Telegram MCP Server

📖 Documentation · ☁️ Cloud version — connect Telegram to Claude.ai or ChatGPT in 30 seconds with QR code, no API keys needed.

Telegram MCP Server — a Model Context Protocol server that connects AI assistants like Claude and ChatGPT to Telegram via the MTProto protocol. Unlike bots, this runs as a userbot -- it operates under your personal Telegram account using GramJS, giving full access to your chats, contacts, and message history.

Features

• Comprehensive tool coverage -- the most full-featured Telegram MCP server available
• MTProto protocol -- direct Telegram API access, not the limited Bot API
• Userbot -- operates as your personal account, not a bot
• Full-featured -- messaging, reactions, polls, scheduled messages, stickers, media, contacts, and more
• Forum Topics -- list topics, read per-topic messages, send to specific topics, per-topic unread counts
• Stickers -- search sticker sets, browse installed/recent stickers, send stickers to any chat
• Account & profile management -- update profile, set emoji status, birthday, personal channel, profile photo, manage privacy settings, sessions, auto-delete timers
• Chat folders -- create, edit, delete and reorder folders, toggle folder tags, read suggested folders (v1.33.0)
• Global privacy -- read and set account-wide privacy settings (v1.33.0)
• Global search -- search messages across all chats at once
• Real-time polling -- fetch updates via stateless cursors; agent owns {pts, qts, date} state
• Inline bots & buttons -- query inline bots, send results, press callback buttons
• Stories -- read stories from peers, get story view stats; publish/edit/delete stories, react, pin, stealth mode, archive, report (v1.30.0)
• Discussion -- get discussion-group info for channel posts with comments, list groups eligible for discussion (v1.30.0)
• Read Receipts -- who read a message in a small group, when your private message was read (v1.30.0)
• Admin controls -- toggle channel signatures, anti-spam, forum mode, prehistory; approve join requests
• Stats -- channel and supergroup analytics (GetBroadcastStats / GetMegagroupStats)
• Boosts & Business -- boost status, boosters list, Telegram Business chat links CRUD, work hours, location, greeting/away/intro messages
• Star gifts -- browse available and saved gifts, save/convert gifts, manage Stars balance and subscriptions (opt-in via MCP_TELEGRAM_ENABLE_STARS=1, v1.34.0)
• Shared daemon -- one background process serves multiple MCP clients over a single Telegram session; see the shared-daemon guide (v1.38.0)
• QR code login -- authenticate by scanning a QR code in the Telegram app
• Session persistence -- login once, stay connected across restarts
• Human-readable output -- sender names are resolved, not just numeric IDs
• Works with any MCP client -- Claude Code, Claude Desktop, ChatGPT, Cursor, VS Code, Mastra, etc.

Prerequisites

• Node.js 18 or later
• Telegram API credentials -- API_ID and API_HASH from my.telegram.org

Quick Start

1. Get Telegram API credentials

1. Go to my.telegram.org and log in with your phone number.
2. Navigate to API development tools.
3. Create a new application (any name and platform).
4. Copy the App api_id and App api_hash.

2. Login

TELEGRAM_API_ID=YOUR_ID TELEGRAM_API_HASH=YOUR_HASH npx @overpod/mcp-telegram login

A QR code will appear in the terminal. Open Telegram on your phone, go to Settings > Devices > Link Desktop Device, and scan the code. The session is saved to ~/.mcp-telegram/session and reused automatically.

Custom session path: set TELEGRAM_SESSION_PATH=/path/to/session to store the session file elsewhere.

Two-step verification (2FA): if your account has a cloud password enabled, scanning the QR code is not enough — Telegram also requires the password. Provide it via TELEGRAM_2FA_PASSWORD so the login can complete:

bash

Copy

TELEGRAM_API_ID=YOUR_ID TELEGRAM_API_HASH=YOUR_HASH TELEGRAM_2FA_PASSWORD=YOUR_PASSWORD npx @overpod/mcp-telegram login

The password is only used locally to answer Telegram's SRP challenge and is never persisted.

