# Telegram Channel Posts Scraper (`webdatatools/telegram-channel-scraper`) Actor

Scrapes public Telegram channels via the t.me/s/ web preview — post text, view counts, media flags, forwards, replies and links, one row per post, no API key or login required.

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

## Pricing

from $0.30 / 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?

An Actor is a serverless cloud program that runs on the Apify platform. It has two run modes.
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.

Apify vocabulary and the platform model are defined once, in the agent quickstart at https://apify.com/agents.md.

## 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.

Do not guess an integration path. Every one of them is in the agent quickstart at https://apify.com/agents.md: the Apify MCP server, Agent Skills with the Apify CLI, the JavaScript and Python clients, the REST API, and the account-free path for an agent with no human to sign in. It also carries the rule on stating cost before the first paid run.

For examples already wired to this Actor's own input schema, see the [API](#api) section below.

Each client library has reference documentation the quickstart does not restate: [JavaScript/TypeScript](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs.md) (`npm install apify-client`) and [Python](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs.md) (`pip install apify-client`).

# README

### What is Telegram Channel Posts Scraper?

Telegram Channel Posts Scraper is an Apify Actor that reads **public Telegram channel posts** straight from Telegram's own public web preview at `https://t.me/s/<channel>` — the read-only page Telegram serves to search engines and browsers with no Telegram account required. Give it one or more channel handles (`@telegram`, `telegram`, or `https://t.me/telegram`) and it returns **one clean row per post**: full text, view count, publish time, media flags, forward origin, reply target and every link mentioned in the post. No API key, no phone-number login, no MTProto client, no proxies — just the same public page a browser loads when you visit a channel without joining it.

### Why use Telegram Channel Posts Scraper?

- **Media monitoring and OSINT teams** track news, government and community channels for new posts, forwards and view-count spikes without registering a Telegram app or phone number.
- **Marketing and community managers** measure their own channel's posting cadence, view counts and which posts get forwarded most.
- **Researchers and journalists** pull a channel's post history — including who it forwards from and what links it shares — into a dataset for analysis.
- **Crypto and trading signal watchers** turn a list of public channels into a structured feed of timestamped posts, ready for a keyword or sentiment pipeline.

### How to use Telegram Channel Posts Scraper

1. Fill **Channels** with one or more public channel handles — bare (`telegram`), with `@` (`@telegram`), or a full `t.me` URL — one per line.
2. Set **Max posts per channel** (default 50) — the Actor pages through the channel's public preview with `?before=<id>` until it collects this many posts or runs out.
3. Leave **Include post text** on to get full message text and every link found inside it, or turn it off for a lighter run that only reads view counts and media flags.
4. Choose **Newest posts first** (default) or oldest-first ordering, and set **Max concurrency** for how many channels are scraped in parallel.
5. Click **Start** and export the dataset as JSON, CSV, Excel or HTML from the **Output** tab.

### Example input

```json
{
    "channels": ["@telegram", "@durov"],
    "maxPosts": 50,
    "includeText": true,
    "newestFirst": true
}
```

### Example output

```json
{
    "channel": "telegram",
    "channelTitle": "Telegram News",
    "channelSubscribers": 9560000,
    "postId": 460,
    "url": "https://t.me/telegram/460",
    "datetime": "2026-08-26T19:12:34+00:00",
    "text": "For all the info from today's update and a look back at 13 years of Telegram features — check out our blog:\nhttps://telegram.org/blog/welcome-messages-buttons-TG-13",
    "views": 1150000,
    "hasPhoto": false,
    "hasVideo": false,
    "hasDocument": false,
    "isForwarded": false,
    "forwardedFrom": null,
    "replyToId": null,
    "links": ["https://telegram.org/blog/welcome-messages-buttons-TG-13"],
    "error": null,
    "scrapedAt": "2026-09-13T19:45:12.769Z"
}
```

### Data table

Telegram Channel Posts Scraper extracts up to 17 fields per row:

| Field | Type | Description |
| --- | --- | --- |
| `channel`, `channelTitle`, `channelSubscribers` | string, number | The handle scraped, its display name and subscriber count (e.g. `9.56M` becomes `9560000`) |
| `postId`, `url`, `datetime` | number, string | Message id, its public `t.me` URL and post time (ISO 8601 UTC) |
| `text`, `links` | string, array | Post message text and every URL found inside it (null/empty when `includeText` is off) |
| `views` | number | View count, parsed from Telegram's compact `1.2K` / `9.56M` notation |
| `hasPhoto`, `hasVideo`, `hasDocument` | boolean | Whether the post carries an attached photo, video or file |
| `isForwarded`, `forwardedFrom` | boolean, string | Whether the post was forwarded, and the origin channel's display name |
| `replyToId` | number | The post id this message replies to, within the same channel |
| `error`, `scrapedAt` | string | Set when the channel could not be read (all other fields null), and the scrape timestamp |

### Input parameters

| Parameter | Type | Default | Description |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| `channels` | array | `["@telegram"]` | Channel handles, `@handles` or `t.me` URLs |
| `maxPosts` | integer | 50 | Max recent posts to collect per channel (1-1000) |
| `includeText` | boolean | `true` | Include message text and links found in it |
| `newestFirst` | boolean | `true` | Sort each channel's rows newest-to-oldest |
| `maxConcurrency` | integer | 3 | Channels scraped in parallel (1-20) |

### Pricing

Telegram Channel Posts Scraper uses pay-per-event pricing: **$0.001 per result row**, plus a negligible actor-start fee. Reading the latest 50 posts from one channel costs about five cents; ten channels at 100 posts each costs about a dollar. Set **Maximum cost per run** and the Actor trims the work to what the budget covers instead of overspending.

