# Methodology

How TelegramInformer collects public Telegram data, how often each channel is checked, how every number on the site is calculated, and what the data cannot tell you.

This page explains where every number on TelegramInformer comes from. If something here doesn't match what you see on
a channel page, that is a bug: please [tell us](/contact).

- Channels tracked daily: 14,427
- Categories: 48; countries with a ranking: 7
- Subscriber history since: May 2023
- Data last refreshed: November 12, 2026

## What we collect

We only collect what Telegram shows publicly for **public channels**: anything anyone can see by opening the
channel in Telegram or at t.me/s/username.

- **Channel profile:** title, @username, description, photo, subscriber count, verified and scam/fake marks.
- **Posts:** text, time, views, reactions, and for some channels reposts (forwards) and comments.
- **Links between channels:** reposts from other channels and @mentions or t.me links to them in posts.

We do **not** collect anything from private channels or groups, direct messages, or the profiles of individual
Telegram users, and we don't record who subscribes to a channel.

## How we collect it

Two collectors, both our own software, running on our server:

1. **Web previews.** Most channels publish a web preview at t.me/s/username. Our crawler reads it like a browser
   would, at a polite pace.
2. **The Telegram API.** Some channels have no web preview. For those, and for exact repost and comment counts on
   recent posts of larger channels, a Telegram account reads them through Telegram's official API (MTProto), exactly
   as the Telegram app opens a public channel. It never posts, joins private chats or contacts anyone.

New channels are found automatically: through reposts, mentions and links in posts we already track, through
Telegram's own "similar channels" suggestions, and through [submissions](/new). A newly found channel is checked and
listed once it has at least 500 subscribers.

## How often channels are checked

| What | How often |
|---|---|
| Subscribers, title, description, photo | Every day |
| New posts, active channels (3+ posts a day) | Every 8 hours |
| New posts, regular channels (a post every 1–3 days) | Every day |
| New posts, quiet channels | Every 3 days |
| New posts, dormant channels (no post in 30 days) | Every week |
| Exact views, reposts and comments of recent posts (API, larger channels) | Every day |
| Growth, reach, engagement and rankings | Recalculated every 6 hours |
| Channels that went private or disappeared | Re-checked every month |

A channel that can't be found three times in a row is marked as unavailable and leaves the rankings; its page stays
if it has history worth keeping. The data on this site was last refreshed on **November 12, 2026**.

## How the numbers are calculated

**Subscribers.** The count Telegram shows, as of our latest check.

**Growth (24 hours, 7 days, 30 days).** The latest subscriber count minus the count closest to 1, 7 or 30 days
earlier, scaled to exactly that period. We only use a past count from a narrow window (18–36 hours, 6–8 days,
27–33 days back) and only if our latest count is less than 48 hours old; otherwise growth is shown as unknown
rather than guessed.

**Posts per day.** Posts in the last 30 days divided by the number of days we have seen the channel posting (at most 30).

**Reach (average views at 24 hours).** For posts from the last 30 days, the views each post had when it was about a
day old (between 20 and 29 hours), averaged. Views keep growing after that, so this is a fair way to compare
channels that post at different times.

**ERR (engagement rate by reach).** Reach divided by subscribers. An ERR of 25% means a typical post is seen by a
quarter of the subscriber count within a day. Shown in rankings only for channels with at least 1,000 subscribers.

**ER (engagement rate).** Interactions divided by views over the last 30 days of posts. Where we have reposts and
comments (at least 3 such posts), interactions are reactions + reposts + comments; otherwise reactions alone, and
the page says which basis it used. Values we don't have are shown as "–", never as 0.

**Citation index.** How widely a channel is cited by other channels in the last 30 days. Each distinct channel that
reposted or mentioned it counts once, weighted by its own audience: log10(10 + its average reach). Being cited by
a large channel counts more than by a small one, but a hundred small channels still count for a lot.

**Mentioned by / cites.** The channels that reposted or mentioned this one in the last 30 days, and the channels it
reposted or mentioned, with counts.

**Ads.** A post counts as an ad when it is explicitly marked as one: an "#ad", "#реклама", "sponsored" or
"advertisement" label, or an advertising identifier (erid) required by law in some countries. Unmarked native
advertising is not detected, so the real share of ads can be higher.

**Posting times.** Posts of the last 90 days by weekday and hour, in UTC.

**Views by post age.** Average views of posts from the last 30 days at 1, 3, 6, 12, 24 and 48 hours, 3 days and 7 days after publishing, from our
repeated readings of the same posts.

**Similar channels.** Telegram's own recommendations, plus channels cited by the same channels.

## Rankings

Channels are ranked by subscribers within: all channels, their category, their country and their language. Ties are
broken by the order we first recorded the channels, so a position never changes without a reason. The rank on a
channel page is always the same as its row in the list it links to. Sorting by growth or by ERR is offered as a
view of the same lists.

Only listed channels take part: those that are active and not hidden under the [editorial policy](/editorial-policy).
Channels labelled 18+ are ranked like the others and marked as such.

## Categories, countries and languages

- **Category** is the channel's main topic, from a fixed list of 48 categories. It is assigned by an AI
  classifier that reads the channel's title, description and recent posts, run and reviewed by
  [Pavel Ufimtsev](/about/pavel-ufimtsev). A category set by a person always wins over the classifier and is never
  overwritten by it.
- **Country** is where a channel's audience is, not where its owner lives. It is decided the same way; channels
  written for readers everywhere are listed as international. Not every channel has been assigned a country yet;
  those appear only in the worldwide rankings.
- **Language** is detected automatically from the title, description and posts: each text votes separately and a
  language needs a clear majority. Channels mixing languages or with little text may have none.

If you think a channel is in the wrong place, [let us know](/contact).

## Known limitations

- **Reposts and comments** come only from channels read through the Telegram API, a small share of all channels.
  Elsewhere they are shown as "–".
- **Freshness.** Most numbers are at most a day old; posts of quiet channels can be a few days behind.
- **Subscriber history** starts in May 2023 for channels that were in the original catalog, and on the day we
  found them for the rest. Gaps in history are not filled in.
- **Fake subscribers and bought views** can't be seen directly in public data. We compute internal warning signs
  (for example, a jump in subscribers that no other channel's mention explains, or reach far below the category
  norm) and use them for review; they are not yet shown on pages.
- **Coverage.** We track 14,427 channels, not every channel on Telegram. Large and frequently cited channels
  are found first.

## Citing our data

You are welcome to quote and cite figures from TelegramInformer. Please name the source and link the page you used,
with the date, for example:

> TelegramInformer, "Pavel Durov (@durov): Telegram channel statistics", accessed 12 November 2026,
> https://telegraminformer.com/channels/durov

Every channel and ranking page has a Markdown copy (add `.md` to the address) that includes the data date and a
ready citation line. AI assistants can start at [llms.txt](/llms.txt).

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Web page: https://telegraminformer.com/methodology