3. Add to Claude

claude mcp add telegram -s user \
  -e TELEGRAM_API_ID=YOUR_ID \
  -e TELEGRAM_API_HASH=YOUR_HASH \
  -- npx @overpod/mcp-telegram

That's it! Ask Claude to run telegram-status to verify.

Multiple Accounts

Use TELEGRAM_SESSION_PATH to run separate Telegram accounts side by side:

# Login each account with a unique session path
TELEGRAM_API_ID=ID1 TELEGRAM_API_HASH=HASH1 TELEGRAM_SESSION_PATH=~/.mcp-telegram/session-work npx @overpod/mcp-telegram login
TELEGRAM_API_ID=ID2 TELEGRAM_API_HASH=HASH2 TELEGRAM_SESSION_PATH=~/.mcp-telegram/session-personal npx @overpod/mcp-telegram login

Then add each as a separate MCP server:

claude mcp add telegram-work -s user \
  -e TELEGRAM_API_ID=ID1 \
  -e TELEGRAM_API_HASH=HASH1 \
  -e TELEGRAM_SESSION_PATH=~/.mcp-telegram/session-work \
  -- npx @overpod/mcp-telegram

claude mcp add telegram-personal -s user \
  -e TELEGRAM_API_ID=ID2 \
  -e TELEGRAM_API_HASH=HASH2 \
  -e TELEGRAM_SESSION_PATH=~/.mcp-telegram/session-personal \
  -- npx @overpod/mcp-telegram

Each account gets its own session file — no conflicts.

Multiple agents / concurrent clients (shared daemon)

The opposite of multiple accounts: one account driven by many clients at once — several Claude Code windows, parallel sub-agents, or multiple IDEs. Normally each process opens the same session and they evict one another with AUTH_KEY_DUPLICATED. Serve mode fixes this.

Run a single persistent daemon that owns the one Telegram connection. Every other process auto-detects the daemon (via a PID lock) and becomes a thin client that proxies tool calls to it over a local Unix socket:

# On the host, once: start the daemon (owns the connection, no stdio)
TELEGRAM_API_ID=YOUR_ID TELEGRAM_API_HASH=YOUR_HASH mcp-telegram serve
# (or set MCP_TELEGRAM_DAEMON=1 instead of the `serve` argument)

Then point each MCP client at the same install with the same TELEGRAM_SESSION_PATH — no serve argument. They connect to the daemon automatically; closing any client never drops the shared connection. Credentials are only required by the daemon (the owner), so client commands can omit TELEGRAM_API_ID/TELEGRAM_API_HASH and keep them where the daemon runs.

See the shared daemon guide for a systemd unit and SSH usage.

Proxy Support

If Telegram is blocked or you're running in a containerized environment (Docker, K3s), use a SOCKS5 or MTProxy:

# SOCKS5 proxy
TELEGRAM_PROXY_IP=127.0.0.1 \
TELEGRAM_PROXY_PORT=10808 \
npx @overpod/mcp-telegram

# MTProxy
TELEGRAM_PROXY_IP=proxy.example.com \
TELEGRAM_PROXY_PORT=443 \
TELEGRAM_PROXY_SECRET=ee00000000000000000000000000000000 \
npx @overpod/mcp-telegram

Connecting via WSS (port 443)

If your VPS or hosting IP is reachable on outbound port 443 but not the default MTProto port 80 (some cloud providers ban port 80 on Telegram DC IP ranges as anti-abuse policy), set:

TELEGRAM_USE_WSS=true npx @overpod/mcp-telegram

Installation Options

npx (recommended, zero install)

No need to clone or install anything. Just use npx @overpod/mcp-telegram.

Global install

npm install -g @overpod/mcp-telegram
mcp-telegram          # run server
mcp-telegram login    # QR login

Pre-built binary (no runtime needed)

Download from Releases — standalone single-file binaries, zero dependencies: