Telegram Members Scraper — Group & Channel Stats

Get the public profile and membership size of any public Telegram group or channel without login, API keys, phone numbers or proxies. Pass one or more chat usernames and get clean JSON with the chat type, title, description, member/subscriber count, online count, photo and more.

Built for community managers, growth teams and researchers who need to track how big public Telegram communities are — without touching the Telegram API or burning an account.

Why this Actor

• No Telegram account needed — reads the public web profile (t.me/<chat>), so there is nothing to authenticate or configure.
• No API key, no api_id/api_hash, no bot token, no phone number, no proxy budget.
• Groups and channels, one input — the Actor detects the chat type automatically and returns the right size metric (members for groups, subscribers for channels).
• Cheap and fast — pay only per chat profile read, plus a one-time start fee.

What it returns (and what it honestly cannot)

Each dataset item is the public profile of one chat, including its membership size. Telegram deliberately hides member rosters (usernames, user IDs, joined dates) from the unauthenticated web surface — the public preview shows only the info card. This Actor returns everything that card exposes:

Field	Groups	Channels
chatType	group	channel
chatTitle / chatDescription	✅	✅
memberCount	✅	—
onlineCount	✅	—
subscriberCount	—	✅
photoUrl / profileUrl	✅	✅
messagePreviewAvailable	false (no public preview)	true (when /s/ exists)
previewAuthors	—	distinct accounts on the post preview (usually the channel itself; forwarded posts may surface others)

Why no per-member rows? Telegram does not expose a member list on the public web. A full roster (IDs, usernames, join dates) requires the authenticated Telegram API — which would contradict this Actor's no-login, no-API-key design. Use this Actor for community sizing, growth tracking and chat intelligence; use the official API if you need an actual roster and are authorised for it.

How it works

Give it a list of public chat usernames (@DatascienceChats, durov) or links (t.me/python_community, t.me/s/durov). For each chat the Actor loads the public info page, parses the profile card and — for channels — probes the /s/ message preview for visible author accounts. Output is one dataset item per chat.

Input

{
  "chats": ["@DatascienceChats", "https://t.me/durov"],
  "checkPreview": true
}

Field	Type	Description
chats	array	Public group/channel usernames (@name, name) or links (t.me/name, t.me/s/name) — required
checkPreview	boolean	Probe the /s/ message preview for channels and collect visible authors (default true)

Output (one item per chat)

{
  "chatUsername": "DatascienceChats",
  "chatType": "group",
  "chatTitle": "Data Science,ML & AI Nugget Chats",
  "chatDescription": "Discussion community for DS, ML, IOT, AI, DEEP LEARNING and much more…",
  "memberCount": 13871,
  "onlineCount": 380,
  "subscriberCount": null,
  "photoUrl": "https://cdn4.telegram-cdn.org/file/…",
  "profileUrl": "https://t.me/DatascienceChats",
  "messagePreviewAvailable": false,
  "previewAuthors": [],
  "scrapedAt": "2026-08-10T12:00:00+00:00"
}

Use cases

• 📈 Growth tracking — chart member/subscriber counts of competitor or topic communities over time.
• 🏷️ Community segmentation — classify public groups vs broadcast channels and their relative sizes.
• 🔍 Market research — size the Telegram audience for a niche before launching a channel or product.
• 🧹 Lead-list hygiene — confirm a group exists, is public, and roughly how many people it reaches before outreach.
• 🤖 AI / datasets — build metadata corpora of public Telegram communities for classification and analytics.

Run it from the API

Trigger the Actor and get results in one call:

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/darknezz~telegram-members-scraper/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=YOUR_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"chats":["@DatascienceChats","durov"]}'

Scheduling: attach an Apify Schedule (e.g. weekly) to keep a growth-tracking dataset topped up automatically.

Limitations

• Only public chats can be read. Private groups/channels are not accessible without authentication.
• No member roster. Telegram hides member lists from the public web; the Actor returns the membership size and chat profile, not per-user rows. A roster requires the authenticated Telegram API.
• Counts are as displayed on the public profile at scrape time (Telegram rounds large numbers, e.g. 13.9K → 13900).
• messagePreviewAvailable is only meaningful for channels; group /s/ URLs redirect to the info page by design.

Pricing

Pay per event: a small fee for each chat profile extracted, plus Apify's standard platform events (actor start + dataset item). No subscription — you pay only for what you run.

FAQ

Do I need a Telegram account, bot token or api_id? No — the Actor reads the public web profile, so there is nothing to authenticate.

Can it scrape private groups or channels? No. Only public chats that expose a t.me/<name> profile can be read.

Where is the member list? Telegram does not publish member rosters on the web. The Actor returns the member/subscriber count from the public info card. Getting actual member records requires the Telegram API (login + api_id/api_hash), which this Actor deliberately avoids.

Why does a channel have subscriberCount but no memberCount? Channels have subscribers, not members — Telegram exposes only the subscriber count publicly. Groups expose member + online counts.

Do I need a proxy? No. The public profile is reachable directly over HTTPS — no proxy or residential IP budget required.

Is scraping this legal? The profile is public and unauthenticated. You are responsible for complying with Telegram's terms and any privacy laws (e.g. GDPR) that apply to how you store and use the data.