Telegram Channel Scraper — export Telegram messages, views & media (no login)

Scrape public Telegram channels with no login, no phone number and no API key: message text, view counts, reactions, photos, videos, documents, polls, link previews, hashtags, forwards and replies, plus channel subscriber counts. Use it as a simple Telegram API alternative to export Telegram messages to JSON, CSV or Excel.

What is Telegram Channel Scraper?

Telegram Channel Scraper is a Telegram scraper that reads the public web preview Telegram itself publishes for every public channel at https://t.me/s/<channel>, the page you see when you open a channel link in a browser. It turns that page into clean, structured data, one item per message.

• No login, no API key, no phone number. It never connects to the Telegram API and never signs in.
• Public channels only. Private chats, groups, invite links and user accounts are out of scope by design.
• Any number of channels in one run: usernames, @handles or t.me links.
• Goes back in history. It pages through older posts automatically until it has as many messages as you asked for, or until it reaches your since date.
• Search inside channels with Telegram's own channel search.
• Polite by design. At most 3 channels at a time, about one request per second overall, and automatic retry with backoff on HTTP 429 and server errors.
• Download your data as JSON, CSV, Excel, HTML or XML, or read it through the Apify API.

What data can I extract from Telegram channels?

Field	Description
channel / channelTitle	Channel username and display name
messageId / url	Post ID and permalink (https://t.me/<channel>/<id>)
date	Publish time (ISO 8601, UTC)
text	Message text as plain text (line breaks kept, emoji included)
textHtml	Original message HTML (optional, includeTextHtml)
views	View count as a number (18.9M becomes 18900000)
reactions	[{ emoji, count }]. Paid star reactions have paid: true. Custom (premium) emoji come with customEmojiId and emoji: null
forwardedFrom	{ name, url } of the original source when the post is a forward
replyTo	{ messageId, url, author, text } when the post replies to another post
hasMedia / media	Photos, videos (file URL, thumbnail, duration), documents (title, size), polls (question, options, %) and link previews (url, title, description, thumbnail)
links	All links in the message text
hashtags / cashtags	#hashtags and $TICKERS found in the text
edited	Whether the post was edited
scrapedAt	When the item was scraped

Channel info. With includeChannelInfo on (the default), every channel also gets one separate item with type: "channel", placed before its messages. It contains title, description, verified, subscribers, photos, videos, files, links and avatar. Message items have type: "message", so you can split the two with a filter.

How can I use Telegram channel data?

• Brand monitoring. Track what news, crypto and community channels say about your brand or product.
• Crypto and news signals. Pull the latest posts from crypto and breaking-news channels, together with $TICKER cashtags, views and reactions, and feed them into trading or alerting pipelines.
• Market research. Compare channels by subscribers, posting frequency, views per post and engagement.
• OSINT on public channels. Archive and analyse public posts for journalism and research.
• Content archiving. Back up a channel's public history with text, links and media URLs.
• AI and LLM pipelines. Feed clean channel text to summarizers, classifiers or RAG systems.

How to scrape Telegram channels

1. Click Try for free on this Actor's page (you need a free Apify account).
2. Add one or more channels: durov, @telegram or https://t.me/cointelegraph.
3. Set Max messages per channel, and optionally a since date or a search keyword.
4. Click Start and wait for the run to finish.
5. Download the dataset as JSON, CSV, Excel or HTML, or connect it to your tools through the API.

How much does it cost to scrape Telegram?

This Actor uses pay-per-event pricing, so you only pay for messages you actually get:

Event	Price
Actor start	$0.005 per run
message-result (one message in the dataset)	$0.001 per message, i.e. $1 per 1,000 messages

Channel info items and error items are never charged.

Example: 1 run × 1,000 messages = $0.005 + $1.00 = $1.005.

The Apify free plan includes $5 of monthly credit, which covers roughly 5,000 Telegram messages per month. You can also set a maximum cost per run. When the Actor reaches it, it stops cleanly and keeps everything scraped so far.

⬇️ Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
channels	list of strings	—	Public channels as usernames, @handles or t.me URLs (required)
maxMessagesPerChannel	integer	50	Newest messages first. Older pages load automatically (about 20 messages per page)
since	string	—	Only messages on or after this date, e.g. 2026-01-31
searchQuery	string	—	Keyword search inside each channel (Telegram's own search)
includeChannelInfo	boolean	true	Add one free type: "channel" item per channel
includeTextHtml	boolean	false	Add the original message HTML as textHtml

{
  "channels": ["durov", "@telegram", "https://t.me/cointelegraph"],
  "maxMessagesPerChannel": 100,
  "since": "2026-09-01",
  "includeChannelInfo": true
}

Search a channel for a keyword: { "channels": ["durov"], "searchQuery": "freedom" }

⬆️ Output

One item per message, newest first, preceded by one channel item per channel. The Overview table in Apify Console shows channel, type, date, text, views, reactions and URL at a glance.

