Telegram Channel Scraper & Monitor - Public Posts

This Telegram channel scraper reads the public web preview of Telegram channels (t.me/s/<channel>) and returns every message as clean, structured data: text, formatted HTML, date, views, reactions, forwards, replies, polls, link previews, links, hashtags, mentions and media metadata. It walks the complete channel history back to the first message, can jump to any date range, and has an incremental monitor mode that returns only new messages on every scheduled run.

No Telegram account, phone number, API key or login is needed. Only public channels are supported: private channels, invite links, groups without a public preview and user profiles are skipped (and never charged).

Typical uses: news and crypto monitoring, brand and competitor tracking, OSINT and research datasets, trend analysis, feeding alerts and AI pipelines through webhooks.

Not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by Telegram. See Legal.

What you can do

Scrape public Telegram channel messages

Give it channel usernames or links (hundreds per run). You get the newest maxMessages per channel, or the whole archive.

Backfill a date range

Set dateFrom / dateTo (2026-09-01, ISO timestamps, or 7 days). The Actor jumps straight to the end of the window with a binary search (a handful of requests) instead of walking from today, so old ranges of huge channels stay cheap.

Monitor channels with incremental runs

Turn on incremental and schedule the Actor. It stores the last message id seen for every channel in a named key-value store and each run returns only newer messages, oldest first. If more new messages are waiting than maxMessages, the next run continues exactly where the previous one stopped, with no gaps and no duplicates.

Filter by keyword or regex

includeKeywords, excludeKeywords, includeRegex, excludeRegex are applied while paginating, and you only pay for the messages that pass.

Input

Field	Type	Description
channels	string list	Usernames or links: telegram, @durov, https://t.me/bbcrussian, https://t.me/s/contest. Required.
maxMessages	integer	Max messages per channel, newest first (default 100). Free plan: 10.
dateFrom, dateTo	string	Date window. 2026-09-01, ISO timestamp, or relative (7 days, 2 weeks). A date without time means the whole day in UTC.
incremental	boolean	Return only messages newer than the last run (state kept per channel).
stateStoreName	string	Named key-value store for the incremental pointers (default telegram-channel-scraper-state). Use one name per monitoring job.
includeKeywords / excludeKeywords	string list	Case-insensitive words or phrases. Exclusion wins.
includeRegex / excludeRegex	string	JavaScript regular expressions (case-insensitive).
extractLinks	boolean	Add links, mentions, hashtags (default on).
includeHtml	boolean	Keep formatted HTML next to plain text (default on).
includeServiceMessages	boolean	Also return "pinned a message" style system messages (default off).
maxConcurrency	integer	Channels scraped in parallel (default 5).
maxPagesPerChannel	integer	Safety cap on pages (20 messages each) when filters match rarely (default 1000).
proxyConfiguration	object	Optional. Not needed in normal use; if enabled the Actor rotates the proxy session after a rate limit.

Output

One dataset row per message. Real example (trimmed image URL), from t.me/durov:

{
  "channel": "durov",
  "channelTitle": "Pavel Durov",
  "channelSubscribers": 10400000,
  "messageId": 525,
  "url": "https://t.me/durov/525",
  "date": "2026-06-12T19:15:19.000Z",
  "text": "🔄 Telegram’s new update is out. Lots of great new features.\n\n😂 But most importantly: the announcement is actually fun to read.",
  "views": 16500000,
  "reactions": [
    { "emoji": "⭐", "count": 4450, "paid": true },
    { "emoji": null, "count": 20000, "customEmojiId": "5265077361648368841" }
  ],
  "reactionsTotal": 40098,
  "forwardedFrom": null,
  "replyTo": null,
  "author": "Pavel Durov",
  "edited": false,
  "linkPreview": {
    "url": "https://telegram.org/blog/watch-apps-and-more",
    "siteName": "Telegram",
    "title": "Smartwatch Apps, Rich Text for Bots, AI Guardians for Groups, and Much More",
    "description": "Today’s update brings Telegram to Apple Watch and Android smartwatches, adds filthy rich text for bots, ...",
    "imageUrl": "https://cdn4.telesco.pe/file/..."
  },
  "media": [],
  "mediaTypes": [],
  "poll": null,
  "links": ["https://telegram.org/blog/watch-apps-and-more"],
  "mentions": [],
  "hashtags": [],
  "html": "🔄 Telegram’s <a href=\"https://telegram.org/blog/watch-apps-and-more\">new update</a> is out. ...",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-10-14T01:49:51.269Z"
}

Other fields you will see depending on the message:

• forwardedFrom: { name, url, author } for forwarded posts.
• replyTo: { messageId, url, author, text } for replies.
• media: list of { type, url, thumbnailUrl, duration, ... } with type of photo, video, round_video, voice, audio, document, sticker or location. Media is never downloaded; URLs are Telegram CDN links, and video/voice links are signed and expire after a while.
• poll: { question, type, options: [{ text, percent }], voters } when the poll is visible.
• buttons: inline buttons under the post, { text, url }.
• reactions[].customEmojiId appears when the reaction is a custom (premium) emoji whose character the public preview does not expose; paid: true marks Telegram Stars reactions.

