We measured how many Telegram subscribers actually see a post. For the biggest channels it's 1 in 25
A Telegram subscriber count says little about readers. Across 45,691 active channels above 10,000 subscribers, a typical post is seen by 8% of subscribers in smaller channels and by 4% above a million, and over a quarter of million-subscriber channels reach fewer than one in fifty
Advertising on Telegram is bought by subscriber count. What an advertiser actually gets is the number of people who see the post, and Telegram prints that number under every post in a public channel. We divided one by the other for every channel in our index above 10,000 subscribers that was still posting when we measured it: 45,691 channels with 2.8 billion subscriptions between them.
Together those channels collect about 306 million views on a typical post, 11% of their subscriptions. The share falls as channels grow: the median channel with 10,000 to 20,000 subscribers shows a post to 8.3% of them, the median channel above a million to 4.0%, one subscriber in 25.
- Reach falls with size. The median channel shows a post to 8.3% of its subscribers at 10,000 to 20,000, 6.0% at 100,000 to 300,000 and 4.0% above a million.
- 64 of the 229 active channels above a million subscribers reach fewer than 2% of them. The lowest, 1win news, has 1.8 million subscribers and about 1,600 views a post.
- Channels that stopped posting look 5 times better on paper: 31% of subscribers against 6.0% for channels that posted that week.
- War & military and music channels are read the most (14% and 12%); gambling (3.8%) and shopping (3.3%) the least.
- Ukrainian channels reach 17% of their subscribers, English ones 6.3%, Burmese 2.8%.
- Channels that carry ads in many posts reach 3.9% against 9.0% for channels without ads at 10,000 to 100,000 subscribers.
- A post has 15% of its views after an hour, 50% after a day and 67% after three days. An ad deleted after 24 hours gets half the views of one that stays.
What we measured
Every post in a public Telegram channel shows how many times it has been viewed. Telegram counts a view when the post appears on someone's screen, including people who reach it through a forward or a link without being subscribed. Divide the views of a typical recent post by the number of subscribers and you get the share of the audience a post reaches. We call it reach.
Our analyser measured it for 89,433 channels above 10,000 subscribers between June 11, 2026 and July 26, 2026. Most comparisons below use the 45,691 of them that had posted in the 30 days before the measurement. Why that matters is the second section.
The bigger the channel, the smaller the share that reads it
Median reach drops from 8.3% for channels with 10,000 to 20,000 subscribers to 4.0% above a million. The spread at every size is wide: in each band a tenth of channels reach more than a quarter of their subscribers, and another tenth reach around one percent or less.
Some audiences are close to empty. When fewer than one subscriber in 50 sees a post, we call the audience a ghost audience. That is 14% of channels with 10,000 to 20,000 subscribers and 28% of channels above a million. From outside we cannot tell whether those subscribers are bots, accounts nobody uses any more, or people who muted the channel long ago. For an advertiser they are the same: they will not see the post.
| Subscribers | Channels | Median reach | Reach under 5% | Reach under 2% |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10K–20K | 15,418 | 8.3% | 33% | 14% |
| 20K–50K | 17,778 | 8.0% | 34% | 14% |
| 50K–100K | 7,112 | 6.4% | 41% | 19% |
| 100K–300K | 4,366 | 6.0% | 44% | 22% |
| 300K–1M | 788 | 5.8% | 45% | 23% |
| 1M+ | 229 | 4.0% | 54% | 28% |
A channel that stopped posting looks better on paper
The first time we ran these numbers, the best-read channels were the ones that had gone quiet. Channels between 10,000 and 100,000 subscribers that had not posted for over six months showed 31% reach; those that had posted that week showed 6.0%.
Their audiences are not better. Old posts keep collecting views for months while nothing new competes for attention, and a channel that posts rarely has each post seen by more of its readers. A seller who quotes views per subscriber from a quiet period is quoting a number a new post will not reach. Everything else in this article compares channels that had posted in the 30 days before we measured them.
| Last post | Channels | Median reach | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Within 7 days | 26,070 | 6.0% | |
| 7–30 days | 14,238 | 13% | |
| 1–6 months | 12,555 | 24% | |
| Over 6 months | 14,309 | 31% |
Gambling and shopping channels are read the least
Compared at the same size, topic changes reach fourfold. War & military channels reach 14% of their subscribers and news channels 9.2%, with few ghost audiences among them. At the bottom are gambling at 3.8% and shopping at 3.3%: about a third of channels in each reach fewer than one subscriber in 50. Crypto sits low as well, at 6.2%, with 22% ghost audiences.
