Telegram Channel Scraper: Messages, Views & Reactions

Telegram Channel Scraper extracts messages from public Telegram channels without a Telegram account, phone number, bot token or API keys. Get message text, date, view counts, reactions (including paid star reactions), photos, videos and documents, links, hashtags, mentions, replies and forwards, link previews, polls and inline buttons, plus a channel info record with title, description and full subscriber count.

It reads Telegram's public web preview (t.me/s/<channel>), so runs are fast and cheap: no browser, no login, no proxies needed. Filter by date range and keywords, or monitor channels on a schedule and get only new messages since the last run. Export to JSON, CSV or Excel, or connect via API, Make, Zapier or n8n.

Why use this Telegram scraper?

	Telegram Channel Scraper	Telegram API (Telethon, MTProto)	Copying by hand
Account, phone number or API ID needed	No	Yes, and risk of account bans	No
Views, reactions, media links, forwards	Yes	Yes	Partly
Date range and keyword filters	Yes, filtered-out messages are free	You write the code	Manual
New-messages-only monitoring	Yes, built in	You write the code	No
Full subscriber count (not just 10.5M)	Yes	Yes	Yes
Price	$0.50 per 1,000 messages, pay as you go	Free, but your time and servers	Your time

What can this Telegram channel scraper do?

• 💬 Scrape Telegram channel messages: text with line breaks, date, message ID and link, author signature, edited flag.
• 📈 Engagement data: view count and every reaction with its count, including paid ⭐ star reactions.
• 🖼️ Media links: photos, videos (with thumbnail and duration), GIFs, voice notes, audio, documents, stickers and locations. Albums are kept together as one message.
• 🔗 Links, hashtags and @mentions extracted from the text, plus the link preview card (site, title, description, image).
• ↩️ Replies and forwards: replied-to message ID and snippet, and the original channel and message of forwarded posts.
• 📊 Polls and inline buttons.
• 📇 Channel info: title, description, full subscriber count (10,468,000 rather than 10.5M), verified badge, avatar, and photo, video, link and file counters.
• 📅 Date range filter: only messages between two dates, or a relative period such as "last 7 days".
• 🔎 Keyword filter: only messages containing any (or all) of your keywords.
• 🔁 Monitoring mode: on a schedule, save only messages posted since the last run.

Who uses Telegram channel data?

• Crypto and trading analysts tracking signal channels, project announcements and sentiment.
• Journalists, OSINT and research teams archiving public news and conflict channels.
• Brand and PR teams monitoring mentions of their company, products or competitors.
• Marketers benchmarking channel growth, views and engagement before buying ads.
• AI and data teams building datasets for LLM summarization, translation, topic clustering or sentiment analysis.

How to scrape a Telegram channel

1. Click Try for free.
2. Add channels to Channels, one per line: a username (durov), an @handle (@durov) or a link (https://t.me/durov).
3. Set Max messages per channel and, optionally, a date range or keywords.
4. Click Start, then download the results from the Output tab.

Input example

{
    "channels": ["telegram", "@durov", "https://t.me/bloomberg"],
    "maxMessagesPerChannel": 200,
    "oldestDate": "30 days",
    "keywords": ["update", "launch"],
    "keywordMatch": "any",
    "includeChannelInfo": true
}

Output examples

Every record has a recordType of message or channel. The Messages and Channels views in the Output tab show them separately.

Message (shortened)

{
    "recordType": "message",
    "channel": "cointelegraph",
    "channelTitle": "Cointelegraph",
    "messageId": 72544,
    "url": "https://t.me/cointelegraph/72544",
    "date": "2026-10-08T05:11:39.000Z",
    "isEdited": true,
    "authorSignature": null,
    "text": "Today's the day for LONGITUDE Singapore 🇸🇬\n\nCatch these speakers on stage: ...",
    "views": 5690,
    "viewsText": "5.69K",
    "reactions": [
        { "emoji": "⭐", "customEmojiId": null, "isPaid": true, "count": 4 },
        { "emoji": "❤", "customEmojiId": null, "isPaid": false, "count": 19 },
        { "emoji": "🔥", "customEmojiId": null, "isPaid": false, "count": 10 }
    ],
    "reactionsTotal": 37,
    "media": [
        {
            "type": "photo",
            "url": "https://cdn5.telesco.pe/file/iNE2_DHJ...jpg",
            "thumbnailUrl": null,
            "postUrl": "https://t.me/cointelegraph/72544",
            "duration": null,
            "title": null,
            "description": null
        }
    ],
    "mediaCount": 1,
    "links": ["http://luma.com/2g8kwtyd", "https://cointelegraph.com/"],
    "hashtags": [],
    "mentions": [],
    "linkPreview": null,
    "replyTo": null,
    "forwardedFrom": null,
    "poll": null,
    "buttons": [],
    "isServiceMessage": false,
    "scrapedAt": "2026-10-08T16:50:01.112Z"
}

A forwarded message has "forwardedFrom": { "name": "Telegram Premium", "url": "https://t.me/premium/144", "channel": "premium", "messageId": 144 }, and a reply has "replyTo": { "messageId": 4405, "url": "https://t.me/tginfo/4405", "author": "Telegram Info", "text": "..." }.

