# Telegram Channel Scraper — Messages, Views & Reactions (`silentshadow55/telegram-channel-actor`) Actor

Scrape any public Telegram channel with no login, API key, or bot token. Every message with text, views, reactions (incl. paid stars), media URLs, links & forwards — plus subscriber counts. Fast, browser-free, pay per message. Crypto, OSINT, brand monitoring & LLM pipelines.

- **URL**: https://apify.com/silentshadow55/telegram-channel-actor.md
- **Developed by:** [Esteban Ortega](https://apify.com/silentshadow55) (community)
- **Categories:** Social media
- **Stats:** 1 total users, 1 monthly users, 96.7% runs succeeded, 0 bookmarks
- **User rating**: No ratings yet

## Pricing

from $1.00 / 1,000 messages

This Actor is paid per event. You are not charged for the Apify platform usage, but only a fixed price for specific events.

Learn more: https://docs.apify.com/platform/actors/running/actors-in-store#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 & Media

Scrape **any public Telegram channel** into structured data — **no login, no phone number, no API key, no bot token, no browser**. Point it at a channel username and get every message with full metadata.

Most Telegram scrapers make you register a Telegram API application, log in with a phone number and session string, or run a heavy headless browser. This one reads Telegram's own public web preview (`t.me/s/channel`) directly over plain HTTP — so it's fast, cheap, and there's nothing to authenticate.

### What you get

**Per message:**

- 📝 **Full text** (clean plaintext + original HTML), with emoji and line breaks preserved
- 👁️ **View count** and 📅 **timestamp** (ISO 8601)
- ❤️ **Reactions** — per-emoji breakdown and total (including paid ⭐ Star reactions) — data most scrapers miss. Standard emoji come through as the emoji itself; premium/custom emoji appear as `custom:<id>` (Telegram serves those as a font glyph with no text fallback, so the id is what the preview exposes)
- 🖼️ **Media URLs** — direct links to photos and videos (plus video thumbnails), media type flags for voice/stickers/documents
- 🔗 **Outgoing links** and rich **link previews** (title + description)
- ↪️ **Forwarded-from** attribution, ✍️ post author, and 💬 reply context
- 🌐 Direct `t.me` permalink to each post

**Per channel** (optional info record):

- Title, description, **subscriber count**, and avatar URL

### Example output

Every record carries the same fields (a `type` discriminator marks `message`, `channel`, or error records; inapplicable fields are explicit `null`/`[]`, never missing), so exports stay rectangular. A real message:

```json
{
  "type": "message",
  "channel": "durov",
  "channel_title": "Pavel Durov",
  "message_id": 527,
  "url": "https://t.me/durov/527",
  "datetime": "2026-06-15T15:53:15+00:00",
  "text": "🏆 Telegram is launching a $200,000 contest for content creators.\n\n🎬 Create a video...",
  "views": 21900000,
  "views_text": "21.9M",
  "total_reactions": 514100,
  "reactions": [
    { "emoji": "⭐paid", "count": 24900 },
    { "emoji": "custom:5265077361648368841", "count": 318000 },
    { "emoji": "custom:5465587407350942612", "count": 88100 }
  ],
  "media_type": "text",
  "photos": [],
  "videos": [],
  "outgoing_links": ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Yq_5aDdJ24", "https://t.me/contest"],
  "forwarded_from": null,
  "is_reply": false
}
```

### Input

```json
{
  "channels": ["durov", "@telegram", "t.me/durov"],
  "maxMessagesPerChannel": 200,
  "filterKeyword": "",
  "includeChannelInfo": true
}
```

Channel names are accepted in any form: `durov`, `@durov`, `t.me/durov`, or `https://t.me/s/durov`. The scraper pages backward from the newest post until it reaches your `maxMessagesPerChannel` limit or the start of the channel.

### Who uses this

- **Crypto & trading communities** — monitor call channels, announcements, and sentiment at scale
- **OSINT & research** — track public channels, capture posts with timestamps and reach (views/reactions)
- **Brand & competitor monitoring** — watch competitors' and news channels, measure engagement
- **Content & marketing** — find top-performing posts by views and reactions; feed content pipelines
- **AI / LLM pipelines** — turn channels into clean text datasets for RAG or analysis (works with Apify's MCP integration)

### FAQ

**Do I need a Telegram account or API credentials?** No. This reads the public web preview that Telegram serves to anyone — no login, phone number, `api_id`/`api_hash`, session string, or bot token.

