# Telegram Channel Scraper - Posts, Views, Reactions, Engagement (`anvildata/telegram-channel-scraper`) Actor

Scrape any public Telegram channel: full post text, view counts, every reaction with its count, engagement totals, media URLs, links and forwards. 24 fields per post. No API key, no login, no phone number.

- **URL**: https://apify.com/anvildata/telegram-channel-scraper.md
- **Developed by:** [Jorge Saragoca](https://apify.com/anvildata) (community)
- **Stats:** 2 total users, 1 monthly users, 100.0% runs succeeded, 0 bookmarks
- **User rating**: No ratings yet

## Pricing

$5.00 / 1,000 telegram posts

This Actor is paid per event. You are not charged for the Apify platform usage, but only a fixed price for specific events.

Learn more: https://docs.apify.com/actors/running/actors-in-store.md#pay-per-event

## What's an Apify Actor?

An Actor is a serverless cloud program that runs on the Apify platform. It has two run modes.
In Batch mode, an Actor accepts a well-defined JSON input, performs an action which can take anything from a few seconds to a few hours,
and optionally produces a well-defined JSON output, datasets with results, or files in key-value store.
In Standby mode, an Actor provides a web server which can be used as a website, API, or an MCP server.

Apify vocabulary and the platform model are defined once, in the agent quickstart at https://apify.com/agents.md.

## How to integrate an Actor?

If asked about integration, you help developers integrate Actors into their projects.
You adapt to their stack and deliver integrations that are safe, well-documented, and production-ready.

Do not guess an integration path. Every one of them is in the agent quickstart at https://apify.com/agents.md: the Apify MCP server, Agent Skills with the Apify CLI, the JavaScript and Python clients, the REST API, and the account-free path for an agent with no human to sign in. It also carries the rule on stating cost before the first paid run.

For examples already wired to this Actor's own input schema, see the [API](#api) section below.

Each client library has reference documentation the quickstart does not restate: [JavaScript/TypeScript](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs.md) (`npm install apify-client`) and [Python](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs.md) (`pip install apify-client`).

# README

## Telegram Channel Scraper - Posts, Views, Reactions and Engagement

Export posts from any public Telegram channel into a spreadsheet, including the
**engagement data most scrapers leave out**: every reaction with its count, total
reactions per post, and view counts as real numbers you can sort and chart.

Useful for Telegram analytics, channel post history exports, engagement tracking and
competitor monitoring.

**No API key. No login. No phone number. No Telegram account needed.**

***

### What you get, per post

| Field | Example |
|---|---|
| `channelTitle` | Pavel Durov |
| `channel` | durov |
| `channelSubscribers` | 10.4M |
| `datetime` | 2026-07-16T20:45:25+00:00 |
| `text` | The complete post text, not a preview |
| `views` | 5.81M |
| `viewsNumeric` | 5810000, sortable |
| `reactions` | every emoji with its count |
| `reactionCount` | 71000, total across all emoji |
| `photoUrls` | direct image links |
| `videoUrls` | direct video links |
| `videoDuration` | 1:15 |
| `mediaTypes` | photo, video, document, voice, poll, sticker |
| `linksInPost` | every URL inside the post |
| `forwardedFrom` | original channel, when the post is a forward |
| `replyToText` | the post being replied to |
| `author` | post signature, where the channel uses them |
| `postUrl` | https://t.me/durov/531 |
| `messageId` | 531 |

### What people use it for

- **Competitor and market monitoring.** Track what channels in your sector publish, and
  how much reach each post gets.
- **Crypto, finance and news signals.** Pull announcement history with timestamps and
  view counts for analysis.
- **Research datasets.** Thousands of timestamped posts with engagement figures.
- **Archiving.** Keep a permanent, searchable copy of a channel you rely on.
- **Content analysis.** Which posts travel, which formats get views, what gets forwarded.

### How to use it

1. Enter one or more channel names. `durov`, `@durov` and `https://t.me/durov` all work.
2. Set how many posts you want per channel.
3. Run it. Download as CSV, Excel, JSON or XML.

Pagination is automatic. It walks backwards through a channel's history until it reaches
your limit or runs out of posts.

### Reactions and engagement included

Most Telegram scrapers return the post text and stop. This one also returns **every reaction with its count**, a **total reaction number** you can sort on, and **view counts as real numbers** rather than "5.81M" strings you have to clean up yourself.

