Telegram Channel Scraper: Posts, Views, Reactions

What does Telegram Channel Scraper do?

Telegram Channel Scraper solves one problem: getting the posts of a public Telegram channel as structured data without a Telegram account, bot token or API key. It reads the public web preview (t.me/s/channel), so 100 posts of a channel arrive in about 10 seconds and nothing you own can be rate-limited or banned.

Every post becomes one record with channel, postId, url, date, text (and optional HTML), views, reactions (emoji and counts), mediaUrls, links, forwardedFrom, replyTo and editedAt; an optional channel-info record adds title, description, subscriber count and avatar. Export JSON/CSV/Excel, call the REST API, or schedule the Actor and push new posts to Slack, Sheets, Make or your own pipeline.

Why use Telegram Channel Scraper?

• Monitor news and announcements from crypto projects, software vendors, media outlets or government channels.
• Track engagement: views and reaction counts per post make it easy to rank content and spot what resonates.
• Build datasets for research or AI: export clean JSON/CSV of thousands of posts with dates and links for NLP, trend analysis or RAG pipelines.
• Archive channels on a schedule and keep your own searchable history.
• Brand and competitor monitoring: collect every mention across a set of channels and pipe it into Slack, Sheets or a database.

Because it reads the public preview, it only works for public channels with the web preview enabled. Private channels, invite links (t.me/+...), groups and bots are not supported.

How to scrape Telegram channels

1. Open the Actor and enter one or more channels — usernames (telegram, @durov) or links (https://t.me/durov) both work.
2. Set Max posts per channel (default 50). Optionally limit by date with Only posts newer than / older than.
3. Click Start. Results appear in the Dataset tab within seconds.
4. Download the data as JSON, CSV, Excel, XML or HTML, or fetch it through the API.
5. Optional: add a Schedule to run daily and only collect new posts by setting postsNewerThan to yesterday.

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
channels	array	["telegram", "durov"]	Public channel usernames or t.me URLs
maxPostsPerChannel	integer	50	Newest N posts per channel
postsNewerThan	string	–	YYYY-MM-DD or ISO date; scraping stops once older posts are reached
postsOlderThan	string	–	Skip posts published after this date
includeChannelInfo	boolean	true	Add one type: "channel" item per channel
includeTextHtml	boolean	false	Add the original formatted HTML of each post
proxyConfiguration	object	none	Usually not needed; enable Apify Proxy if you get HTTP 429

Example input:

{
  "channels": ["telegram", "https://t.me/durov"],
  "maxPostsPerChannel": 100,
  "postsNewerThan": "2026-01-01"
}

Output

Each post is one dataset item:

{
  "type": "post",
  "channel": "durov",
  "postId": 548,
  "url": "https://t.me/durov/548",
  "date": "2026-09-10T16:05:00+00:00",
  "timestamp": 1789056300,
  "text": "Telegram has become the sponsor of Codeforces — the largest competitive programming platform in the world...",
  "author": null,
  "views": 772000,
  "viewsRaw": "772K",
  "reactions": [
    { "emoji": "⭐", "customEmojiId": null, "isPaid": true, "count": 10000 },
    { "emoji": "🔥", "customEmojiId": null, "isPaid": false, "count": 18100 }
  ],
  "reactionsTotal": 38220,
  "links": [{ "url": "https://codeforces.com/blog/entry/156620", "text": "Codeforces" }],
  "linkPreview": { "url": "https://codeforces.com/...", "siteName": "Codeforces", "title": "...", "description": "...", "imageUrl": "https://cdn4.telesco.pe/file/..." },
  "imageUrls": ["https://cdn4.telesco.pe/file/..."],
  "videoUrls": [],
  "videos": [],
  "documents": [],
  "poll": null,
  "forwardedFrom": null,
  "replyTo": null,
  "isForwarded": false,
  "isReply": false,
  "isEdited": false,
  "hasMedia": true
}

Channel items ("type": "channel") contain title, username, description, photoUrl, subscribers, photosCount, videosCount, filesCount, linksCount and isVerified.

You can download the dataset in various formats such as JSON, HTML, CSV, or Excel.

Data fields

Field	Description
postId, url, date, timestamp	Post identity and publish time (UTC)
text, textHtml	Plain text (line breaks preserved) and optional original HTML
views, viewsRaw	View count as a number and as shown (772K)
reactions, reactionsTotal	Per-emoji counts, paid (star) reactions flagged, custom emoji IDs
links, linkPreview	Links inside the text and the rendered link preview card
imageUrls, videos, videoUrls, documents, audio, stickerUrl, poll	Media attached to the post (direct CDN URLs)
forwardedFrom, replyTo	Source of forwards and the quoted message for replies
author, isEdited, isServiceMessage, hasMedia	Post metadata

How much does it cost to scrape Telegram channels?

Pricing is pay per event: you pay a small amount per post and per channel-info item, nothing else. Scraping the latest 1,000 posts from a channel typically finishes in under a minute. Set Max posts per channel and date filters to control cost precisely; the Actor stops as soon as your limit or your run's maximum charge is reached.

Tips

• Telegram's preview returns about 20 posts per page, so 1,000 posts means ~50 requests. Keep maxPostsPerChannel at what you actually need.
• For daily monitoring, schedule the Actor and set postsNewerThan to the previous day; the run will stop paging as soon as it hits older posts.
• Media URLs point at Telegram's CDN and can expire after a while — download files you need promptly.
• If you scrape hundreds of channels in one run and see HTTP 429 in the log, enable Apify Proxy in Proxy configuration.

FAQ and disclaimers

Does it work for private channels or groups? No. Only public channels with the web preview enabled (https://t.me/s/<channel> must open in a browser).

Do I need a Telegram account? No. Nothing is logged in and no Telegram API credentials are used.

Is it legal? The Actor only collects publicly available data that Telegram itself serves to anyone on the web. You are responsible for how you use the data and for complying with Telegram's terms and applicable laws (e.g. GDPR when storing personal data). This is an unofficial tool and is not affiliated with Telegram.

Something is missing or broken? Telegram occasionally changes its preview markup. Please open an issue in the Issues tab with the channel name and we will fix it quickly. Custom features and integrations are available on request.