### Telegram Channel Posts Scraper vs. the Telegram app

The Telegram app requires an account, a phone number and manual scrolling to review a channel's history, and it has no built-in export. This Actor reads the same public preview page Telegram already serves without login, and turns any number of channels into one flat, typed row per post — ready to schedule, filter or feed into a monitoring, sentiment or archival pipeline.

### Using Telegram Channel Posts Scraper with AI agents and MCP

Telegram Channel Posts Scraper is pay-per-event with limited permissions — the two requirements for an Actor to be callable through the Apify MCP server at `mcp.apify.com`. An agent passes a `channels` list and gets structured post rows back, ready to summarise recent activity on a channel, check for new posts since a given date, or trace where a viral message was forwarded from.

### FAQ

**Does this need a Telegram account, phone number or bot token?** No. It reads `https://t.me/s/<channel>`, the public HTML preview Telegram serves to anyone — including search engines — with no login of any kind.

**Why does it only work for some channels?** Only channels with public content preview enabled expose `t.me/s/<channel>`. Private channels, groups, bots and channels that disabled the web preview return a row with `error` set and every other field null instead of failing the run.

**How far back can it read?** As far as the channel's own history goes. The Actor pages through `?before=<id>` until it collects `maxPosts` posts or a page returns nothing new, so a large `maxPosts` on an old, active channel can mean many requests.

**Why is `channelSubscribers` sometimes very round or slightly stale?** Telegram's public preview shows a compact, cached count (e.g. `9.56M`), not a live figure — the same number you would see visiting the page in a browser without joining.

**What counts as a "link" in the output?** Every `href` inside the post's text, including Telegram's own auto-linked mentions and post cross-references (e.g. `t.me/channel/123`), not just external URLs.

**Is this legal to run?** Yes. `t.me/s/<channel>` is a public, unauthenticated page Telegram itself serves for search-engine indexing and link previews; no login wall is bypassed and no private content is accessed.

### Related Actors

Part of the **webdatatools** web-intelligence suite — every Actor is pay-per-event, runs without
proxies or a headless browser, and returns one clean row per entity:

Browse the whole suite at [webdatatools](https://paulet4a-commits.github.io/webdatatools/), or call ten of
these Actors straight from Claude, Cursor or Cline with the
[webdatatools MCP server](https://github.com/paulet4a-commits/webdatatools-mcp-server).

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### Support and feedback

Found a channel layout or edge case it should handle better? Open an issue on the **Issues** tab.

# Actor input Schema

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

Enter one public Telegram channel per row: a bare handle (telegram), an @handle (@telegram) or a t.me URL (https://t.me/telegram). The channel must have public content preview enabled at t.me/s/<handle> — private channels and groups are not supported.

## `maxPosts` (type: `integer`):

Enter how many of the most recent posts to fetch per channel, e.g. 50. The Actor pages through https://t.me/s/<channel>?before=<id> until this many posts are collected.

## `includeText` (type: `boolean`):

Keep this on to include each post's message text and the links found inside it. Turning it off leaves text and links empty, which is faster when you only need view counts and media flags.

## `newestFirst` (type: `boolean`):

Keep this on to sort each channel's rows from newest to oldest post. Turn it off for oldest-first order.

## `maxConcurrency` (type: `integer`):

Enter how many channels to scrape in parallel, e.g. 3. Telegram's web preview has no documented rate limit, but a lower value is gentler if you scrape many channels at once.

## Actor input object example

```json
{
  "channels": [
    "@telegram",
    "@durov"
  ],
  "maxPosts": 50,
  "includeText": true,
  "newestFirst": true,
  "maxConcurrency": 3
}
```

# Actor output Schema

## `posts` (type: `string`):

All scraped posts — download as JSON, CSV, Excel or HTML.

# 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",
        "@durov"
    ],
    "maxPosts": 50,
    "includeText": true,
    "newestFirst": true,
    "maxConcurrency": 3
};

// Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
const run = await client.actor("webdatatools/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",
        "@durov",
    ],
    "maxPosts": 50,
    "includeText": True,
    "newestFirst": True,
    "maxConcurrency": 3,
}

# Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
run = client.actor("webdatatools/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",
    "@durov"
  ],
  "maxPosts": 50,
  "includeText": true,
  "newestFirst": true,
  "maxConcurrency": 3
}' |
apify call webdatatools/telegram-channel-scraper --silent --output-dataset

```

## MCP server setup

```json
{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "type": "http",
            "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch-actor-details,webdatatools/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/lqJAwcXhlwPcLKwes/builds/fbwjnlUe1LiBktlQh/openapi.json