Best Free Telegram Bots for Groups

The best free Telegram bots for groups are moderation bots that do real work on a free plan: vet new members, stop spam, filter harmful content, and remove invite-link spam, all without a subscription. "Free" on Telegram comes in two shapes. You can build your own bot from scratch at no cost, or you can add a ready-made moderation bot that already does the job. This guide explains both honestly, then shows exactly what Telegram Bot App's free tier includes so you can judge whether it covers your group.

The honest version up front: a genuinely useful free group bot is rare because the expensive parts of moderation are the AI checks (scanning images, reading sentiment), and those cost real compute. What separates a good free tier from a token one is whether the core moderation, the part that runs on every message and every join, stays on for free. With Telegram Bot App it does.

Two meanings of "free" on Telegram

When people search for a free Telegram bot for groups, they usually mean one of two things.

Build your own. Anyone can create a Telegram bot for free. You message @BotFather, send /newbot, choose a name and a username ending in bot, and Telegram hands you an API token. That part is genuinely free. But the token by itself does nothing. To make the bot moderate a group, you then have to write code against the Telegram Bot API, host it on a server, and maintain it. CAPTCHA, spam scoring, NSFW image detection, none of that exists until you build it. For most group owners that is weeks of work plus hosting costs, which is not free in any meaningful sense.

Add a ready-made bot. The faster path, and what most people actually want, is a bot that already does the job. You add it to your group, give it admin rights, and configure it. No code, no server, no token to manage. This is what Telegram Bot App is. The rest of this guide is about that path. For background on what bots are, see what are bots.

A note on what this is not. Telegram Bot App is not a bot-builder and not a no-code platform. You do not create or program it. You add a finished moderation bot and adjust its settings from a web dashboard. @BotFather does not build a moderation bot for you either; it only issues the token for a bot you would write yourself.

What a free group bot should actually cover

A free tier is only worth adding if it handles the jobs a group admin faces daily. Five of them matter most:

1. Vet new members at the door. A join is when an attacker walks in.
2. Stop spam before members see it. Spam is why most groups need a bot at all.
3. Filter harmful content. NSFW images, toxic language, banned words, malicious links.
4. Keep admins in control. Thresholds and toggles you set, not fixed behaviour.
5. Cost nothing to run at baseline. The core checks should not eat into a paid quota.

A free bot that covers one or two of these is a partial tool. The section below shows which of them Telegram Bot App's free tier covers, and where the paid tiers actually begin.

What Telegram Bot App's free tier includes

The free plan (called Basic, priced at $0) runs the full core moderation stack with no quota on the parts that fire on every message and every join. Specifically, the free tier includes:

• CAPTCHA on join. Every new member is challenged before they can post. You set the timeout from 1 to 60 minutes, and choose whether unverified accounts are removed or just restricted when it expires. Details in the CAPTCHA verification guide.
• Welcome messages. Custom greetings and auto-generated group rules for new arrivals.
• Both anti-spam layers. AI Spam Intelligence scores each user from 0.0 to 1.0 using Bayesian analysis and auto-kicks at 0.75 by default. Spamfinder is a separate machine-learning classifier that reads message content against a threshold you set. Both run at no quota on the free tier. How they work together is covered in the anti-spam guide.
• Language enforcement. Detect and act on messages in languages you have not allowed, across roughly 33 to 43 languages.
• Media restrictions. Block videos, GIFs, audio, stickers, files, and forwarded messages.
• Custom badwords filtering. Your own banned-word list, with leetspeak and bypass-trick detection.
• Profile scanning. New members' profile pictures and bios are checked, including NSFW screening of profile images.
• Invite-link blocking. Telegram channel and group invite links are removed automatically. This blocks Telegram invite links specifically; it is not a general URL remover. Malicious-URL detection uses Safe Browsing on a separate quota.
• The web dashboard. Analytics and a live punishment feed, covered in the dashboard guide.

On top of that, the free tier includes two AI-scan allowances each month: 500 image scans (NSFW detection on photos, GIFs, stickers, and profile pictures) and 1,000 sentiment analyses (toxicity, profanity, insults, threats). These run on the same engine the paid plans use; the free plan simply caps how many run per month.

Those two limits exist because scanning an image with a neural network and reading a message for toxicity both cost real compute per item, so they are metered. The cheap checks, spam scoring, language detection, badwords, and CAPTCHA, are not metered at all, which is why they stay fully on for free.

