Telegram Channel & Group Scraper — Public Messages, Views & Media API

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A fast, lightweight Telegram channel scraper that extracts messages, view counts, media URLs (photos, videos, documents, voice notes), forward attributions, reply threads, channel descriptions and member counts from any public Telegram channel or group. No Telegram account, no MTProto, no bot token, no phone-number SMS login. Just pass a list of usernames (durov, telegram, bbcnews) or t.me URLs and get back structured JSON ready to drop into Postgres, Elasticsearch, BigQuery or your SIEM.

Built for OSINT investigators, crypto-signal researchers, news and media-monitoring teams, brand-safety vendors, academic researchers studying political discourse, and growth teams tracking competitor Telegram channels. Uses raw HTTP requests against the public t.me/s/<channel> web preview — so it's an order of magnitude cheaper and more stable than solutions that maintain a persistent Telegram session.

✨ Why use this scraper

Given a list of public channel or group identifiers — full URLs like https://t.me/durov, the preview variant https://t.me/s/telegram, @username handles or plain usernames — this scraper fetches each channel's public web preview, paginates backward through message history using the Telegram ?before=<id> cursor, parses each message block with Cheerio and emits one dataset item per message.

Because it uses pure HTTP requests (no headless browser, no Puppeteer, no Playwright, no MTProto sessions) a run of 100 messages on one channel finishes in roughly 20 seconds and costs a fraction of a cent. The scraper is also safe from the account-ban risk that comes with Telegram API clients — it never authenticates, it never touches the MTProto protocol, it only reads what the public web preview exposes.

Telegram exposes three ways to read channel data:

1. Bot API — requires adding your bot as an administrator of the channel. Useless for scraping public channels you don't own.
2. MTProto (via tdlib, telethon, gramjs) — needs a phone number, an app ID, an api_hash and a persistent session file. Telegram periodically flags or bans accounts that scrape aggressively, and rebuilding a session is painful.
3. t.me web preview (what this actor uses) — the public page at https://t.me/s/<channel> that renders recent messages without any login. No account risk. No rate-limit games with Telegram's core protocol.

For OSINT, media-monitoring and competitive-intelligence workflows, option 3 is usually the right trade-off: you give up access to private channels, but you gain stability, repeatability and zero account-ban risk. This actor is a production-ready wrapper around option 3.

📤 Output fields

One item per message. Flat JSON that maps 1:1 to a SQL column layout, so it drops straight into Postgres, Snowflake, BigQuery or ClickHouse.

Channel metadata

Field	Type	Description
channel	string	Channel username slug, e.g. durov
channelTitle	string	Display name as shown in the Telegram header
channelMembers	integer	Subscriber / member count (parsed from strings like "1.2M subscribers")
channelDescription	string	Channel bio text from the info panel

Message fields

Field	Type	Description
messageId	integer	Numeric message ID within the channel
date	string	ISO 8601 timestamp of the message
text	string	Full message body (plain text, HTML stripped)
views	integer	View count (Telegram aggregates are parsed from "4.8M" / "120K" notation)
url	string	Canonical link https://t.me/<channel>/<messageId>

Media attachments (enabled when includeMedia=true)

Field	Type	Description
mediaType	string	photo, video, document or voice — null if no media
mediaUrl	string	Direct URL to the media asset when Telegram exposes it

Thread and social context

Field	Type	Description
forwardedFrom	string	Name of the original channel when the message was forwarded
author	string	Author name — relevant in group chats where multiple users post
replyTo	string	First 100 characters of the message being replied to

Run metadata

Field	Type	Description
scrapedAt	string	ISO 8601 timestamp of when the message was extracted

🎯 Use cases

• Crypto signal research — pull every post from a list of trading-signal channels, parse the ticker and direction, backtest the signal accuracy over weeks and months. Quantify whether the "pro" signal channels beat buy-and-hold.
• OSINT and threat intelligence — monitor public channels run by threat actors, scam operations or extremist groups. Feed messages into an IOC extraction pipeline or Maltego investigation.
• News media monitoring — aggregate posts from regional news channels (Russia-Ukraine coverage, Brazilian politics, Iranian protest channels). Many newsrooms treat Telegram as primary-source social media.
• Brand safety — check whether ads or affiliate links attributed to your brand show up on disinformation or pirate-content channels.
• Competitive intelligence — many B2B and consumer brands post product news on Telegram before blog posts. Track what competitors announce, when, and with what engagement.
• Influencer analytics — measure view counts, posting cadence and forward ratios across lifestyle, fashion or tech Telegram creators.
• Academic research — reproducible Telegram datasets for studies on platform moderation, political discourse, misinformation networks and social movements.
• Training data for LLMs and classifiers — public Telegram posts in underrepresented languages are valuable for small-model fine-tuning.

