows, Mac, and Linux to bring the full suite of Signal features to your computer too. The downside to this privacy is that if you lose your phone, recovering your message history is impossible unless you've set up a secure backup. It's easy to do, and all your messages plus 45 days' worth of media is free, and a backup of everything is $1.99/month. It's Signal's first paid feature, but it doesn't change the app.

Signal is great if you want security and simplicity. There are few bells and whistles—it's just industry-standard encrypted texting and calling. (And I absolutely love it.)

Signal price: Free

Best texting app for contacting anyone

Messenger (Windows, iOS, Android, Web)

Messenger pros:

• Facebook is ubiquitous around the world—and Messenger is too

Messenger cons:

• Dialed back but still a bit chaotic

More than a third of the world's population still uses Facebook every month. That's wild. If you want to contact an old school friend, a local business, or your partner's parents, you can probably do it using Messenger. It's a serious feature that no other texting app can match. 

The app includes all the basic messaging and calling features you'd expect—and some you probably won't. Send texts to individuals, groups of up to 250 people, or communities of up to 5,000 people, and react to messages with stickers, GIFs, and emoji. Make voice and video calls to your friends and family. You can send voice messages, photos, and videos, or capture your own media using Messenger Camera. You can post photos to your Messenger Story (or crosspost them from your Instagram Story). There's also Meta AI, should you want to chat with the company's bot or get it to generate any wild AI images. There's a lot there, and this is actually a leaner, more stripped-down version of Messenger than it was a few years ago.

Facebook rolled out end-to-end encryption a few years back, which brought it more in line with WhatsApp. Your one-on-one conversations are secure, but Community chats, Marketplace chats, and other professional chats still aren't encrypted. In the past, Facebook was able to scan all the images sent through Messenger to see if they had been flagged as child abuse materials, and Facebook has used message scanning in the past to quell sensationalist messages designed to incite harm or unrest. The company claims they don't scan your private conversations for advertising purposes. It's unclear if this still happens with end-to-end encrypted conversations as there are ways to scan messages on-device before anything is encrypted.

What Messenger lacks in taste and privacy, it's always made up for with its ubiquity. And that's why it stays on the list.

When you connect Facebook Messenger to Zapier, you can orchestrate multi-step messaging workflows that help you stay responsive without constantly checking apps. For example, you can use AI to draft personalized replies, notify you where you'll actually see it, and save the conversation for later follow-up. Learn more about how to automate Facebook Messenger.

Facebook Messenger Price: Free

Best texting app for an all-in-one messaging app

Beeper (Windows, macOS, iOS, Android, Linux)

Beeper pros:

• 12+ different messaging platforms through one app

Beeper cons:

• A bit more hacked together than some of the other apps

Beeper is a universal texting app that combines more than 12 different messaging services into one user interface. While this sounds like it could be busy and chaotic, Beeper pulls it off nicely, and the whole app is pretty seamless. 

The services it supports include other texting services, like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Telegram, and Signal, as well as a few other platforms like Slack, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Discord. There's also unofficial support for iMessage, LINE, and a few other services—though they're not always available on all devices in the same way. If the name Beeper seems familiar, you probably saw a news story or two about its back-and-forth with Apple trying to get iMessage to work on Android devices a couple of years back.

Of course, supporting all these different services means that there isn't quite feature parity between all your chats. Reactions work with WhatsApp but not SMS, for example. Some services work locally on your device while others require Beeper Cloud, where its servers simply pass end-to-end encrypted messages along without unencrypting them. It's a bit less intuitive all around, and the very nature of having an additional service in the middle makes things a bit less secure. 

With a free account, you get one account per service up to five accounts total; Beeper Plus adds three accounts per network and 10 accounts total for $9.99/month. Beeper Plus Plus gives you unlimited accounts, but at $49.99/month, it's clearly targeted at businesses. 

Beeper isn't without tradeoffs, but it does give you an awesome texting app without getting your friends to switch to Signal.

Beeper price: Free for five accounts; from $9.99/month for Beeper Plus with 10 accounts.

Other messaging options

Text messages are just one way to stay in contact. Here are some other options:

• If you're looking for a more community-driven chat, check out Discord. It's a lot better for large groups than a single very active group chat. 

• Similarly, while social media has a mixed reputation, Instagram, Snapchat, and even TikTok are all good ways to keep in contact with friends and family. All these apps have some kind of messaging built in. It's just not as useful or simple as the picks above.

• Matrix is an open source alternative that's possibly gaining some very quiet traction. It's way too niche to make this list, but if the idea of an open, interoperable texting standard sounds like your jam, give it a look.

Which texting app should you choose?

Text message apps aren't really about the app—they're about the people you're connecting with. If you can convince your friends and family to use one of these picks, like WhatsApp or Signal, go right for it. Lay out the reasons that you—and I—feel it's safer, more secure, or more convenient than whatever they're already using, and see if they'll make the switch. 

But if they insist on only using iMessage, I'd suggest you park your interoperability concerns and stay in contact.

Related reading:

• How to text from a computer

• Beeper vs. Texts: Which should you use?

• I let AI write my texts for a week—here's how it went

• SMS by Zapier: Send automatic text alerts for priority events

This article was originally published in June 2019 by Timothy Brookes. The most recent update was in July 2026.