Telegram Channel Scraper – Posts, Views & Media

Telegram Channel Scraper: scrape public Telegram channel messages without login

Scrape posts from any public Telegram channel. No login, no API keys, no phone number. Get the text, view counts, reactions, links, forwards, replies, and photo and video URLs as clean JSON, CSV, or Excel. You can filter by date range or keyword. Monitoring mode returns only posts that are new since your last run, so it suits scheduled alerts, dashboards, and AI agents.

The Actor reads only Telegram's own public web preview (https://t.me/s/<channel>), the page anyone can open in a browser without an account.

What can this Telegram scraper do?

• Crypto and trading signals. Track announcement channels for projects, exchanges, whale alerts and news (e.g. whale_alert_io, cointelegraph). Schedule it every 5–15 minutes with only new posts and pipe the results into a webhook, Slack, or your trading bot.
• OSINT and research. Archive public channels from news outlets, governments, and public figures, with exact timestamps and permalinks. Track narratives by keyword across dozens of channels.
• Brand and competitor monitoring. Watch channels for mentions of your brand, product, ticker, or competitors with the keywords filter.
• Media and engagement analytics. Compare views and reactions per post, posting frequency, and forwarding patterns across channels.
• AI agents, RAG, and LLM pipelines. Feed fresh channel content into vector stores, summarizers, or agents. The output is flat, typed JSON with stable post URLs. It works with the Apify MCP server, the API, LangChain, n8n, Make, and Zapier.
• Dataset building. Collect historical posts by paging back as far as the channel's public history goes.

Telegram channel scraper features

• ✅ Usernames, @handles, t.me/name, t.me/s/name and telegram.me links all work
• ✅ Automatic pagination back through the channel history
• ✅ dateFrom / dateTo filters (scraping stops as soon as it passes dateFrom, so you don't pay for pages you don't need)
• ✅ Case-insensitive keyword filter over the post text and links
• ✅ Only new posts monitoring mode, which remembers the last post per channel between runs
• ✅ Views parsed to numbers (6.15M → 6150000), reactions including paid ⭐ Stars and custom emoji
• ✅ Forward source, reply-to info, edited flag, author signature, hashtags, mentions, and link previews
• ✅ Media: photos, videos, GIFs, round videos, voice, documents and audio, stickers, polls, and locations
• ✅ Polite rate limiting and retries. One bad channel never fails the whole run (see RUN_SUMMARY)
• ✅ Pay only for the results you get

How to scrape a Telegram channel

1. Open the Actor and add one or more public channels: usernames like durov, @telegram, or links like https://t.me/cointelegraph.
2. Optionally set max posts per channel, a date range, or keywords.
3. Click Start. Posts appear in the dataset as they're scraped.
4. Download the results as JSON, CSV, Excel or HTML, or fetch them through the Apify API.
5. To get alerts, turn on Only new posts, add a schedule, and connect a webhook or an integration (Slack, Zapier, Make, n8n).

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
channels	array	–	Required. Channel usernames or links, e.g. durov, @telegram, https://t.me/cointelegraph
maxPostsPerChannel	integer	100	The most posts to save per channel (after filters)
dateFrom	string	–	Oldest post date to include (YYYY-MM-DD or ISO datetime, UTC)
dateTo	string	–	Newest post date to include. A plain date includes that whole day (UTC)
keywords	array	–	Keep only posts that contain at least one keyword (case-insensitive)
includeMedia	boolean	true	Include media URLs. Media types are always included
onlyNewPosts	boolean	false	Monitoring mode: return only posts newer than the previous run
stateStoreName	string	telegram-channel-scraper-state	Named key-value store for the monitoring state. Use a different name for each separate monitor
resetMonitoringState	boolean	false	Forget the saved state for the given channels before scraping
maxPagesPerChannel	integer	500	Safety cap. Each page holds about 20 posts
requestDelaySecs	number	1.5	Delay between requests
maxRetries	integer	4	Retries for 429 and 5xx responses
proxyConfiguration	object	none	Optional Apify Proxy, for very large runs

Example input

{
  "channels": ["durov", "https://t.me/cointelegraph", "@whale_alert_io"],
  "maxPostsPerChannel": 200,
  "dateFrom": "2026-11-01",
  "keywords": ["bitcoin", "btc"],
  "includeMedia": true,
  "onlyNewPosts": false
}

Monitoring example. Schedule this every 15 minutes. The first run returns the latest 50 posts, and each later run returns only new ones:

{ "channels": ["whale_alert_io", "cointelegraph"], "maxPostsPerChannel": 50, "onlyNewPosts": true, "stateStoreName": "crypto-monitor" }