🚀 How to use

Mode 1 — scrape the last N messages from a public channel

{
    "channels": ["durov", "https://t.me/s/telegram"],
    "maxMessages": 50,
    "includeMedia": true
}

Mode 2 — scrape a specific date range

Pass dateFrom / dateTo in YYYY-MM-DD format. The scraper paginates backward until it hits dateFrom.

{
    "channels": ["bbcnews"],
    "maxMessages": 500,
    "dateFrom": "2026-01-01",
    "dateTo": "2026-01-31"
}

Mode 3 — scrape everything the public preview exposes

Set maxMessages to 0 for unlimited. Telegram's web preview typically caps at around 1,000–2,000 older messages per channel, so in practice this still terminates naturally.

{
    "channels": ["my_niche_channel"],
    "maxMessages": 0,
    "includeMedia": true
}

Mode 4 — monitor a portfolio of channels

Drop a list of 20–50 channels. Each channel runs sequentially with a 1.5-second pause between pagination hits to stay friendly with Telegram's infrastructure.

{
    "channels": [
        "durov", "telegram", "bbcnews", "durov_russia",
        "cryptosignals_official", "tradingview_en"
    ],
    "maxMessages": 100,
    "includeMedia": true
}

📥 Input

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
channels	array	—	Channel/group URLs or usernames. Accepts https://t.me/x, https://t.me/s/x, @x or x
maxMessages	integer	100	Max messages per channel (1–10000). Set 0 for unlimited
includeMedia	boolean	true	Extract media URLs for photos, videos, documents and voice notes
dateFrom	string	—	Only include messages after this date (YYYY-MM-DD)
dateTo	string	—	Only include messages before this date (YYYY-MM-DD)

📋 Output example

{
    "channel": "durov",
    "channelTitle": "Du Rove's Channel",
    "channelMembers": 1245000,
    "channelDescription": "Pavel Durov, founder of Telegram.",
    "messageId": 312,
    "date": "2026-03-15T14:22:00+00:00",
    "text": "We just crossed 950 million monthly active users. The next milestone is coming soon.",
    "views": 4820000,
    "mediaType": "photo",
    "mediaUrl": "https://cdn4.telegram-cdn.org/file/abc123.jpg",
    "forwardedFrom": null,
    "author": null,
    "replyTo": null,
    "url": "https://t.me/durov/312",
    "scrapedAt": "2026-04-22T10:15:33.421Z"
}

Export the full dataset as CSV, Excel, XML, JSONL or HTML table directly from the Apify console, or programmatically via the Apify API.

💻 Code examples

curl

curl -X POST 'https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/makework36~telegram-channel-scraper/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=YOUR_TOKEN' \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{
    "channels": ["durov", "telegram"],
    "maxMessages": 100,
    "includeMedia": true
  }'

Python (apify-client)

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN")
run = client.actor("makework36/telegram-channel-scraper").call(run_input={
    "channels": ["bbcnews", "reuters"],
    "maxMessages": 200,
    "dateFrom": "2026-01-01",
    "dateTo": "2026-03-31",
    "includeMedia": True,
})
for msg in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(msg["channel"], msg["date"], msg["views"], msg["text"][:80])

Node.js (apify-client)

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: 'YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN' });

const run = await client.actor('makework36/telegram-channel-scraper').call({
  channels: ['durov', 'telegram'],
  maxMessages: 50,
  includeMedia: true,
});

const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.table(items.map((m) => ({ ch: m.channel, id: m.messageId, views: m.views })));

Export to CSV

From the console run page → Export → CSV. Or directly via API:

https://api.apify.com/v2/datasets/DATASET_ID/items?format=csv&token=YOUR_TOKEN

Pipe messages into Elasticsearch

from apify_client import ApifyClient
from elasticsearch import Elasticsearch, helpers

client = ApifyClient("YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN")
es = Elasticsearch("http://localhost:9200")

run = client.actor("makework36/telegram-channel-scraper").call(run_input={
    "channels": ["my_monitoring_list"], "maxMessages": 1000,
})
docs = list(client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items())
helpers.bulk(es, ({"_index": "telegram", "_source": d} for d in docs))

⚡ Performance

• ~20 seconds per 100 messages — pure HTTP, no browser overhead
• 1,000–2,000 message depth per channel — capped by what Telegram's public web preview exposes
• 128 MB Apify memory tier is enough — runs cheap
• Billed per batch of 100 messages — predictable per-item pricing
• Built-in 1.5-second delay between pagination hits to avoid hammering Telegram's servers

📊 Comparison

A few Telegram scrapers live on the Apify Store. Here's how this one compares on the criteria that matter for OSINT and monitoring pipelines.

