Telegram Channel Scraper API - No Bot Token, No Phone Login

Fast first run — the default input returns a small public-channel sample from t.me/s/<channel> preview pages. No Telegram account or bot token required for public preview pages. Telegram may still limit or hide some channels. Built for monitoring and RAG ingestion — start with 10-25 posts, verify channel coverage, then scale to ongoing channel intelligence jobs.

For implementation notes, examples, and Telegram monitoring workflows, see the Telegram Posts Scraper guide on Konabayev.com.

Scrape posts from public Telegram channels without phone numbers, 2FA, OAuth, bot tokens, or spending weeks on MTProto client libraries. This actor wraps Telegram's own t.me/s/ SEO preview pages behind a single Apify-platform input with proxy rotation, pagination, filters, and a clean canonical output schema.

Perfect for brand monitoring, channel intelligence, AI RAG pipelines, crypto/news tracking, research datasets, and competitive analysis across one-person blogs to million-subscriber broadcast channels. Returns structured JSON with post text, view counts, timestamps, media URLs, link previews — plus an optional clean Markdown format that plugs straight into LangChain document loaders or Claude MCP tools.

How it works

Three input sources, used together in one run:

1. channels — list of channel handles (without @ or t.me/). Scraper walks t.me/s/<handle> newest-first, paginating via ?before=<post_id> until maxItems or end of feed. This is the main mode.
2. postUrls — list of full post URLs (e.g. https://t.me/durov/478). Each URL fetches one post with its OG metadata and embedded widget data.
3. search — channel handle lookup via t.me/s/<query>. Useful when you know a likely public handle but want to run it through the same preview parser.

Posts are pushed to the dataset incrementally — even if the run is aborted, everything fetched so far is already stored.

What "public" means on Telegram: every channel with previews enabled. The channel admin sets this toggle in Telegram → Channel Settings. Most news, crypto, and broadcast channels have previews on. Some private or sensitive ones don't — we detect this case and surface it cleanly (empty dataset with a warning log).

Why use this instead of alternatives?

Feature	Telegram Posts Scraper	Telethon (self-host)	Telegram Bot API	Other Apify scrapers
Auth required	None	Phone number + 2FA + SIM	Bot token + channel admin	Varies
Can scrape without joining channel	Yes (public preview)	Yes (after join)	Only if bot is admin	Varies
IP rotation	Yes — Apify proxy	Manual	N/A	Varies
Output formats	full / minimal / rag-markdown	Custom code	Raw objects	full only
Link preview extraction	Yes, structured	Manual	Manual	Rare
View counts + dates	Yes	Yes	Not directly exposed	Varies
Pagination	Automatic via ?before=<id>	Manual	Manual	Varies
MCP compatible	Yes (PPE = agent-friendly)	No	No	Rarely
Pay model	PPE — only what you scrape	Free but self-host	Free but bot must be admin	Varies

Key advantage: no Telegram account. No SIM risk. No api_id/api_hash registration. No 2FA loops. Just channel handles in, structured posts out.

Input examples

Read two channels (default prefill)

{
  "channels": ["durov", "telegram"],
  "maxItems": 10,
  "outputFormat": "full"
}

Monitor a crypto announcement channel since a specific date

{
  "channels": ["binance_announcements"],
  "sinceIso": "2026-04-01T00:00:00Z",
  "minViews": 5000,
  "maxItems": 200
}

Fetch a specific viral thread + related posts

{
  "postUrls": ["https://t.me/durov/478", "https://t.me/durov/479"],
  "outputFormat": "rag"
}

Paginate deep into a channel's history

{
  "channels": ["telegram"],
  "before": 400,
  "maxItems": 500,
  "outputFormat": "minimal"
}

