AI & DATA
Telegram public channels,
no phone required
Scrape posts, views, link previews and media from any public Telegram channel via t.me/s/ — no bot token, no Telethon, no SIM card risk. RAG-ready output for LLM pipelines.
0 creds
No account, no bot token
$0.002
Per Post
Real-time
Posts as they go live
RAG-ready
Markdown Output
USE CASES
What you can do with this data
Brand Monitoring
Watch competitor announcement channels. Alert on keywords. Track view-count decay to estimate channel reach.
Crypto Signal Tracking
Monitor shilling and alpha channels. Extract mentioned token tickers via regex. Correlate posts with on-chain signals.
AI RAG Feeds
Ingest news/AI channels into a vector DB. Your agent cites real-time sources without Telegram account risk.
OSINT / Journalism
During breaking events, monitor hundreds of public Telegram channels for primary source material in real time.
Local News Aggregation
Thousands of Telegram channels exist per country and city. Aggregate by location for local-news apps.
Dataset Building
Build labeled corpora for abuse detection, sentiment, or language ID. Telegram covers every major language.
OUTPUT FIELDS
Fields extracted per post
Post ID + canonical URL
Channel handle
Post text (multi-line)
ISO-8601 timestamp
View count (parsed from 1.5K/2M)
Forwarded-from author
Reply-to URL
Photo CDN URLs
Video URL (time-limited)
Voice message flag
Document URL
Link preview (url + title + description)
Link preview image URL
Link preview site name
Markdown block (RAG mode)
OG metadata (single-post mode)
HOW IT WORKS
Three steps to structured data
List channels
Pass channel handles (without @ or t.me/). Optionally add specific post URLs or a channel-name search.
Scrape
Actor walks t.me/s/<channel> newest-first, paginates via ?before=<post_id>. Parses every tgme_widget_message into structured JSON.
Consume
Full / minimal / RAG-markdown output. Stream to vector DB, feed to your agent, or export CSV for analysis.
COMPARISON
Why this actor vs alternatives
| Feature | This Actor | Telethon (DIY) | Telegram Bot API |
|---|---|---|---|
| Auth required | None | Phone + 2FA + SIM | Bot token + admin |
| Private channels | No (public only) | Yes (after join) | Only as admin |
| Price per post | $0.002 | Free but self-host | Free but admin-gated |
| IP rotation | Apify proxy | Manual | N/A |
| MCP-compatible | Yes (PPE) | No | No |
| Setup time | Zero — just call | Days (account + session) | Hours (bot + approval) |
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
Do I need a Telegram account or bot token?
No. No account, no phone, no bot token, no api_id/api_hash. The actor reads Telegram's public SEO preview pages (t.me/s/<channel>) that Telegram serves to every indexing bot.
How does it compare to Telethon?
Telethon requires a Telegram account (phone, 2FA, SIM risk). This actor needs zero credentials. Trade-off: Telethon reads any channel you've joined; this actor only reads channels with public previews enabled (most news/crypto/broadcast channels have them on).
What about private channels?
Not supported by design. Private channels and channels with previews disabled return empty. No way around that without a real Telegram account — which we explicitly do not do.
How fresh is the data?
Real-time. Each run hits Telegram live — you get the same posts a website visitor sees.
Can I paginate into older posts?
Yes — pass before=<post_id> to start at posts older than that ID. Telegram typically exposes the last 100–200 posts in the /s/ preview; for deeper history, Telethon with an account is required (out of scope).
START NOW
Read Telegram without an account
One run = thousands of posts with link previews. Feed your RAG, monitor a brand, or track breaking news in real time.
Start Scraping Telegram→