tgden — Telegram catalog & search

TGDen Telegram Tools — free scrapers, search and exports

Run Telegram tools locally or in a public GitHub Actions workflow. Export JSON and CSV. No Apify account, Telegram account, bot token or API key is required.

Download one Python file · Run on GitHub · Free tools guide · По-русски · API & MCP

Free tools

git clone https://github.com/JustJuice55/tgden-api.git

cd tgden-api python3 -m tgden_tools groups --query python --limit 10 --output output python3 -m tgden_tools channel-posts --username telegram --limit 5 --output posts

Python 3.10+ and the standard library are enough. Results are written to result.json, result.csv and metadata.json in the output directory.

To run from the GitHub website: fork this public repository → enable Actions → Run a free Telegram tool → choose a tool → Run workflow → download the result artifact. A GitHub login is needed for that route; the local commands need none.

These are free public-data tools with explicit limits. Catalog search is keyword-based; buyer search is a masked preview. Full partner-only semantic search, private chat access and a complete channel history are outside this free bundle. See limits and examples.

Public catalog API and hosted MCP

**A live index of what exists *on* Telegram: 1.8M+ channels, 448k+ group chats, 228k+ bots, plus live marketplace listings and the weekly demand index.** No Telegram account. No API key. No install. CORS enabled — it runs from a browser tab as happily as from a server.

• MCP endpoint — https://tgden.com/api/mcp
• REST API — https://tgden.com/api/catalog
• Human UI — tgden.com · Docs — tgden.com/en/api-docs

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What people ask for in Telegram

Telegram Demand Index — a daily, open count of requests in public Telegram chats by country and niche (services, goods, real estate, jobs, freight), as CSV and JSON with a day-by-day history. It is the telegram_demand tool below, published as a dataset.

Maintain a Telegram community list

Telegram Link Checker & Community Directory checks public previews beyond HTTP 200 and includes a small, regularly refreshed group directory. Use the Python CLI or reusable GitHub Action to distinguish community, bot, generic-contact and inconclusive previews. No Telegram account or API key is required.

Why another Telegram MCP server?

Every other Telegram MCP server connects to your Telegram account — you hand it an API hash, a phone number or a bot token, and it reads *your* dialogs, sends *your* messages, manages *your* groups. Useful, but it can only ever see what you already have access to.

This one is the opposite. It's a public catalog, so it answers the question none of the others can:

*"What Telegram channels and groups exist about X, and which are worth joining?"*

Because it never touches an account, there's nothing to leak and nothing to get banned.

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Quick start

Claude Code

claude mcp add --transport http tgden https://tgden.com/api/mcp

Listed in the official MCP Registry as io.github.JustJuice55/telegram-catalog — clients that browse the registry find it under *telegram*.

Claude Desktop · Cursor · any MCP client — add to your MCP config:

{

"mcpServers": { "tgden": { "type": "http", "url": "https://tgden.com/api/mcp" } } }

That's the entire setup: streamable HTTP transport, stateless, no auth handshake.

Check it by hand:

curl -s https://tgden.com/api/mcp \

-H 'Content-Type: application/json' \ -d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"tools/list"}' | jq '.result.tools[].name'

Tools

Resources

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Free REST API (no key either)

Telegram has no official public search. Finding a channel, a live discussion group or a bot by topic means guessing usernames or trusting closed directories. If you don't speak MCP, the same catalog is plain HTTP.

GET /api/catalog — search

curl "https://tgden.com/api/catalog?q=crypto&type=channel&limit=3"

{

"items": [ { "id": "6ec0407a-4f5e-4a86-9154-f42481bc9413", "telegram_id": 2075341442, "username": "hamster_kombat", "title": "Hamster Kombat Announcement", "is_private": false, "avatar_url": "https://cdn4.telesco.pe/file/…" } ] }

Call it from the browser

Access-Control-Allow-Origin: * is set on both read-only endpoints, so there is no proxy step: paste this into any page's devtools console (or a CodePen) and it answers.

const r = await fetch("https://tgden.com/api/catalog?q=crypto&type=channel&limit=3");

console.table((await r.json()).items);

Rate limit is shared and fair-use (~200 requests / 10s per IP). No key, no signup, no CORS proxy, no Access-Control-Allow-Credentials — nothing of yours is ever sent.

GET /api/suggest — instant autocomplete

Grouped, ranked suggestions as-you-type. Good for search boxes and agent tool-use.

curl "https://tgden.com/api/suggest?q=btc"

{

"groups": [ { "key": "chats", "label": { "en": "live chats", "ru": "живые чаты" }, "items": [ { "label": "BTC Times Discussion", "sub": "221 members", "href": "/en/chat/thebtctimes", "kind": "chat", "username": "thebtctimes" } ] } ] }

Runnable examples: shell · Python · JavaScript.

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Limits — published, because hidden limits are worse than low ones

Verified search-engine and AI crawlers are excluded from the shared limit.

We treat these as a contract: when they change, we announce it here and in the docs. No silent throttling. Need guaranteed throughput or a bulk export for something real? Open an issue, or reach us via @tgden_bot.

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About the data

Parsed continuously from Telegram's public surfaces — fresher than any LLM training set, which is most of the point of exposing it over MCP.

*Census 06.08.2026. The MCP server reports these totals live, so what your agent sees is current — not whatever was true when this file was written.*

Public data only: channels, groups and bots that are already publicly listed or linked. No private groups, no archives from closed communities, no personal data.

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Use cases

• Agent tool-use — give an agent real Telegram discovery in one config line.
• Research — map communities, track niches, study the open Telegram graph.
• Discovery bots — recommend channels and chats by topic.
• Market intel — what's being rented, sold and offered in regional Telegram economies.
• Demand intel — what people ask for in Telegram chats, by topic and country, week over week.

Machine-readable site summary for AI crawlers: https://tgden.com/llms.txt

License

MIT — do what you want, no warranty. Data is public Telegram metadata.

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Maintained by tgden.com. Not affiliated with Telegram FZ-LLC. Indexes public t.me links only.