Find a channel by topic

{
  "search": "cats",
  "maxItems": 20
}

Input parameters

Field	Type	Default	Description
channels	array[string]	["durov", "telegram"]	Channel handles (no @, no t.me/). Most common mode.
postUrls	array[string]	[]	Specific https://t.me/<channel>/<id> URLs to fetch.
search	string	—	Channel-name lookup. Telegram returns the top-matching public channel.
maxItems	integer	10	Cap on total posts across all sources. Each is one PPE event.
before	integer	—	Start at posts OLDER than this post ID. Default is newest first.
outputFormat	enum	full	full / minimal / rag. See Output format section.
minViews	integer	0	Drop posts below N views. Good for "only viral posts" runs.
sinceIso	string	—	ISO-8601 (2026-01-01T00:00:00Z). Older posts are skipped.
proxyConfiguration	object	{useApifyProxy: true}	Apify proxy group. Default auto-selects.

Output format

Full (default)

Every post includes:

{
  "channel": "durov",
  "post_id": 478,
  "data_post": "durov/478",
  "url": "https://t.me/durov/478",
  "date": "2026-04-23T17:12:59+00:00",
  "text": "🔄 Your massive monthly Telegram update is out.\n\n🧠 100% private AI Editor for your outgoing messages...",
  "views": 1500000,
  "forwarded_from": null,
  "reply_to_url": null,
  "photos": ["https://cdn4.telesco.pe/file/..."],
  "video_url": null,
  "has_voice": false,
  "document_url": null,
  "link_preview": {
    "url": "https://telegram.org/blog/april-2026",
    "site_name": "Telegram",
    "title": "April 2026 Update",
    "description": "100% private AI Editor, new polls, Live Photos...",
    "image_url": "https://telegram.org/..."
  }
}

Minimal

Keeps: channel, post_id, url, date, text, views, forwarded_from, photos, video_url, link_preview.

RAG (Markdown)

Each post becomes one Markdown block with post metadata, text, and link preview — paste directly into a vector DB.

# t.me/durov/478

**Channel:** durov · 2026-04-23T17:12:59+00:00 · 1500000 views

🔄 Your massive monthly Telegram update is out.
🧠 100% private AI Editor for your outgoing messages.
🗳 The most powerful polls in any messenger...

**Link preview:** [April 2026 Update](https://telegram.org/blog/april-2026)

Output fields

Field	Type	Description
channel	string	Handle without @, e.g. durov.
post_id	integer	Numeric ID within channel (used for pagination).
url	string	Canonical t.me/<channel>/<id>.
date	string (ISO-8601)	When posted (UTC).
text	string|null	Post body. <br> converted to \n, all formatting stripped.
views	integer|null	Parsed from 1.5K/2M notation to absolute integer.
forwarded_from	string|null	Original author if this is a forward.
reply_to_url	string|null	URL of post being replied to, if any.
photos	array[string]	CDN URLs for photo attachments.
video_url	string|null	Direct video URL (may be time-limited CDN link).
has_voice	boolean	True if post contains a voice message.
document_url	string|null	Direct document URL for file uploads.
link_preview	object|null	{url, site_name, title, description, image_url} if post includes a link preview card.

Integrations

Python — quick RAG ingest

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN>")
run = client.actor("tugelbay/telegram-posts-scraper").call(run_input={
    "channels": ["durov"],
    "outputFormat": "rag",
    "maxItems": 100
})
for item in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    vector_db.ingest(item["markdown"])

JavaScript/Node

import { ApifyClient } from "apify-client";

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: "<YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN>" });
const run = await client.actor("tugelbay/telegram-posts-scraper").call({
  channels: ["binance_announcements"],
  sinceIso: "2026-04-01T00:00:00Z",
  minViews: 10000,
});
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();

MCP (Claude / GPT agents)

Expose this actor as a tool via the Apify MCP Server (mcp.apify.com). Your agent gets a Telegram-read tool with no credentials to manage:

{
  "name": "scrape_telegram_channel",
  "apifyActor": "tugelbay/telegram-posts-scraper",
  "description": "Read recent public Telegram posts from one or more channels"
}

LangChain / LlamaIndex

Use the RAG output format. The markdown field drops straight into Document(page_content=item['markdown'], metadata={"channel": item["channel"], "url": item["url"]}).