Channel

{
    "recordType": "channel",
    "channel": "durov",
    "url": "https://t.me/durov",
    "title": "Pavel Durov",
    "description": "Founder of Telegram.",
    "subscribers": 10468000,
    "subscribersText": "10.5M",
    "isVerified": true,
    "avatarUrl": "https://cdn4.telesco.pe/file/...jpg",
    "counters": { "photos": 102, "videos": 46, "links": 200 },
    "latestMessageId": 548,
    "scrapedAt": "2026-10-08T16:49:58.311Z"
}

A RUN_SUMMARY record in the key-value store shows messages saved and scanned per channel, why each channel stopped, and any channel that was not found or has no public preview.

How much does it cost to scrape Telegram?

This Actor uses pay-per-event pricing. You only pay for the records you get:

Event	Price
Message saved	$0.50 per 1,000 messages ($0.0005 per message)
Channel info record saved	$1.00 per 1,000 channels ($0.001 per channel)
Actor start	$0.00005 per run

Messages skipped by your date or keyword filters are free, and there's no extra charge for compute or proxies. Set Maximum cost per run in the run options to cap spending.

Examples:

• The prefilled example (2 channels, 50 messages each): about $0.05
• 10,000 messages: $5.00
• Channel info (subscribers, description) for 1,000 channels: $1.00
• Daily monitoring of 20 channels posting ~10 messages a day: about $3 per month

Monitor Telegram channels for new messages

1. Turn on Only new messages since the last run.
2. Save the input as a task and add a schedule (for example every hour) in Apify Console.
3. Each run saves only messages newer than the newest one seen before, per channel. Runs with nothing new cost almost nothing.
4. Connect Slack, Google Sheets, a webhook or Make/Zapier/n8n to receive new messages automatically.

Use a different Monitoring state store name for each task so their positions don't mix. Combine with Keywords to get alerts only for messages that mention your brand, ticker or topic.

Use it with AI agents (MCP) and the API

Add this Actor as a tool in Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, VS Code or any other MCP client through the Apify MCP server:

https://mcp.apify.com?tools=magenta_waterwheel/telegram-channel-scraper

Then just ask, for example: "Get the last 100 messages from @durov and @telegram and summarize what was announced this month." The Actor runs with limited permissions, so it can only access its own run storage.

To get results in a single HTTP request, call the synchronous endpoint with your Apify API token:

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/magenta_waterwheel~telegram-channel-scraper/run-sync-get-dataset-items" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"channels":["durov"],"maxMessagesPerChannel":50,"includeChannelInfo":false}'

You can also use the official Python and JavaScript clients, or the ready-made code on the API tab.

Integrations and scheduling

• ⏰ Schedule runs hourly, daily or weekly in Apify Console, with no server to maintain.
• 🔗 Send results anywhere: Google Sheets, Slack, Google Drive, Airbyte, webhooks, or no-code tools such as Make, Zapier and n8n.
• 📤 Export the dataset as JSON, CSV, Excel, XML, RSS or HTML.
• 📈 Monitoring: get notified if a run fails, and see every run's log and cost in Console.

FAQ

Do I need a Telegram account, phone number or API key?

No. The Actor reads the public web preview that Telegram shows for every public channel at t.me/s/<channel>. Nothing is logged in, and your own Telegram account is never at risk.

Is there a free trial?

Yes. Apify's Free plan includes $5 of usage credit every month, enough for about 10,000 messages with this Actor. No credit card is needed to start.

Which channels can I scrape?

Any public channel with a web preview, which is almost all public channels. Private channels, invite links (t.me/+...), groups and bots can't be read without logging in. The Actor lists them in RUN_SUMMARY as not found or without a public preview, and the rest of the run continues.

How far back can I go?

As far back as the channel's history goes. The Actor pages backwards about 20 messages at a time. For keyword or date searches, Max pages without matches per channel (default 50 pages, about 1,000 skipped messages) is a safety limit you can raise.

Can I get forward counts or comments?

Telegram's public web preview shows views and reactions, but not forward counts or the comments thread, so those fields aren't available without logging in.

Are view counts exact?

Telegram shows large view counts rounded (for example 1.74M). views is the number as shown and viewsText is the original text. The channel record's subscribers comes from the channel page, which shows the full number (for example 10,468,000 instead of 10.5M).

Does it download the media files?

It returns direct links to photos, video files and thumbnails as Telegram serves them. Telegram's media links can expire after a while, so download files you need soon after the run. Very large videos only have a link to the post.

Is it legal to scrape Telegram?

The Actor only reads publicly available channel posts that anyone can see in a browser without logging in. Messages can contain personal data and copyrighted media, so make sure your use complies with applicable laws, such as GDPR, and with Telegram's terms.

I found a bug or need a feature

Open an issue in the Issues tab with a link to your run. We aim to reply within one business day.

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