**Which channels work?** Any **public** channel (one with a `t.me/s/<name>` preview). Private channels, private groups, individual user accounts, and bots have no public preview and are reported as skipped rather than failing the run.

**Can it get reactions and view counts?** Yes — both, including paid Star reactions with per-emoji counts, when the channel exposes them in its preview. A few very large channels hide the reaction footer from the public preview; those come back with `reactions: []` and `total_reactions: 0` (not an error — the data simply isn't published). Custom/premium emoji appear as `custom:<id>`; standard emoji as the glyph.

**Are the counts exact?** View, subscriber, and reaction counts come from Telegram's abbreviated labels (`21.9M`, `82.3K`), so both the rounded integer (`views: 21900000`) and the original label (`views_text: "21.9M"`) are provided — use `*_text` when you need the value exactly as Telegram displayed it.

**How far back can it go?** As far as the channel's history via backward pagination. Very large pulls take longer (20 messages per page request) and are paced politely to avoid rate limits.

**Can it download the actual media files?** It returns direct `cdn*.telesco.pe` URLs to photos and videos, which you can fetch yourself. It doesn't re-host files. Note that Telegram's media URLs are time-limited — fetch them soon after the run rather than weeks later, as older links expire.

**What about message edits, comments, or poll results?** The public preview shows the current state of each post; discussion-group comments and live poll internals aren't part of it.

**Is this legal?** It reads publicly available content that Telegram publishes to any web visitor, with no authentication and no access to private data.

### Roadmap

- Search a channel by keyword server-side (via `t.me/s/<name>?q=`)
- Grouped-album handling (multiple photos in one post)
- Date-range cutoffs (stop paging at a target date)

Hit a channel that parses oddly? Open an issue — fixes ship fast.

***

**Building something on this actor?** Open an issue on the Issues tab and say what you're working on - real use cases get priority fixes and shape the roadmap.

# Actor input Schema

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

Public channel usernames or links. Accepts any of: 'durov', '@durov', 't.me/durov', or 'https://t.me/s/durov'. Private channels, groups, bots, and user accounts have no public preview and are skipped.

## `maxMessagesPerChannel` (type: `integer`):

How many recent messages to fetch per channel, newest first. The scraper pages backward 20 at a time until it reaches this count or the channel's start.

## `includeChannelInfo` (type: `boolean`):

Emit one extra item per channel with its title, description, subscriber count, and avatar (type: 'channel').

## `filterKeyword` (type: `string`):

Only keep messages whose text contains this keyword (case-insensitive). Leave empty to keep all messages.

## `skipMediaOnlyMessages` (type: `boolean`):

Drop messages that have no text (e.g. a photo or video posted with no caption).

## `proxyConfiguration` (type: `object`):

Proxies to use. Telegram's public preview is lightly protected, so Apify Proxy (datacenter) is sufficient for typical runs.

## Actor input object example

```json
{
  "channels": [
    "durov"
  ],
  "maxMessagesPerChannel": 100,
  "includeChannelInfo": true,
  "skipMediaOnlyMessages": false,
  "proxyConfiguration": {
    "useApifyProxy": true
  }
}
```

# 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": [
        "durov"
    ]
};

// Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
const run = await client.actor("silentshadow55/telegram-channel-actor").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": ["durov"] }

# Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
run = client.actor("silentshadow55/telegram-channel-actor").call(run_input=run_input)

# Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if there are any)
print("💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/" + run["defaultDatasetId"])
for item in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).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": [
    "durov"
  ]
}' |
apify call silentshadow55/telegram-channel-actor --silent --output-dataset

```

## MCP server setup

```json
{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "command": "npx",
            "args": [
                "mcp-remote",
                "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=silentshadow55/telegram-channel-actor",
                "--header",
                "Authorization: Bearer <YOUR_API_TOKEN>"
            ]
        }
    }
}

```

## OpenAPI specification

Download the OpenAPI definition: https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/2dwKh3FIfaFhc03JS/builds/y72UdMgY4xRuYffiT/openapi.json