#signal #privacy #cost #benefit

Privacy is Priceless, but Signal is Expensive

Our nonprofit structure doesn’t mean it costs less for Signal to produce a globally distributed communications app. Signal is a nonprofit, but we’re playing in a lane dominated by multi-billion-dollar corporations that have defined the norms and established the tech ecosystem, and whose business models directly contravene our privacy mission.

So in order to provide a genuinely useful alternative, Signal spends tens of millions of dollars every year. We estimate that by 2025, Signal will require approximately $50 million dollars a year to operate—and this is very lean compared to other popular messaging apps that don’t respect your privacy.

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We hope that this cursory tour of some of Signal’s operations and costs helps provide a greater understanding of Signal’s unique place in the tech ecosystem, and of the tech ecosystem itself.

Our goal of developing an open source private messenger that is supported and sustained by small donations is both highly ambitious and, we believe, existentially important.

Thank you for your support. It’s an honor and privilege to work on Signal every day, and we—very literally—couldn’t do it without you. Please consider donating to Signal via our website or learn how to give using the app.

https://signal.org/donate/
https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360031949872#how

https://signal.org/blog/signal-is-expensive/