Feature	This scraper	Alternative A	Alternative B	Alternative C
Authentication required	None (public preview)	MTProto (phone + API ID)	Bot API (channel admin required)	None
Account-ban risk	Zero	High	None	Zero
Scraping engine	Pure HTTP + Cheerio	MTProto session	HTTPS via Bot API	Browser
Media URL extraction	Yes (photo, video, doc, voice)	Yes (all)	Only for own channels	Partial
Forwarded-from detection	Yes	Yes	Yes	Partial
Reply context	Yes (first 100 chars)	Yes	Yes	No
Date-range filter	Yes (dateFrom / dateTo)	Yes	No	Partial
Max historical depth	~1–2K messages (Telegram cap)	Unlimited	Channel admin	~1–2K
Multi-channel per run	Yes (array)	Yes	Yes	Single only
Export formats	JSON / CSV / Excel / XML	JSON	JSON	JSON / CSV
Code examples in README	Python / Node / curl / Elastic	None	None	None

The honest take: if you need every message ever posted in a channel and you're comfortable managing MTProto sessions and ban risk, an MTProto-based scraper reaches deeper. For everything else — monitoring, research, brand safety, news aggregation — the public web preview approach is more predictable and much cheaper.

💵 Pricing

Pay-per-result model:

Plan	Price per 100 messages	Example: 1K msgs	Example: 10K msgs	Example: 100K msgs
FREE trial	$0 (up to $5 credit)	free	N/A	N/A
BRONZE	$0.50	$5	$50	$500
SILVER	$0.40	$4	$40	$400
GOLD	$0.30	$3	$30	$300
DIAMOND	$0.20	$2	$20	$200

Apify gives every new user a $5 trial credit — enough to scrape ~1,000 Telegram messages to evaluate. No subscription, no minimums, no egress fees.

❓ FAQ

Do I need a Telegram account or bot? No. This scraper reads the public web preview at t.me/s/channel — the same page any browser visitor sees. No phone number, no bot, no admin permissions.

Does it work on private or restricted channels? No. Only channels with the public preview enabled are scrapable. If the channel owner disabled the web preview, the page redirects and the scraper returns nothing.

Can I scrape group chats? Yes, provided the group has a public preview enabled. The author field populates with each poster's display name.

Can I scrape messages older than a year? Usually yes up to the Telegram web-preview cap (~1K–2K messages). Beyond that, schedule the actor repeatedly — new scrapes will surface messages the previous ones didn't reach.

Is scraping Telegram legal? This actor only reads data Telegram itself renders to any anonymous browser. Review Telegram's Terms of Service and your local data-protection laws (GDPR, CCPA, LGPD). We do not bypass access controls.

How is this different from using telethon or tdlib directly? Those are MTProto clients that log in as a user and can read anything the user sees — including private chats. They also carry ban risk and session-management overhead. This actor trades reach for stability by reading only public previews.

Can I get message reactions or poll results? Not in v1. The public preview shows views and text but hides reactions and poll votes. Drop a request on the issues tab and we'll prioritize.

Can I download media files? The actor returns mediaUrl links when Telegram exposes them. Downloading the actual bytes is outside the actor's scope — pipe the URLs through your own HTTP downloader or a second Apify actor.

What language are messages returned in? The message text itself is in whatever language the channel posts. There's no translation — pipe the output through an LLM or DeepL for normalization.

📝 Changelog

• v1.0 (2026-04-22) — Full SEO rewrite, pricing tiers, comparison table, Python/Node/curl/Elastic examples, tutorial, advanced patterns.
• v0.3 (2026-02-15) — Reply-thread extraction and forward attribution.
• v0.2 (2026-01-10) — Media URL support (photos, videos, documents, voice notes).
• v0.1 (2025-12-05) — Initial release — public channel and group scraping with Cheerio.

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