# Telegram Channel Scraper — Posts, Views, Reactions & Cadence (`tidyfeed/telegram-channel-scraper`) Actor

Posts from any public Telegram channel, newest first: text, views, reactions, media type, forwards, links and dates, one row per post. Or one summary row per channel: subscribers, posts per week, median views, media share. Reads the channel's public preview page. No login, no API key, no proxies.

- **URL**: https://apify.com/tidyfeed/telegram-channel-scraper.md
- **Developed by:** [tidyfeed](https://apify.com/tidyfeed) (community)
- **Categories:**
- **Stats:** 2 total users, 1 monthly users, 100.0% runs succeeded, 0 bookmarks
- **User rating**: No ratings yet

## Pricing

from $1.40 / 1,000 posts

This Actor is paid per event. You are not charged for the Apify platform usage, but only a fixed price for specific events.
Since this Actor supports Apify Store discounts, the price gets lower the higher subscription plan you have.

Learn more: https://docs.apify.com/actors/running/actors-in-store.md#pay-per-event

## What's an Apify Actor?

Actors are web data automations that power AI and operations. They run on the Apify platform to scrape websites, process data, connect APIs, and automate workflows.
In Batch mode, an Actor accepts a well-defined JSON input, performs an action which can take anything from a few seconds to a few hours,
and optionally produces a well-defined JSON output, datasets with results, or files in key-value store.
In Standby mode, an Actor provides a web server which can be used as a website, API, or an MCP server.
Actors are written with capital "A".

## How to integrate an Actor?

If asked about integration, you help developers integrate Actors into their projects.
You adapt to their stack and deliver integrations that are safe, well-documented, and production-ready.
The best way to integrate Actors is as follows.

- **AI agents and MCP clients** — the [Apify MCP server](https://docs.apify.com/integrations/mcp.md) at `https://mcp.apify.com` (remote, streamable HTTP, OAuth on first use).
- **Agentic workflows and local Actor development** — [Agent Skills](https://apify.com/.well-known/agent-skills/index.json) with the [Apify CLI](https://docs.apify.com/cli/docs.md): `npm install -g apify-cli`, then `apify login`.
- **JavaScript/TypeScript projects** — the official [JS/TS client](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs.md): `npm install apify-client`.
- **Python projects** — the official [Python client](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs.md): `pip install apify-client`.
- **Any other language** — the [REST API](https://docs.apify.com/api/v2.md).

For usage examples, see the [API](#api) section below.

For more details, see Apify documentation as [Markdown index](https://docs.apify.com/llms.txt) and [Markdown full-text](https://docs.apify.com/llms-full.txt).

# README

## Telegram Channel Scraper — Posts, Views, Reactions & Cadence

**What is this channel posting, how often, and how much of it gets seen?**

Every post on a public Telegram channel, newest first, one row per post: the text, view count, reactions, what media it carries, whether it was forwarded and from where, the links in it, and when it went out. Or flip the switch and get one summary row per channel — subscribers, posts per week, median views, views per subscriber, media share — for a whole list of channels in one run.

No login. No API key. No phone number. No proxies.

***

### Two modes

**Posts — one row per post.** The default. Point it at a channel and get its recent posts as a table you can filter by views, media type or date. Ask for older posts with the cap and it walks back page by page.

**Summary — one row per channel.** Give it fifty channels and get fifty rows you can sort: who has the subscribers, who actually gets views per subscriber, who posts daily and who has gone quiet, who forwards more than they write.

***

### What you get

#### Posts mode

**The post** — `text`, `textHtml` (optional), `links`, `mediaType` (`photo`, `video`, `document`, `poll`, `sticker`, `voice`, `none`), `mediaCount`, `mediaUrl`, `linkPreviewUrl`, `linkPreviewTitle`, `author` (channels that sign posts)

**How it did** — `views`, `reactions` (all reactions added up), `reactionsText` (each reaction with its count, e.g. `👍 322K, ❤ 89.1K`)

**Where it came from** — `forwardedFrom`, `forwardedFromUrl`, `isReply`

**When and where** — `postedAt`, `daysSincePosted`, `messageId`, `postUrl`, `channel`, `channelTitle`

#### Summary mode

`channel`, `channelTitle`, `channelUrl`, `description`, `subscribers`, `subscribersText`, `photosCount`, `videosCount`, `filesCount`, `linksCount`, `postsRead`, `postsLast7d`, `postsLast30d`, `postsPerWeek`, `medianViews`, `averageViews`, `viewsPerSubscriber`, `medianReactions`, `mediaPostsPercent`, `forwardedPostsPercent`, `latestPostAt`, `daysSinceLastPost`, `oldestPostReadAt`, `status`

***

### Typical uses

- **Monitor channels in your market.** Posts mode with `daysBack: 7` on a schedule — a dated log of everything a set of channels published, with views at that moment.
- **Vet a channel before buying an ad or a partnership.** Summary mode: subscribers alone say little; `viewsPerSubscriber` and `postsPerWeek` say whether anyone is reading.
- **Track your own channel.** Which posts got the views and the reactions, which media type works, what time of day lands.
- **Research and OSINT.** Public statements, forwards and their sources, with permanent post links.

***

### Input

| Field | What it does |
|---|---|
| `channels` | Channel names or links: `telegram`, `@durov`, `https://t.me/bloomberg`. |
| `mode` | `posts` (default) or `summary`. |
| `daysBack` | `0` for no date filter; `7` or `30` for a window. |
| `maxPostsPerChannel` | Cap per channel, newest first. Default 100; up to 5,000. Telegram serves about 20 posts per page. |
| `includeHtml` | Adds `textHtml` with Telegram's own formatting. Posts mode only. |

***

### What it costs

**$2.00 per 1,000 posts** in posts mode, **$10.00 per 1,000 channel summaries** in summary mode, plus $0.005 per run. Apify's Starter, Scale and Business plans get 10%, 20% and 30% off.