Message item (real output, media URLs shortened):

{
  "type": "message",
  "channel": "durov",
  "channelTitle": "Pavel Durov",
  "messageId": 546,
  "url": "https://t.me/durov/546",
  "date": "2026-08-31T16:30:15.000Z",
  "text": "🏳️ Gram Wallet in Telegram is ready and is now accessible to a select group of users.\n\n🤩 We'll be gradually rolling it out to our billion+ users over the next couple of weeks.\n\n...",
  "views": 3260000,
  "reactions": [
    { "emoji": "⭐", "paid": true, "count": 35600 },
    { "emoji": null, "customEmojiId": "5399847211989246390", "count": 26900 },
    { "emoji": null, "customEmojiId": "5373223594484587136", "count": 8760 }
  ],
  "forwardedFrom": null,
  "replyTo": null,
  "hasMedia": true,
  "media": [
    {
      "type": "video",
      "url": "https://cdn4.telesco.pe/file/e0b2769474.mp4?token=...",
      "thumbnail": "https://cdn4.telesco.pe/file/s08k3hBvfTPqk3MEOz4w-....jpg",
      "duration": "0:20"
    }
  ],
  "links": [],
  "hashtags": [],
  "cashtags": [],
  "edited": false,
  "scrapedAt": "2026-10-05T02:31:25.938Z"
}

Channel item (real output):

{
  "type": "channel",
  "channel": "cointelegraph",
  "url": "https://t.me/cointelegraph",
  "title": "Cointelegraph",
  "description": "The Future of Money \n\nUnbiased crypto, markets & Web3 news in real-time. Trusted since 2013. ...",
  "verified": false,
  "subscribers": 332000,
  "photos": 20600,
  "videos": 1290,
  "files": 4,
  "links": 58200,
  "avatar": "https://cdn4.telesco.pe/file/jPFyFIOer2JR1IPIGSeTo2wXFb3HA6XDHPrr6gSRBQc1H....jpg",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-10-05T02:30:43.651Z"
}

Notes on fields:

• Telegram shows rounded counts (10.5M, 9.69K), so views and subscribers are rounded the same way.
• Media URLs on telesco.pe are signed by Telegram and expire after a while. Download the files soon after the run if you need to keep them.
• Telegram's web preview does not include custom (premium) emoji characters, so those reactions only carry customEmojiId.
• Service posts ("channel created", "pinned a message") are skipped.

Error items

{ "channel": "wallstreetbets", "url": "https://t.me/wallstreetbets", "errorType": "GROUP_NOT_SUPPORTED", "error": "\"wallstreetbets\" is a group, not a channel — groups have no public web preview" }

errorType is one of:

• NOT_FOUND: no public channel with that name.
• PREVIEW_DISABLED: the channel exists, but its owner turned off the web preview.
• GROUP_NOT_SUPPORTED: the name belongs to a group.
• NOT_A_CHANNEL: the name belongs to a bot or user.
• INVALID_CHANNEL: an invite link or other unusable input.
• FETCH_FAILED: the page could not be loaded.

Error items are never charged.

Integrations and API

Apify API: start a run and get the results over HTTP.

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/istmobot~telegram-channel-scraper/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=<YOUR_API_TOKEN>" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"channels": ["durov"], "maxMessagesPerChannel": 20}'

Python (pip install apify-client):

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_API_TOKEN>")
run = client.actor("istmobot/telegram-channel-scraper").call(run_input={
    "channels": ["durov", "cointelegraph"],
    "maxMessagesPerChannel": 100,
})
for item in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    if item.get("type") == "message":
        print(item["date"], item["views"], item["text"][:80])

Node.js (npm install apify-client):

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' });
const run = await client.actor('istmobot/telegram-channel-scraper').call({
    channels: ['@telegram'],
    maxMessagesPerChannel: 50,
    since: '2026-09-01',
});
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.log(items.filter((i) => i.type === 'message'));

• Schedules: run it hourly or daily to monitor channels for new posts.
• Webhooks: get notified, or trigger your own pipeline, when a run finishes.
• Make, Zapier, n8n: send Telegram posts to Google Sheets, Airtable, Slack or a database without code.
• AI agents: use it from Claude, ChatGPT or any MCP client through the Apify MCP server (https://mcp.apify.com).

FAQ

Do I need a Telegram account, phone number or API key? No. The Actor only reads the public t.me/s/ web preview that anyone can open in a browser. It never logs in and never uses the Telegram API (no api_id, no session files).

Which channels can I scrape? Only public channels that have a username and whose web preview is enabled (most do). Private channels, groups, invite links (t.me/+…), bots and user accounts are not supported. You get a free error item explaining why.

Is it legal to scrape Telegram? The Actor collects only data that channel owners chose to publish openly on the web. Public data is generally fine to collect, but posts may contain personal data, especially names and opinions. If you store or process it, keep GDPR and similar privacy laws in mind and have a legitimate purpose. You are responsible for using the data in line with applicable laws and Telegram's terms. If unsure, consult a lawyer.

How far back can it go? As far as the web preview allows, which is usually the channel's full public history. Use maxMessagesPerChannel and since to control depth and cost.

How does search work? searchQuery uses Telegram's built-in channel search (t.me/s/<channel>?q=…). Telegram returns only the ~20–25 most recent matches per channel. For deeper keyword monitoring, scrape without search (optionally with since) and filter the text field yourself.

Can I get comments or the members of a channel? No. Comments live in linked discussion groups, and member lists need a logged-in account. Neither is part of the public web preview.

Can I schedule it? Yes. Use Apify Schedules (hourly, daily, weekly) together with since or a small maxMessagesPerChannel to pick up new posts.

Do I need proxies? No. Requests are lightweight and rate-limited.

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Your feedback

Found a bug or want a new field? Open an issue in the Issues tab of this Actor. We read every one.

Disclaimer

This is an unofficial tool. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by Telegram.