Output

Each dataset item is one post. Example (trimmed):

{
  "channel": "durov",
  "channelTitle": "Pavel Durov",
  "channelSubscribers": 10000000,
  "postId": 554,
  "url": "https://t.me/durov/554",
  "datetime": "2026-11-10T12:59:06+00:00",
  "text": "Any Telegram message can now become an app. ...",
  "views": 993000,
  "authorSignature": "Pavel Durov",
  "isForwarded": false,
  "forwardedFrom": null,
  "isReply": false,
  "replyTo": null,
  "isEdited": false,
  "links": ["https://t.me/BotNews/122"],
  "linkPreview": null,
  "hashtags": [],
  "mentions": [],
  "media": [{ "type": "video", "url": "https://cdn4.telesco.pe/file/...mp4?token=...", "thumbnailUrl": "https://cdn4.telesco.pe/file/...", "postUrl": "https://t.me/durov/554" }],
  "mediaTypes": ["video"],
  "reactions": [
    { "emoji": "⭐", "customEmojiId": null, "isPaidStars": true, "count": 4870 },
    { "emoji": null, "customEmojiId": "5399847211989246390", "isPaidStars": false, "count": 13900 }
  ],
  "scrapedAt": "2026-11-11T18:30:09+00:00"
}

You can export the dataset as JSON, CSV, Excel, XML, or HTML, or read it through the Apify API. The Console offers three ready views: Overview, Engagement, and Links & media.

The run also writes a RUN_SUMMARY record to the default key-value store, with each channel's status (ok, preview_disabled, group, user_or_bot, not_found, invalid_input, charge_limit_reached), posts saved and scanned, pages, and newest post id.

How much does it cost to scrape Telegram?

Pay per event, with no monthly fee:

Event	Price
Channel with results (once per channel per run, only if it yields at least one new post)	$0.002
Post saved	$0.0015 ($1.50 per 1,000 posts)

Examples:

• 1 channel × 100 posts = $0.152
• 10 channels × 1,000 posts = $15.02
• A monitor on 5 channels every 15 minutes, with about 30 new posts a day: runs with no new posts cost nothing per channel, so the total is at most about 30 × ($0.002 + $0.0015) = about $0.11/day

Filtered-out posts, channels with no new or matching posts, and failed channels are not charged. A monitoring run that finds nothing new charges no events. Set a maximum cost per run in the run options and the Actor stops cleanly when it reaches it.

Limits and good to know

• Public channels only. Private channels, invite links (t.me/+...), groups and chats, comments, and member lists are not supported. This is by design.
• Some channel owners disable the web preview (e.g. coindesk). These channels are reported as preview_disabled and are not charged for posts.
• Media URLs come from Telegram's CDN and are temporary. Download the files soon after the run if you need them.
• Telegram serves about 20 posts per page. Very deep history takes longer, at about 1.5 s per page by default.
• Views on very new posts can change. Some posts (for example service messages) have no view count, so views is null.
• Dates are in UTC.

Is it legal to scrape Telegram?

This Actor collects only information that Telegram publishes openly on the web at t.me/s/, which needs no account and is visible to anyone. It doesn't log in, bypass access controls, or collect private messages or member lists. Posts can still contain personal data, so make sure your use complies with the GDPR and other privacy laws, Telegram's Terms of Service, and copyright law. If you're unsure, consult a lawyer. Read more in Apify's post Is web scraping legal?

FAQ

Do I need a Telegram account or API ID? No.

Can I get every post ever? You can page back through the public history up to maxPagesPerChannel. Use dateFrom to limit it.

How do I get alerts? Turn on onlyNewPosts, schedule the Actor, and add a webhook or an integration (Slack, email, Zapier, Make, n8n) on the Run succeeded event.

Can AI agents use this? Yes. It works through the Apify MCP server and the Apify API, so agents can call it with a channel name and get structured posts back.

Is there a Telegram API alternative without a phone number? Yes. This Actor needs no Telegram account, API ID or phone number. It reads the public web preview that anyone can open.

Can it scrape Telegram groups or member lists? No. Only public channels are supported, by design. Private groups, chats and member lists need a logged-in account.

Does it download photos and videos? It returns direct media URLs. They're temporary, so download the files soon after the run.

Can I use it from Python or JavaScript? Yes. Call it with the Apify API client for Python or JavaScript, or plain HTTP, then read the dataset.

I found a bug or need a field. Open an issue on the Issues tab. Fixes usually ship quickly.

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