You pay for rows delivered. A private channel, a group, a user profile, a name that does not exist or a window that matches nothing costs nothing.

***

### How it works

Telegram publishes a preview page for every public channel at `t.me/s/<channel>` — the page you see when you open a channel link without the app. It lists posts twenty at a time with their views, reactions and media, and older pages are one link away. This actor reads that page and nothing else: no Telegram account, no API keys, no MTProto, no proxies.

It is the one tidyfeed actor that reads HTML rather than a JSON feed, so the parser lives in a single file with every Telegram class name it depends on listed once. If Telegram changes its markup, that file is fixed and the actor is rebuilt the same day.

***

### Honest limits

- **Public channels only.** Private channels, groups and user profiles have no preview page. They are reported by name with the reason and return no rows.
- **Views and reactions are Telegram's rounded figures** — `24.2M`, `1.2K` — turned into numbers. The raw text is kept in `viewsText` and `reactionsText` so nothing is lost.
- **Comment counts are not on the preview page**, so they are not here.
- **Posts a channel deleted are gone**; the preview shows what Telegram shows.
- **Cadence figures in summary mode are computed from the posts read.** If the cap is reached before the 30-day window is covered, `postsLast7d`, `postsLast30d` and `postsPerWeek` are left empty rather than reported as a floor, and `status` says so. Raise the cap to fill them in.
- **Custom emoji reactions have no character**, so they appear as `(custom)` in `reactionsText`; their counts are still included in `reactions`.
- **Telegram rate-limits heavy readers.** Pages are read one at a time with a short pause; a run on hundreds of channels at once may see HTTP 429, which is reported per channel rather than failing the run.

***

### Scheduling

Channels post daily. Schedule posts mode with `daysBack: 7` on your list and each run adds the week's posts with their views at that moment; schedule summary mode weekly and you have a dated record of subscribers, cadence and reach over time.

***

### Legal

This actor reads only pages Telegram serves publicly for public channels, at addresses it serves to anyone. It requires no account and bypasses no access control. Channel posts are public broadcasts; author names appear only where the channel itself prints them. You remain responsible for how you use the exported data.

***

Questions, or a channel that behaves oddly? Open an issue on the actor — issues are read and answered.

# Actor input Schema

## `channels` (type: `array`):

Channel names or links: telegram, @telegram, https://t.me/telegram and https://t.me/s/telegram all work. Only public channels have a preview page; private channels, groups and user profiles are reported as such and return no rows.

## `mode` (type: `string`):

"Posts" gives one row per post. "Summary" gives one row per channel: subscribers, posts per week, median views, reaction and media shares, computed from the posts it reads.

## `daysBack` (type: `integer`):

Leave at 0 for no date filter. Set 7 or 30 to track what was posted since the last run.

## `maxPostsPerChannel` (type: `integer`):

Upper limit per channel, newest first. Telegram serves about 20 posts per page, so 100 posts is 5 page loads. In summary mode this is how many posts the figures are computed from.

## `includeHtml` (type: `boolean`):

Adds a textHtml column with Telegram's own formatting (bold, links, emoji) next to the plain text. Off by default to keep spreadsheets readable.

## Actor input object example

```json
{
  "channels": [
    "telegram",
    "@durov",
    "https://t.me/bloomberg"
  ],
  "mode": "posts",
  "daysBack": 0,
  "maxPostsPerChannel": 100,
  "includeHtml": false
}
```

# Actor output Schema

## `rows` (type: `string`):

No description

## `rowsCsv` (type: `string`):

No description

# API

You can run this Actor programmatically using our API. Below are code examples in JavaScript, Python, and CLI, as well as the OpenAPI specification and MCP server setup.

## JavaScript example

```javascript
import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

// Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
// Replace the '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token
const client = new ApifyClient({
    token: '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>',
});

// Prepare Actor input
const input = {
    "channels": [
        "telegram"
    ]
};

// Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
const run = await client.actor("tidyfeed/telegram-channel-scraper").call(input);

// Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if any)
console.log('Results from dataset');
console.log(`💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/${run.defaultDatasetId}`);
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
items.forEach((item) => {
    console.dir(item);
});

// 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs

```

## Python example

```python
from apify_client import ApifyClient

# Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
# Replace '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token.
client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_API_TOKEN>")

# Prepare the Actor input
run_input = { "channels": ["telegram"] }

# Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
run = client.actor("tidyfeed/telegram-channel-scraper").call(run_input=run_input)

# Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if there are any)
print(f"💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/{run.default_dataset_id}")
for item in client.dataset(run.default_dataset_id).iterate_items():
    print(item)

# 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs/quick-start

```

## CLI example

```bash
echo '{
  "channels": [
    "telegram"
  ]
}' |
apify call tidyfeed/telegram-channel-scraper --silent --output-dataset

```

## MCP server setup

```json
{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "type": "http",
            "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch-actor-details,tidyfeed/telegram-channel-scraper"
        }
    }
}

```

The hosted server signs you in with OAuth on first connect, so no API token belongs in this config. Clients without OAuth support can send an `Authorization: Bearer <APIFY_API_TOKEN>` header instead, using a token from API & Integrations in Apify Console (https://console.apify.com/settings/integrations).

## OpenAPI specification

Download the OpenAPI definition: https://api.apify.com/v2/actors/ToHtxxmNWaYqGxtY8/builds/KYpMAhEOU1sw9d1Vx/openapi.json