What's free vs what's paid, honestly

This is the part most "free bot" lists skip, so here it is plainly.

Paid tiers do not turn moderation back on. Every core moderation check listed above runs on the free tier. What the paid tiers buy is higher monthly quotas for the metered AI scans (image and sentiment), plus faster support response times.

Concretely, the tiers are:

• Basic (free): 500 image scans + 1,000 sentiment analyses per month, all core moderation.
• Gold ($4.99/mo): higher image and sentiment quotas, priority email support.
• Platinum ($9.99/mo): higher quotas again, plus a discount on overage charges.
• Ultimate ($49.99/mo): the highest quotas, custom thresholds, and a dedicated account manager.

Annual billing runs about 20% cheaper than paying monthly. The full breakdown is in purchasing premium.

So the decision is not "free protects my group, paid protects it better." A small or medium group that posts a moderate number of images and toxic-language candidates per month fits inside the free quotas and gets the same protection a paying group does. You upgrade when monthly volume exceeds 500 images or 1,000 flagged messages, not because moderation stops working.

Who the free tier fits

The free tier is enough on its own for a lot of groups: a small private community where joins are the main risk (CAPTCHA, profile scanning, and both spam layers all run free), a hobby group with occasional rather than constant photos (500 image scans a month covers it), or a multilingual group that needs language enforcement and badwords filtering (both free and unmetered).

It starts to feel tight when a group is large and image-heavy, or when toxic-language candidates run past 1,000 messages a month and you want every one scanned. At that point the quota, not the feature set, is the limit, and a paid tier raises the ceiling.

Free build vs free add: which to choose

If you want to learn the Bot API and run your own code, building via @BotFather costs nothing for the token, but expect to write and host real software to get any moderation behaviour. If your goal is a managed group rather than a coding project, adding a ready-made bot is faster and the free tier already does the work: no token to guard, no server to keep alive, no code to maintain. For most group owners that is the practical meaning of "free." Walk through it in how to add the bot.

Frequently asked questions

Is Telegram Bot App actually free, or is it a trial?

It is a free tier, not a trial. The Basic plan stays free indefinitely and includes all core moderation plus 500 image scans and 1,000 sentiment analyses each month. There is no expiry and no card required to use it. You only pay if you want higher monthly scan quotas or faster support.

What does the free tier not include?

The free tier includes every core moderation check. What it limits is volume: image NSFW scanning is capped at 500 per month and sentiment analysis at 1,000 per month. Beyond those counts, the metered scans pause until the next month or until you upgrade. Cheap checks like CAPTCHA, both spam layers, language, badwords, and invite-link blocking are not metered and never pause on the free tier.

Can I build my own free Telegram bot instead?

Yes. Anyone can create a Telegram bot for free through @BotFather: send /newbot, pick a name and username, and receive an API token. The token is free, but it does nothing until you write code against the Bot API and host it somewhere. Building moderation features like CAPTCHA and spam detection from scratch is a real software project. If you want those features without building them, adding a ready-made bot is the shortcut.

Does upgrading unlock moderation features that were turned off?

No. Paid plans do not re-enable any moderation. Every core check runs on the free tier already. Upgrading buys higher monthly quotas for the two metered AI scans (image and sentiment) and faster support response, nothing more. Your spam, badwords, language, and CAPTCHA protection is identical on free and paid.

Will the free tier stop spam bots on its own?

Yes, for most groups. CAPTCHA challenges every join before a new account can post, and both anti-spam layers (AI Spam Intelligence and Spamfinder) run unmetered on the free tier. Together they handle the bulk of automated spam without touching any quota. See stop spam bots for how the join-time checks break a spammer's plan.

How many groups can I protect on the free tier?

You can add the bot to multiple groups, and each one gets its own independent configuration from the dashboard. The monthly scan quotas (500 image, 1,000 sentiment) apply to your account's metered usage; the core moderation runs free in every group you add.

Getting started

The free tier is the default; you do not opt into it. Add the bot to your group, promote it to admin so it can delete messages and ban users, send one message to register the group, then configure everything from the dashboard at telegram-bot.app. Core moderation starts as soon as you enable it, at no cost. If your group later outgrows the 500 image or 1,000 sentiment monthly limits, purchasing premium raises the ceiling without changing what the bot does to your group.