Naven
Answers
Is there a free messaging app with no ads?
Signal, Telegram and Naven are all free and carry no advertising. They are funded differently — Signal by donations, Telegram by an optional subscription, Naven by its developer — which is worth knowing because the funding model predicts the future behaviour better than the current feature list.
A free product with no advertising has to be paid for somehow, and the three common answers are donations, a paid tier, and somebody absorbing the cost. The fourth answer — selling data — is what advertising-funded messengers do, and it is the one that shapes the product: a service that sells attention has to hold it.
The question worth asking of any of them is what happens when the money runs out.
Naven has no advertising, no paid tier and no data sale, and says so in its structured data as well as its marketing. It is run by one person, which is a real limitation and stated as one.