TelegramBot (Telegram): what it is and how to allow or block it

Q: How do I block TelegramBot?

Add a group to the robots.txt at the root of your domain: User-agent: TelegramBot followed by Disallow: /. A group that names the bot overrides a general User-agent: * group. Telegram documents nothing about robots.txt for this agent, so we cannot promise it is honored.

Updated 2026-10-25 · checked against the operator's documentation on 2026-10-25

TelegramBot is Reported to be the fetcher that appears in server logs when a link is shared in Telegram. Its robots.txt token is TelegramBot.

Facts

Operator: Telegram

Category: Social preview fetcher (reported, unconfirmed)

robots.txt token: TelegramBot

Honors robots.txt?: Not documented. Telegram documents nothing about robots.txt for this agent that we could find; compliance is unconfirmed.

User-agent example: Contains telegrambot (the operator documents no full example string)

User agent we logged: TelegramBot (like TwitterBot)Most common variant in our own logs, 4 requests, 19 to 25 Oct 2026. Static snapshot, not the live counter below. A logged string is a claim: anyone can send it.

Official source: No crawler documentation published by Telegram (checked 2026-10-25)

Compared with the source: 2026-10-25

What it is used for

Reported to fetch a URL after it is shared in Telegram, to build the link preview. Telegram itself publishes no page about this fetcher that we could find.

What happens if you block it

We cannot say what blocking it changes, because Telegram documents nothing about this fetcher. A link preview may not appear in Telegram if the fetch is refused; that is unconfirmed.

Telegram publishes no page for this fetcher that we could find. The user agent we logged reads TelegramBot (like TwitterBot). Because anyone can send it, treat the identity of a request as unconfirmed.

Is it really TelegramBot?

Anyone can send TelegramBot as a user agent, and Telegram publishes no IP list or reverse-DNS method that we could find, so a log line cannot prove a request is real. Check whether it fetched /robots.txt and whether the address belongs to the operator's network.

Telegram publishes no crawler documentation that we could find (checked 2026-10-25), so there is no IP list or reverse-DNS method to compare against and the user agent alone cannot show that a request is genuine.
Paste any user agent from your logs into the user-agent lookup, or follow the scripts in Fake Googlebots and PHP scanners.

How to allow or block TelegramBot

Add one of these groups to the robots.txt at the root of your domain. A group that names the bot overrides a general User-agent: * group.

Allow TelegramBot

User-agent: TelegramBot
Allow: /

Block TelegramBot

User-agent: TelegramBot
Disallow: /

Does your site allow TelegramBot today? The checker evaluates your robots.txt for this and every other bot.Check my site

What we see on our own sites

Live counter, last 30 days: no request identifying as TelegramBot recorded yet. The counter started after the week below, so it does not cover it. Earlier log snapshot (19 to 25 Oct 2026): 4 requests identified as TelegramBot.

Counts come from the websites we operate; they hold no IP addresses or URLs, and a user agent is only a claim. See the bot traffic data and the methodology.

Questions about TelegramBot

What is TelegramBot?

Reported to be the fetcher that appears in server logs when a link is shared in Telegram. Reported to fetch a URL after it is shared in Telegram, to build the link preview. Telegram itself publishes no page about this fetcher that we could find.

Is TelegramBot safe and legitimate?

Telegram publishes no crawler documentation that we could find, so we cannot say what a genuine TelegramBot request looks like. A user-agent string is only a claim, and anyone can send it. We found no IP list or reverse-DNS method published by Telegram (checked 2026-10-25), so the user agent alone cannot prove a request is real.

Does TelegramBot obey robots.txt?

Not documented. Telegram documents nothing about robots.txt for this agent that we could find; compliance is unconfirmed.

How do I block TelegramBot?

Add a group to the robots.txt at the root of your domain: User-agent: TelegramBot followed by Disallow: /. A group that names the bot overrides a general User-agent: * group. Telegram documents nothing about robots.txt for this agent, so we cannot promise it is honored.

Will blocking TelegramBot hurt my Google rankings or AI visibility?

Not your rankings. Telegram documents nothing about this fetcher, so we cannot say what blocking it changes; a link preview may not appear if the fetch is refused.

Other Social preview fetchers

All Social Preview Fetchers · Bot directory · Which bots to allow or block · robots.txt generator · See a page as a bot