# 📡 TeleHawk — Telegram Public Channel Scraper & Keyword Monitor (`inexhaustible_glass/telehawk`) Actor

Scrape public Telegram channels for messages, views, media and forwarded-from info — no login, no API token, no MTProto session. Keyword filter to monitor specific channels for mentions. For market researchers, OSINT, crypto/trading signal tracking, and brand monitoring.

- **URL**: https://apify.com/inexhaustible_glass/telehawk.md
- **Developed by:** [Hitman studio](https://apify.com/inexhaustible_glass) (community)
- **Categories:** Agents, MCP servers
- **Stats:** 2 total users, 1 monthly users, 100.0% runs succeeded, 0 bookmarks
- **User rating**: No ratings yet

## Pricing

from $2.00 / 1,000 telegram messages

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

## 📡 TeleHawk — Telegram Public Channel Scraper & Keyword Monitor

> **No login, no API token, no MTProto session required.** Scrape any public
> Telegram channel's messages, views, media and forwarded-from info, and
> optionally filter by keyword — in one run.

Reads Telegram's own official public preview interface (the same lightweight
page Telegram serves to search engines), so there's nothing to configure:
no `api_id`/`api_hash` from my.telegram.org, no phone-number login, no
session string to generate and store. Just type a channel name and go.

***

### 👥 Who needs this

| You are a… | You get… |
|---|---|
| 🔍 **OSINT researcher** | Public channel monitoring without a Telegram account or API setup |
| 📈 **Crypto / trading signal tracker** | Pull every post from a signals channel, filtered by keyword |
| 🏷️ **Brand / competitor monitor** | Track mentions of your brand or a competitor across specific channels |
| 📰 **Market & trend researcher** | Bulk-export a news or community channel's post history |
| 🤖 **Automation builder** | Feed Telegram channel content into n8n/Zapier/Make pipelines |

### ✨ What you get, per message

- 📝 Full message text
- 👁️ View count (as shown, e.g. `1.72M`, plus a parsed numeric estimate)
- 🖼️ Media type + CDN URL (photo or video)
- 🔁 Forwarded-from channel (if the post was forwarded)
- 🕒 Exact post date/time (ISO 8601)
- 🔗 Direct message URL
- ✍️ Author name (shown on channels that display it)

### 🚀 How to use

1. Add one or more **public** Telegram channel usernames (with or without `@`).
2. Optionally add a keyword to filter by, or a media-only toggle.
3. Press **Start**.

#### Example 1 — scrape a channel's recent history

```json
{
  "channels": ["telegram"],
  "maxMessagesPerChannel": 200
}
```

#### Example 2 — monitor multiple channels for a keyword

```json
{
  "channels": ["durov", "telegram", "nytimes"],
  "maxMessagesPerChannel": 500,
  "keyword": "update"
}
```

#### Example 3 — media-only pull (photos & videos)

```json
{
  "channels": ["nytimes"],
  "maxMessagesPerChannel": 100,
  "mediaOnly": true
}
```

***

### 📦 Output (per message)

`channel`, `status`, `message_id`, `message_url`, `date`, `text`,
`views_display`, `views_estimate`, `media_type`, `media_url`,
`forwarded_from`, `author`.

A channel that's private, a group (not a channel), or doesn't exist returns
one honest `status: "not_found_or_private"` row with a clear `error`
message — never silently skipped, never a fabricated empty success.

***

### ⚠️ Scope & limits (read before running)

- **Public channels only.** Private channels, groups, and DMs are not
  accessible this way — there is no keyless public preview for them, and
  this actor does not attempt to join, log in, or bypass that.
- Shows the same message history Telegram's own public preview exposes —
  typically the channel's full post history is reachable via pagination,
  but very old or heavily-pruned channels may have less available.
- `keyword` filters the messages this run actually fetches from the
  channels you list — it does not search all of Telegram globally (no
  public, keyless endpoint for that exists).

***

### 🔎 Keywords

telegram scraper, telegram channel scraper, telegram message scraper,
telegram data scraper, telegram channel monitor, telegram keyword search,
telegram keyword monitor, telegram OSINT tool, telegram public channel
scraper, telegram no login scraper, telegram scraper no api, telegram
scraper without api key, telegram bulk export, telegram history scraper,
telegram media scraper, telegram photo scraper, telegram video scraper,
telegram views scraper, telegram crypto signals scraper, telegram trading
signal tracker, telegram brand monitoring, telegram competitor monitoring,
telegram channel export csv, telegram channel export json, telegram
automation, telegram n8n integration, telegram data extraction tool,
telegram analytics scraper, telegram post tracker, telegram forwarded
message tracker, Apify telegram actor, telegram scraping api alternative.

# Actor input Schema

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

Public channel usernames (with or without @), e.g. telegram, durov. One per line.

## `maxMessagesPerChannel` (type: `integer`):

How far back to paginate per channel.

## `keyword` (type: `string`):

Only return messages whose text contains this word/phrase (case-insensitive). Leave blank for every message.

## `mediaOnly` (type: `boolean`):

Only return messages that contain a photo or video.

## Actor input object example

```json
{
  "channels": [
    "telegram"
  ],
  "maxMessagesPerChannel": 100,
  "keyword": "",
  "mediaOnly": false
}
```

# Actor output Schema

## `messages` (type: `string`):

No description

# 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": [
        "telegram"
    ]
};

// Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
const run = await client.actor("inexhaustible_glass/telehawk").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": ["telegram"] }

# Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
run = client.actor("inexhaustible_glass/telehawk").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": [
    "telegram"
  ]
}' |
apify call inexhaustible_glass/telehawk --silent --output-dataset

```

## MCP server setup

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

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/02cOvAfcniJ078RC6/builds/w4ecbGwWXLCebUrR1/openapi.json