Telegram Channel & Group Scraper

Scrapes public Telegram channels and groups for messages, media links, view counts, and channel metadata. No API key or login needed — uses the t.me web preview.

What data does it extract?

Field	Description
channel	Channel username (e.g. durov)
channelTitle	Display name of the channel
channelMembers	Number of subscribers/members
channelDescription	Channel bio/description text
messageId	Numeric message ID
date	ISO 8601 timestamp of the message
text	Full message text
views	View count on the message
mediaType	Type of attached media: photo, video, document, or voice
mediaUrl	Direct URL to the media file
forwardedFrom	Original channel name if the message was forwarded
author	Author name (relevant for group chats)
replyTo	First 100 chars of the message being replied to
url	Direct link to the message (e.g. https://t.me/durov/123)
scrapedAt	ISO 8601 timestamp when the data was collected

Use cases

• Competitor monitoring — Track what competing brands or industry channels post about weekly
• Crypto/finance research — Collect posts from trading signal channels to analyze accuracy over time
• Media monitoring — Pull messages from news channels in specific regions or languages
• Academic research — Gather public discourse data from political or social channels
• Influencer analytics — Measure view counts and posting frequency across multiple channels

How to use

Scrape the last 50 messages from two channels:

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

Get messages from a specific date range:

{
    "channels": ["bbcnews"],
    "maxMessages": 200,
    "dateFrom": "2025-01-01",
    "dateTo": "2025-01-31"
}

Input parameters

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
channels	array	[]	List of channel URLs or usernames. Accepts https://t.me/channel, @channel, or just channel
maxMessages	integer	100	Max messages to scrape per channel. Set 0 for all available
includeMedia	boolean	true	Extract URLs for photos, videos, documents, and voice messages
dateFrom	string	—	Only get messages after this date (YYYY-MM-DD)
dateTo	string	—	Only get messages before this date (YYYY-MM-DD)

Output example

{
    "channel": "durov",
    "channelTitle": "Durov's Channel",
    "channelMembers": 1245000,
    "channelDescription": "Official channel of Pavel Durov",
    "messageId": 312,
    "date": "2025-03-15T14:22:00+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": "2025-03-28T10:15:33.421Z"
}

Performance & cost

• Scrapes about 100 messages per channel in under 30 seconds
• Uses pure HTTP requests (Cheerio), no browser needed — very low compute cost
• Billed per 100 messages scraped (one charge event per batch)

FAQ

Does this work with private channels? No. It only scrapes channels that have a public web preview at t.me/s/channelname. Private or restricted channels won't return data.

Can I scrape group chats? Yes, as long as the group has a public preview enabled. The author field will show who posted each message.

Why are some messages missing media URLs? Telegram's web preview doesn't always expose direct media links, especially for videos. The mediaType will still indicate what type of media was attached.

Is there a limit on how far back I can go? The scraper paginates backwards through the channel's history, but Telegram's web preview typically caps at around 1,000-2,000 older messages depending on the channel.