| Topic | Channels | Median reach | Under 2% | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| War & military | 1,000 | 14% | 7% | |
| Music | 465 | 12% | 10% | |
| Humour & entertainment | 2,089 | 11% | 11% | |
| Gaming | 1,428 | 11% | 15% | |
| Sports & fitness | 1,731 | 10% | 12% | |
| Politics, government & law | 2,387 | 9.7% | 11% | |
| News & current affairs | 3,896 | 9.2% | 8% | |
| Education & science | 3,474 | 9.0% | 11% | |
| Business, finance & economy | 2,483 | 9.0% | 13% | |
| Anime, manga & comics | 491 | 8.6% | 16% | |
| Cars & transport | 499 | 8.4% | 12% | |
| Technology & IT | 1,622 | 8.3% | 11% | |
| Lifestyle, travel & food | 1,655 | 8.2% | 9% | |
| Motivation & self-help | 1,603 | 8.1% | 10% | |
| Health & medicine | 946 | 8.0% | 7% | |
| Arts, books & culture | 1,022 | 7.8% | 9% | |
| Religion & spirituality | 1,732 | 7.0% | 17% | |
| Family, kids & relationships | 630 | 6.5% | 17% | |
| Fashion & beauty | 2,414 | 6.3% | 18% | |
| Crypto & trading | 1,955 | 6.2% | 22% | |
| VPN & proxies | 316 | 5.9% | 11% | |
| Jobs & careers | 1,126 | 5.5% | 22% | |
| Adult content | 691 | 5.0% | 26% | |
| Movies, TV & streaming | 1,253 | 4.6% | 32% | |
| Betting & gambling | 1,035 | 3.8% | 35% | |
| Shopping, deals & giveaways | 1,525 | 3.3% | 35% |
Ukrainian channels are read the most, Burmese the least
Language matters as much as topic. Ukrainian channels reach 17% of their subscribers and only 2% of them have ghost audiences; Russian channels reach 9.3%. English-language channels reach 6.3%, and 22% of them reach fewer than one subscriber in 50. Chinese (3.5%) and Burmese (2.8%) channels are at the bottom; 40% of Burmese channels have ghost audiences.
| Language | Channels | Median reach | Under 2% | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ukrainian | 1,311 | 17% | 2% | |
| Uzbek | 1,020 | 13% | 7% | |
| Russian | 16,432 | 9.3% | 8% | |
| Italian | 368 | 7.2% | 18% | |
| Persian | 4,646 | 7.1% | 14% | |
| English | 5,260 | 6.3% | 22% | |
| Spanish | 705 | 5.9% | 20% | |
| Arabic | 3,425 | 5.8% | 23% | |
| French | 334 | 5.5% | 27% | |
| Chinese | 1,350 | 3.5% | 33% | |
| Burmese | 509 | 2.8% | 40% |
Channels full of ads reach half as many people
Our analyser labels whether a channel's recent posts carry ads. Between 10,000 and 100,000 subscribers, channels with ads in many posts reach 3.9% of their subscribers and channels without ads 9.0%. Between 100,000 and a million it is 2.5% against 7.0%, and 43% of the ad-heavy channels have ghost audiences.
Channels sold through a shared ad contact, which we mapped in our study of Telegram ad networks, show the same pattern: 4.7% against 6.6% between 100,000 and a million subscribers, and 2.9% against 5.4% above a million.
| Subscribers | No ads | Some ads | Many ads | Many ads, under 2% |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10K–100K | 9.0% | 7.8% | 3.9% | 32% |
| 100K–1M | 7.0% | 6.7% | 2.5% | 43% |
| 1M+ | 5.0% | 3.0% | 3.0% | 32% |
The million-subscriber channels
229 channels above a million subscribers were active when we measured them. The least read have one to five million subscribers and a few thousand views a post. Sorted by reach, the two ends of the list look like this.
