Telegram Channel Scraper — Posts, Views, Video Transcripts

Name a public Telegram channel and get its posts as rows, newest first: when each post was published, how many views it has, the full text, the links in it, what media it carries, who it was forwarded from and which post it replies to. No login, no Telegram account, no phone number. Run it on a schedule and it returns only the posts that are new since your last run — posts your account already has are skipped and never charged twice. Turn on transcripts and every voice note, round video and short video clip Telegram shows publicly comes back as text too. Click Start with nothing set and you get a sample: 5 posts from Telegram's own public channel, read live, and nothing is charged for it.

Using an AI agent? Pin this actor in Apify's MCP server with one link: https://mcp.apify.com?tools=steadyfetch/telegram-channel-scraper

• Actor id: steadyfetch/telegram-channel-scraper
• Input: { "channels": ["https://t.me/telegram"] } — the one field you have to set: public channel links, @names or plain names. Add "maxPosts": 100 for the per-channel limit and "transcribe": true for transcripts.
• Public channels only: a private chat, an invite link, or a channel whose owner turned the web preview off has no public page to read — each comes back as one row that costs nothing and says which it is.
• Cap the bill: set maxTotalChargeUsd on the run (a run option, not Actor input), e.g. 1.00 — the run stops when it reaches it.
• Price: from $0.50 per 1,000 posts on Gold and above, $0.80 per 1,000 on the Apify free plan; transcripts $0.007 per started minute; a channel read with nothing new is one $0.002 channel check. Full table below.
• How often it changes: news channels post every few minutes, most channels a few times a day, and view counts keep climbing for a day or two. An hourly or daily run is the shape that fits.

Unofficial, not affiliated with Telegram — not endorsed by or sponsored by Telegram, nor by any channel whose public posts appear in the sample.

What you get

One row per post (type: post).

Column	What it holds
channel · channelTitle	the channel's name and its display title
postId · url	the post's number in the channel and its permanent link
date	the publish time, ISO 8601 in UTC
views	the view count as a number (Telegram's "1.59M" read as 1590000)
text	the post's text, line breaks kept
links[]	every link in the text, and the link preview's address
mediaKind · mediaCount · mediaDurationSeconds	video, voice, round_video, photo, document, poll, sticker — and how long the clips run
forwardedFrom	the channel a post was forwarded from (its name and link when Telegram shows them)
replyTo	the post it replies to, with its link
edited · authorSignature	whether Telegram marks the post as edited, and the author's signature when the channel signs posts
charged · chargedEvents · status · statusReason	on every row, so the invoice reconciles from the dataset

With Transcribe voice and video on, one more row per clip (type: transcript): postId, url, mediaKind, durationSeconds, transcript, language and timed segments.

Voice notes and short videos as text

Telegram's public channel page serves voice notes and the shorter video clips; it does not serve big ones. Measured on 30 video posts across busy channels, about half the video seconds were served — the longest served clip ran about 3½ minutes, while a clip Telegram shows as "Media is too big" (that can happen even at 30 seconds) cannot be fetched by anyone without the app. So this actor transcribes what Telegram serves, and a withheld clip comes back as a transcript row saying so — never charged. A clip that is only music or silence is never charged either. Voice notes are rare on public channels; most clips are videos and round videos.

Only new posts, on a schedule

Only new posts since my last run is on by default. Each channel is read newest first, down to the newest post your account got from it on an earlier run, and stops there — so an hourly run delivers, and charges, only what was posted in that hour. The memory lives in your own Apify account (a key-value store named telegram-channel-scraper-memory). If a run stops early (your maximum charge, the run clock), the posts it delivered are remembered too, and the next run collects the older new posts below them without charging anything twice. Turn the setting off to read the newest posts again whatever you have.

A read that finds nothing new is billed one $0.002 channel check, because the page was still read for you. A read that delivers even one post never pays it.

What it costs

Event	Apify free plan	Bronze	Silver	Gold and above
Post	$0.0008	$0.0007	$0.0006	$0.0005
Transcript minute (opt-in, per started minute of audio)	$0.007	$0.007	$0.007	$0.007
Channel check (a read with nothing new)	$0.002	$0.002	$0.002	$0.002

No start fee. Never charged: a private, missing or preview-off channel, a link that is not Telegram, a page Telegram did not answer for, a clip Telegram does not serve, a clip with no speech, posts your account already has, posts cut by your own limits or the run clock, and the sample a bare Start returns. Platform usage is included in these prices.

Input

Field	What it does
channels	public channel links or names, one per line (https://t.me/telegram, t.me/s/telegram, @telegram, telegram; a post link is read as its channel)
maxPosts	newest posts to read from each channel — 20 by default, up to 2,000
since	only posts on or after a date (2026-10-01) or a span back from now (7 days); a value that is not a date is refused on an uncharged row, never guessed
onlyNewPosts	only posts newer than your last run — on by default
transcribe	transcripts of voice notes, round videos and video clips — off by default
maxRunSeconds	stop collecting after this many seconds; what was collected is still delivered

As an HTTP endpoint

The same actor answers HTTP requests (Apify Standby): GET https://steadyfetch--telegram-channel-scraper.apify.actor?channel=telegram&maxPosts=20 with your Apify token returns the rows as JSON in the same response, charged exactly as a run. One channel per request, up to 100 posts (20 with transcripts). The endpoint keeps no account memory, so "only new posts" is a run feature; Apify free plan callers get posts without transcripts.

When something goes wrong

Every channel that delivers less than you asked ends on one uncharged row naming why: the channel has no more posts, every older post is one you already have, the posts are older than your date, Telegram has no channel by that name, it shows no public page for it, it is a private chat, it does not display the channel, or it did not answer (please re-run). A time limit ends the collecting, never the delivering: posts already collected are always delivered. This actor may fail when Telegram changes its public pages — failed items are never charged. Posts this actor's safety screen withholds come back as an address-only row, uncharged.

Questions

Open an issue on the Issues tab — we usually reply within a couple of hours.

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