A per-channel run summary (status, messages, pages read, incremental pointers) is saved in the SUMMARY record of the run's key-value store.

Pricing

Pay per message returned. You are never charged for channels that fail, are private, do not exist or return nothing, and not for the Actor start.

Apify plan	Price per 1,000 messages
Free / Bronze	$1.00
Silver	$0.80
Gold and above	$0.50

Billing is per message event: USD 0.001 / 0.0008 / 0.0005 per message returned.

The Actor respects the maximum cost per run you set: it stops cleanly when the next message would exceed it.

Free plan limits: up to 10 messages per channel and 10 channels per run, so you can test the output on real channels. Paid plans have no cap.

Speed and platform cost. In our tests from a datacenter IP (GitHub runner) the Actor read 2,426 messages from 3 channels in 19 seconds with 128 requests, no rate limiting and no retries (1,000 messages from a single channel take roughly 15 to 20 seconds). Telegram's preview returned 20 messages per page of about 130 KB. A small run on Apify (30 messages, 3 channels, 2 GB) used USD 0.0006 of platform usage, which extrapolates to about USD 0.02 per 1,000 messages including start-up overhead (extrapolated from a small run; large runs are cheaper per message).

FAQ

Does it work for private channels or groups? No. Only channels that have a public web preview at t.me/s/<name> work. Anything else is reported in the summary as not_found, preview_disabled, not_a_channel, restricted or invalid, and costs nothing.

How far back can it go? To the first message of the channel. The preview exposes the full history; the Actor pages backwards with ?before=<id>.

Does incremental mode lose messages if a run fails? No. The pointer is saved only after a channel was read successfully, and when a run is cut short by maxMessages or by your maximum cost, it continues from the last message it actually returned.

Where is the incremental state stored, and how do I reset it? In the named key-value store telegram-channel-scraper-state (or the name you set in stateStoreName), one record per channel (last_<username>). Delete a record, or use a new store name, to start over from the latest messages.

What about deleted or edited messages? Deleted messages are not shown by Telegram. Edited messages carry edited: true and show their current text.

Why is a reaction emoji null? Custom emoji reactions are rendered by Telegram as animated stickers without a character; we return their customEmojiId and count.

Which channels were used to test it? Large public channels such as telegram, durov, contest, tginfo, bbcrussian, rian_ru and tass_agency, including full-archive walks.

It says 429 or rate limited. The Actor backs off automatically (honouring Retry-After) and slows every worker down. If it keeps happening, lower maxConcurrency or enable the proxy option.

Can I get the messages of a group or the comments of a post? No, this Actor only reads channel posts.

Limitations

• Public channels only; no login, no private content, no phone-number lookups, no user profile scraping beyond what a public post shows (author signature, forwarded-from name).
• Channels that disabled the web preview, or that Telegram restricts for age or copyright reasons, return nothing.
• View, reaction and poll numbers are the values shown at scraping time and change later.
• Telegram may change its preview markup; the parser is covered by tests on real saved pages and the Actor is smoke-tested daily.

Legal and responsible use

This Actor is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by Telegram. It reads only information that Telegram publishes openly on public web pages, without logging in. Messages can contain personal data. You are responsible for using the data lawfully, including GDPR and similar privacy laws, copyright, and Telegram's terms. Do not use it to harass, profile private individuals or collect data you have no lawful basis to process.

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En español

Telegram Channel Scraper & Monitor lee la vista previa web pública de los canales de Telegram (t.me/s/<canal>) y devuelve cada mensaje como dato estructurado: texto, HTML, fecha, vistas, reacciones, reenvíos, respuestas, encuestas, enlaces, hashtags, menciones y metadatos de multimedia (sin descargar archivos).

• Solo canales públicos. No hace falta cuenta, teléfono ni API de Telegram. Los canales privados, enlaces de invitación y canales sin vista previa se omiten y no se cobran.
• Historial completo hasta el primer mensaje, rango de fechas (dateFrom / dateTo) y modo incremental para monitorear: en cada ejecución programada devuelve solo los mensajes nuevos, guardando el último id por canal en un almacén con nombre.
• Filtros por palabras clave y expresiones regulares, y hasta cientos de canales por ejecución.
• Precio: USD 1,00 por cada 1.000 mensajes (Silver 0,80, Gold o superior 0,50). Plan gratis: 10 mensajes por canal y 10 canales por ejecución.
• Aviso legal: no está afiliado a Telegram ni cuenta con su respaldo. Los mensajes pueden contener datos personales; el usuario es responsable de usarlos conforme a la ley (por ejemplo GDPR y la ley argentina de protección de datos personales).