Telegram Channel Search — Topics, Audience & Activity

Find public Telegram channels by words in their names, descriptions and catalog summaries.

Part of TGDen — Telegram Intelligence. No Telegram account, phone number or session is required.

Try it

Use this input, run the Actor and open its dataset (JSON, CSV or the table view):

{
  "queries": [
    "AI news"
  ],
  "maxChannelsPerQuery": 5
}

Real output

A shortened row read on 23 October 2026 during owner-account acceptance testing. Results change as the corpus changes.

[
  {
    "username": "sprutai_news",
    "title": "Sprut.AI News (Умный Дом | Smart Home)",
    "url": "https://t.me/sprutai_news",
    "summary": "News and updates regarding Smart Home ecosystems like HomeKit and Alice.",
    "subscribers": 8400,
    "avgPostReach": 3897,
    "languages": [
      "ru"
    ],
    "subscribersCheckedAt": "2026-09-10T12:54:19.718718Z"
  }
]

The dataset contains the delivered rows. The run's OUTPUT record adds counts, an explicit outcome (results, valid_zero_result, limited or incomplete), source timings and any stop reason. A source failure fails the run; it is never presented as a successful empty search.

Cost

$0.005 per run start + $0.002 per channel delivered. With the 256 MB memory limit there is one start event. Ten billable results cost about $0.025 in Actor fees. Zero matches incur only the start fee. Prices and any platform charges shown by Apify at launch are authoritative.

Set Maximum charge per run before starting (default $0.50). Delivery stops when the remaining budget cannot pay for another result; duplicate results are not billed twice in a run. Apify free-plan accounts receive at most 50 billable results per run. The amount of data in a snapshot may be larger than your budget permits.

Freshness and interpretation

Results come from an existing catalog, not a live Telegram check. Use each audience or signal measurement timestamp. Some observations can be weeks old; null means unmeasured. Coverage and matches vary by topic and language.

This is keyword catalog search, not semantic retrieval or a live Telegram crawl. Broad terms such as AI can match adjacent topics. Audience dates are shown explicitly. Activity metrics have no independent measurement date: activityMeasuredAt is null; zero activity is not proof a channel is inactive.

Why use it

Export comparable audience and description fields for channel research without opening every search result.

This Actor reads public catalog data. It does not join groups, send messages or contact anyone. Verify the source and suitability before outreach or business decisions.

Watch an example

API and scheduled runs

Use the same JSON input with the public Actor API. Keep your Apify token in an environment variable.

curl -X POST \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  --data @input.json \
  "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/telegrambest~telegram-channel-discovery/run-sync-get-dataset-items?memory=256&timeout=180&maxTotalChargeUsd=0.50"

For longer runs use Apify's asynchronous run endpoint and fetch the dataset after completion. Where available, onlyNew=true remembers delivered items for this Actor and your account so scheduled searches skip them. Keep it off when you want a full repeatable snapshot.

The family

Buyer Search · Groups · Similar Groups · Channels · Bots · Username Checker · Marketplace Ads · Prices · Demand Map

Questions or a bad result? Open an issue on this Actor and include the run link and expected behavior. Never post tokens or Telegram sessions.