That matters if you are measuring what actually lands: a post with 5M views and 400 reactions performed very differently from one with 5M views and 70,000.

### Speed

A recent run collected **600 posts across two channels in 44 seconds**, with no failures.

### Why this one

**It tells you when it fails.**

Most scrapers share a defect: when something goes wrong, they return an empty list and
mark the run successful. Your dashboard shows a green tick, your file is empty, and you
find out later.

This checks every page before returning anything: did a response arrive, is it the real
page, and does it actually contain posts. Fail any one and the run is marked **FAILED**
with the reason attached. There is a switch to turn that off if you prefer partial
results, but it is on by default.

It also separates **temporarily blocked**, which it retries on a fresh connection, from
**the site changed**, which it stops on immediately and reports, instead of retrying
forever and hiding the problem.

### Pricing

Pay per post delivered. Nothing to start a run. Nothing for failed runs, blocked pages or
duplicate posts.

### A note on reaction emoji

Telegram renders reaction emoji with JavaScript, so its public pages contain the
reaction **id** and **count** but not the emoji character itself. No tool reading those
pages can return the symbol. You get the id, the count, the number of distinct reactions
and the total, which is what the numbers are for.

### Notes

- Public channels only. Private channels and groups cannot be read without an account and
  are not supported.
- Collects only what Telegram itself publishes on its public preview pages.
- Duplicate posts are removed automatically across pages.

# Actor input Schema

## `channels` (type: `array`):

Channel usernames or t.me links. Example: durov or https://t.me/durov. Public channels only.

## `maxPostsPerChannel` (type: `integer`):

Stop after this many posts per channel. You are charged only for posts actually delivered.

## `proxyConfiguration` (type: `object`):

Optional. Telegram's public preview pages rarely block, so the cheap datacenter proxy is the default.

## `failRunOnBlock` (type: `boolean`):

On by default. Most scrapers return an empty list and report success, which hides the problem from you.

## Actor input object example

```json
{
  "channels": [
    "durov"
  ],
  "maxPostsPerChannel": 200,
  "proxyConfiguration": {
    "useApifyProxy": true
  },
  "failRunOnBlock": true
}
```

# Actor output Schema

## `posts` (type: `string`):

Every post collected in this run.

## `postsCsv` (type: `string`):

The same posts as a spreadsheet you can open in Excel.

## `runReport` (type: `string`):

What this run delivered, retried and failed. Written on every run.

# API

You can run this Actor programmatically using our API. Below are code examples in JavaScript, Python, and CLI, as well as the OpenAPI specification and MCP server setup.

## JavaScript example

```javascript
import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

// Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
// Replace the '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token
const client = new ApifyClient({
    token: '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>',
});

// Prepare Actor input
const input = {
    "channels": [
        "durov"
    ]
};

// Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
const run = await client.actor("anvildata/telegram-channel-scraper").call(input);

// Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if any)
console.log('Results from dataset');
console.log(`💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/${run.defaultDatasetId}`);
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
items.forEach((item) => {
    console.dir(item);
});

// 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs

```

## Python example

```python
from apify_client import ApifyClient

# Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
# Replace '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token.
client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_API_TOKEN>")

# Prepare the Actor input
run_input = { "channels": ["durov"] }

# Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
run = client.actor("anvildata/telegram-channel-scraper").call(run_input=run_input)

# Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if there are any)
print(f"💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/{run.default_dataset_id}")
for item in client.dataset(run.default_dataset_id).iterate_items():
    print(item)

# 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs/quick-start

```

## CLI example

```bash
echo '{
  "channels": [
    "durov"
  ]
}' |
apify call anvildata/telegram-channel-scraper --silent --output-dataset

```

## MCP server setup

```json
{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "type": "http",
            "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch-actor-details,anvildata/telegram-channel-scraper"
        }
    }
}
```

The hosted server signs you in with OAuth on first connect, so no API token belongs in this config. Clients without OAuth support can send an `Authorization: Bearer <APIFY_API_TOKEN>` header instead, using a token from API & Integrations in Apify Console (https://console.apify.com/settings/integrations).

## OpenAPI specification

Download the OpenAPI definition: https://api.apify.com/v2/actors/3xKiKjVaOWPSSqtSb/builds/v2qs24Soffx8Hrafi/openapi.json