Use cases

• Brand & competitor monitoring — watch a competitor's announcement channel, alert on keywords.
• Crypto signal tracking — monitor shilling channels, extract mentioned token tickers via regex over text.
• AI news feed — aggregate AI/ML channels, dedupe, feed to LLM-summary pipelines.
• Channel research for ads — before sponsoring a channel, pull last 100 posts, measure view decay, engagement.
• Internal KB from public team channel — teams that use public Telegram for announcements can ingest their own channel into Notion/Confluence.
• Local news aggregation — hundreds of Telegram channels for every country/city — aggregate by location.
• Dataset building — label corpus for abuse detection, sentiment analysis, language identification.
• Academic research — social-network effects without needing Telegram developer registration.
• Journalism leads — monitor OSINT channels during breaking events.
• Public figure tracking — read every post from a politician/CEO/founder channel as it arrives.

Cost estimation

Scenario	Posts	Cost (FREE tier)	Cost (GOLD tier)
Daily 20-post feed from 5 channels	100/day	$0.20/day	$0.13/day
Monthly digest — 500 posts across 10 channels	500	$1.00	$0.65
One-off research dump — 10,000 posts	10,000	$20.00	$13.00
RAG cold-start — 100 channels × 200 posts	20,000	$40.00	$26.00

Compare to running your own Telethon instance: $5–10/mo proxy + SIM card risk + ~40 hours maintenance/year.

FAQ

Do I need a Telegram account? No. No account, no phone, no 2FA. The actor reads public channel previews that Telegram serves to every indexing bot.

What about private channels? Private channels and channels with "web previews" disabled return empty. No way around that without a real account — which we explicitly don't do.

Can it read comments? Only when comments are public widgets on the channel post (rare). Private comment sections require account login.

How fresh is the data? Real-time. Each run hits Telegram live — you get the same posts a website visitor sees.

What rate limits apply? In validation, 40 rapid requests to t.me/s/ returned 200. Apify proxy handles any edge-case throttling. Heavy runs (>10k posts) should use RESIDENTIAL proxy group for safety.

Is this legal? Channel previews are public by design (they're indexed by Google). Standard web-scraping compliance applies — respect channel owners' rights, honor takedown requests, don't re-publish copyrighted material.

What languages? All. Text is extracted as-is. Telegram channels exist in every major language; the actor returns whatever bytes Telegram serves.

Why t.me/s/ and not the Bot API? Bot API requires the bot to be a channel admin. t.me/s/ requires nothing. Different access model — we chose simplicity.

Can I get channel subscriber count? Not currently. t.me/s/<handle> doesn't expose it. Could add via t.me/<handle> in a future version if requested.

Troubleshooting

Issue	Cause	Fix
0 posts returned for a channel	Channel is private or has previews disabled	Confirm t.me/s/<channel> in a browser — if it shows no posts, this channel isn't scrapeable publicly.
Some posts missing link previews	Telegram doesn't always generate them	Nothing to fix — link_preview is null when Telegram doesn't emit the card.
Photo URLs expire after a few hours	Telegram CDN signs media URLs	Download media during the run, don't rely on URLs later. Or hit the page again when needed.
Pagination stops early	Hit oldest post in preview window	Telegram only shows ~100–200 posts in /s/ view for most channels. For deeper history, pass lower before IDs or use a Telethon account.
Rate limit / slowdown	Heavy burst from one IP	Use RESIDENTIAL proxy group or lower concurrency.

Limitations

• No private channels, no group chats — only channel public previews.
• No comments — Telegram renders those client-side.
• Media URLs are CDN-signed and expire; download during the run if you need persistence.
• No reactions count — not in the public preview HTML.
• Subscriber counts not yet extracted (future work).
• Some channels have previews limited to last 100 posts — deeper history requires account-based access (out of scope).

Changelog

• 0.1 (2026-04-24) — Initial release. Full / minimal / RAG formats. Pagination via ?before=. Filters by views + date. MCP-compatible PPE pricing.