| Channel | Subscribers | Reach | Views per post | Language |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1win news | 1.8M | 0.09% | 2K | English |
| Sergei Sergienko | 3.8M | 0.1% | 4K | English |
| Just News | 3.7M | 0.1% | 4K | English |
| Popcorn Today | 3.4M | 0.1% | 3K | English |
| OKX Новости | 4.9M | 0.12% | 6K | Russian |
| INSIDER Deutscher | Nachrichten | 1.3M | 0.12% | 2K | German |
| No 1 Telegram Influencer | 2.9M | 0.2% | 6K | English |
| INSIDER | News | Politics | USA | 2.1M | 0.23% | 5K | English |
| خبر فوری | 1.0M | 0.24% | 2K | Persian |
| خرید صندلی(پزشکی -پیراپزشکی) | 1.1M | 0.26% | 3K | Persian |
| Channel | Subscribers | Reach | Views per post | Language |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| LaborX - Web3 Jobs l Crypto & Blockchain Jobs | 1.2M | 65% | 762K | English |
| Matin Crypto | ارز دیجیتال | 2.2M | 59% | 1.3M | Persian |
| Жеcть дня | 1.6M | 58% | 940K | Russian |
| Venture Capital | 2.8M | 58% | 1.6M | English |
| Топор. Экономика. | 1.2M | 53% | 633K | Russian |
| Вячеслав Володин | 1.3M | 51% | 664K | Russian |
| СМИ Россия не Москва | 2.9M | 51% | 1.5M | Russian |
| Exile | 1.3M | 49% | 652K | Russian |
| VilarsoFREE |CryptoTrading ¹⁸⁺ | 1.0M | 48% | 488K | Russian |
| شبكة ابن بابل | 3.9M | 46% | 1.8M | Arabic |
A high ratio does not prove a real audience either: views can be bought like subscribers. But a channel whose posts are seen by one subscriber in a thousand is not delivering what its subscriber count advertises.
Half of a post's views come in the first day
Telegram has no ranking feed: a post sits in the channel until readers open it, and views keep coming in for weeks. We saw 142,967 posts from 12,550 channels at a known age and compared each with the same channel's posts that were one to four weeks old. A typical post has 15% of those views after an hour, 50% after a day, 62% after two days and 92% after a week.
This is what an ad buyer pays for. Many channels sell posts that are deleted after 24, 48 or 72 hours. A post deleted after a day collects about 50% of the views it would get if it stayed, after three days about 67%. A fair price for a 24-hour post is half the price of one that stays.
| Deleted after | Typical post | Middle half of posts |
|---|---|---|
| 24 hours | 50% | 39%–68% |
| 48 hours | 62% | 50%–81% |
| 72 hours | 67% | 56%–83% |
| 7 days | 92% | 80%–100% |
Two things matter less than advertisers tend to think. Ad posts are not buried: across 1,104 posts marked as ads in 761 channels, mostly Russian-language ones where ads must carry a label by law, the typical ad got 98% of the views of a regular post in the same channel. And the hour of posting barely changes the total. In Russian and Ukrainian channels, where we know the time zone, posts published between 9:00 and 21:00 ended up within 1% of each other after a week; posts published after midnight collected about 5% more.
Check a channel
Paste a channel's username or t.me link to see its reach, where it stands among channels of the same size, language and topic, and how many views an ad would get. The same check lives on its own page as the Telegram channel audit.
Method
Population. Our index holds 146,098 public channels above 10,000 subscribers, with groups left out and channels listed under several usernames counted once. The index is not a random sample of Telegram.
Reach. Our analyser records the ratio of views on recent posts to subscribers. We use measurements taken between June 11, 2026 and July 26, 2026, drop placeholder values, and compare it with our own crawl of posts where both exist: for most channels the two agree within a factor of 1.5. A channel counts as active if its last post was less than 30 days before the measurement. Ghost audience means reach under 2%.
Topics and languages. Topics come from the tags our analyser gives each channel, grouped into 27 families; a channel's main topic is the family most of its tags belong to. Language is the language of the channel's description.
Views over time. Our crawler saw each post once, at a known age. For every channel with at least three posts aged one to four weeks we took the median of their views and divided each post's views by it. Ads are posts with a legal ad label or an ad hashtag. Posting hours are compared on posts one to four weeks old, against each channel's own average.
Limits. Views include people who are not subscribed, and some channels buy views as well as subscribers, so reach can overstate a real audience. Ads and topics are labels from our analyser and can be wrong for individual channels.