Telegram Channel Finder: Keyword to Public Channels

🏆 Part of The Mine Works' 149-actor portfolio · 40,000+ runs · 200,000+ results delivered across our full distribution stack · 99.9%+ success rate

💰 $3.00 / 1,000 results.

⚡ Keyword to public Telegram channels, with an optional standing watch for newly indexed ones. No bot token, no phone number, no login.

💸 A search that returns nothing is never billed.

Give it a keyword or phrase and get back matching public Telegram channels: handle, title and canonical t.me link. No login, no bot token, no API key.

Why this doesn't depend on a third-party Telegram directory

The obvious approach is scraping one of the existing Telegram directory sites (TGStat, TGKit and similar) that already index channels by category and keyword. That was deliberately not the approach here: it makes this actor's uptime and accuracy dependent on a service we don't control staying online, keeping its layout stable, and continuing to index broadly. Telegram itself exposes no public keyword search without a bot token, but Google indexes public channel previews at t.me/<channel>, so a site-restricted search finds the same channels without that dependency, using the same search transport already proven on this actor's LinkedIn and company-lookup siblings.

Input

• query (required): a keyword or phrase, e.g. "artificial intelligence" or a brand name.
• maxResults: caps how many channels come back. Default 20, maximum 100.
• monitorMode: turns this into a standing watch (see below).

Example output

{
  "handle": "durov",
  "url": "https://t.me/durov",
  "title": "Durov's Channel",
  "checked_at": "2026-08-30T00:00:00.000Z"
}

Invite links (t.me/joinchat/..., t.me/+...) are excluded on purpose: they point at private chats, not public channels, and don't resolve to a checkable public handle the way a channel does.

Turning a keyword into a standing watch

A brand or research team tracking a topic on Telegram doesn't want the same channel list re-delivered and re-billed every time it checks in. Set Monitor mode to true, save the run as an Apify Task, then add that task to a Schedule with the same query each time. Every run after the first returns only channels not delivered in a previous run, so a daily or weekly watch bills only for what's genuinely new.

Who this is for

Brand and market research teams tracking mentions or communities on Telegram around a topic, product or competitor. OSINT and research workflows that need a structured list of relevant public channels rather than Telegram's own in-app search. Anyone building a channel directory or monitoring dashboard that needs Telegram coverage alongside other platforms.

Frequently asked questions

Why isn't a private group or invite-only channel returned? This only finds public channels Google has indexed at a t.me/<handle> URL. Private groups and invite links are excluded, since they don't resolve to a public handle to report.

Does this need a Telegram account or bot token? No. It performs a public web search and reads the results; it never connects to Telegram's own API.

Why did a search return fewer channels than maxResults? A narrow or unusual keyword may simply not have that many indexed public channels. The run log states how many were found.

Can I search in a language other than English? Yes, results depend on what Google has indexed for that term regardless of language.

Does it return subscriber counts or post history? No. Each row is the handle, title and canonical t.me link. To read a channel's posts, pass the handle to Telegram Channel Scraper.

Pricing

Event	Price	You pay when
Channel found	$0.003	A public channel matching your keyword is delivered

$3.00 per 1,000 channels. Flat pricing, the same on every Apify plan. A search that returns nothing is never charged.

Run it on a schedule

Monitor mode is what makes a schedule cheap here. With it on, every run after the first returns only channels that were not delivered before, so a weekly topic watch bills for genuinely new channels rather than the same list again.

1. Run it once with the input you want repeated, then click Save as a task so that exact input is attached to every future run.
2. In the Apify Console go to Schedules and create a new one, either a preset (hourly / daily / weekly) or a cron expression.
3. Save. It then runs unattended, billed the same pay-per-result way. Nothing is charged for the schedule existing.

Use from Claude, ChatGPT & any MCP agent

Hosted MCP endpoint, no install, OAuth on first connect:

https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=themineworks/telegram-channel-finder

Claude Desktop / Cursor config (token auth):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "telegram-channel-finder": {
      "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=themineworks/telegram-channel-finder",
      "headers": { "Authorization": "Bearer YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN" }
    }
  }
}

Ask your agent: "Find public Telegram channels about [topic]."

Works well with

Find the channel here, then read its post history with Telegram Channel Scraper. If you are checking whether a brand or project has claimed the same handle elsewhere, Username Checker covers 13 other platforms.

Keywords: Telegram channel finder, find Telegram channels by keyword, Telegram channel discovery, Telegram OSINT tool, Telegram market research, Telegram community tracking