Short answer. Telegram auto reply exists in three forms. A Premium account can set greeting and away messages under Settings > Telegram Business. A bot replies to anyone who writes to it. And an auto message bot Telegram users connect to their own account can answer private chats on their behalf. Messages sent on a clock are a separate feature. In every form, Telegram's documentation requires the other person to act first.
Search results for this topic mix up two requests. One person wants a reply to go out when a customer writes at midnight. Another wants a message to leave at 09:00 every Monday, or to land in forty groups without anyone touching a phone. Both get called an automatic message, and they are built from different Telegram features with different published limits.
This guide sorts every option by its trigger: an incoming message, a join, a clock, or an event in another system. Each option is described with the limit Telegram documents for it, quoted from the page where Telegram states it. Where Telegram publishes no number, the guide says so, which is the rule Sendhaus follows across its Telegram messaging and automation work.
What does Telegram auto reply mean?
Telegram auto reply means a message sent automatically because somebody else did something: wrote to an account, wrote to a bot, or joined a chat. A telegram auto message is the wider term, and it also covers messages sent because a clock reached a set time. Six separate Telegram features sit under those two phrases, and only some of them need a bot.
| Feature | What triggers it | Who sends it |
|---|---|---|
| Greeting message | A person writes for the first time, or after a quiet period | Your own account (Telegram Business) |
| Away message | A message arrives while the business is closed | Your own account (Telegram Business) |
| Bot reply | A message or command sent to a bot | The bot account |
| Connected bot reply | A message in one of your private chats | A bot, on your account's behalf |
| Welcome message | A user joins a group or channel | The chat itself, visible only to the new member |
| Scheduled message | A clock | Your account, or a bot running its own timer |
The first two rows are the ones older guides miss. Vendor pages ranking for this query in October 2026 still state that Telegram auto reply does not exist inside the app and that a bot is the only route. That stopped being true on 31 March 2024, when Telegram announced Telegram Business with automated messages included.
"Starting today, anyone can turn their Telegram account into a business account"Telegram blog, Telegram Business, 31 March 2024
How to set auto message in Telegram without a bot
The built-in answer to how to set auto message in Telegram is Telegram Business: open Settings, choose Telegram Business, and configure a greeting message, an away message or both. No bot and no code are involved, and the reply leaves from your own account. Telegram's announcement states the Business features are "available for free to Premium subscribers", so an account without Premium does not have them.
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Write the reply once, as a preset
In Telegram's API documentation both automated messages point at a quick reply shortcut, the same preset format used for manual quick replies. The announcement says a quick reply "may contain several messages" and supports formatting, links, stickers, media and files. An away message can therefore be a text plus a PDF price list.
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Set the greeting message
Telegram describes the greeting as a message "sent to users who contact you for the first time". The announcement adds that a period can be set after which a new message triggers the greeting again. The API stores that period as a whole number of days in a field named
no_activity_days. -
Set the away message and its schedule
An away message is, in Telegram's words, "to be sent when your business is closed or while you're on vacation". The API documentation lists three schedule types: always, outside the opening hours saved on the profile, and a custom start and end date. A separate flag named
offline_onlynarrows the send further. -
Choose who receives it
Both messages carry a recipient filter with five switches in the API: existing chats, new chats, contacts, non-contacts, and an exclude list. The announcement gives the reason: automated messages can be limited "to exclude specific chats or entire chat categories", so family and friends do not get the out-of-hours notice.
How to make Telegram bot auto reply
The answer to how to make Telegram bot auto reply has three parts: register a bot with @BotFather, receive each incoming message as an update, and send back a reply chosen by a rule. Telegram's Bots FAQ is blunt about the skill required: "there are no out-of-the-box ways to create a working bot if you are not a developer." No-code builders exist to fill that gap.
The steps below are the short version of how to create auto reply bot in Telegram, with the documented detail that decides whether the bot is reliable.
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Register the bot
Message @BotFather, send
/newbot, and pick a name and a username. BotFather returns a token. The token is the bot's password: anyone holding it can read the bot's incoming messages and send as the bot. -
Decide how messages arrive
The Bot API documentation describes "two mutually exclusive ways of receiving updates": polling with
getUpdates, or a webhook that Telegram calls. Undelivered updates "will not be kept longer than 24 hours". A telegram auto reply bot that is down from Friday evening to Monday morning has lost most of the weekend's messages for good. -
Write the reply rule
A rule can be a command such as
/hours, a keyword match, a button menu, or text generated by a language model. Keyword rules are cheap and predictable. Generated replies handle open questions and add a running cost per message plus the risk of a wrong answer sent in the business's name. -
Keep it running
A bot is a program on a server. It needs hosting, monitoring and somebody who notices when the reply stops. That ongoing part is what a client is paying for when a Telegram bot is built and operated for them, and it usually costs more over a year than the first build.
Pace is the second documented limit. The Bots FAQ advises: "In a single chat, avoid sending more than one message per second." A Telegram auto reply sent as five separate messages in a burst works against that advice. One message with the whole answer is both faster for the reader and safer for the bot.
Can an auto message bot Telegram supports answer from your own account?
Yes, since March 2024. A Telegram Business user can connect a bot that reads incoming private messages and, where the owner permits, answers on the account's behalf. Telegram's Bot Features page calls this Secretary Mode. The customer sees the reply inside their chat with the person or business, with no separate bot chat to open.
This is the closest thing to a telegram automatic message bot for a personal account, and it carries a limit that product pages rarely mention. The right that lets a connected bot send is defined by time.
"True, if the bot can send and edit messages in the private chats that had incoming messages in the last 24 hours"Telegram Bot API, BusinessBotRights, can_reply
A connected bot can answer today's enquiry. A connected bot cannot be pointed at last month's chat list to send a follow-up, because those chats have had no incoming message inside the window. The design keeps a telegram auto message bot of this kind on the reply side and off the outreach side.
| Question | Business greeting or away | Standalone bot | Connected bot |
|---|---|---|---|
| Reply appears from | Your account | The bot's own chat | Your account's chat |
| Premium needed | Yes | No | No, per the API documentation |
| Can read the question | No, fixed preset | Yes | Yes |
| Works in groups | No, private chats | Yes, if added | No, private chats |
| Documented limit | Recipient filter only | User must write first | Chats active in the last 24 hours |
Three further details about an auto message bot Telegram accounts can connect come from the API page on connected business bots. Connecting one "does not require Telegram Premium". The page states that "currently just one business bot may be connected to a user account". And the owner decides which chats the bot may touch; the 2024 announcement gives the examples of "excluding all chats with your contacts, or only responding to new chats". A single conversation can be paused from a bar at the top of the chat.
How to send automatic message in Telegram at a set time
The built-in answer to how to send automatic message in Telegram on a clock is the scheduler: write the message, hold the Send button on a phone or right-click it on desktop, and choose Schedule Message. The message is held on Telegram's servers and leaves with the phone switched off. Repeating a scheduled message requires Premium.
That covers one chat at a time. The options, the four error codes and the repeat periods are set out in the guide to scheduling messages in Telegram. The point that matters here is who is excluded. Telegram's API documentation lists the error SCHEDULE_BOT_NOT_ALLOWED, described as "Bots cannot schedule messages."
Every telegram auto send bot therefore keeps its own clock. A server waits for the chosen minute and then asks Telegram to send an ordinary message, which means an outage on that server is a missed send. The same is true of a telegram auto send message bot run through a no-code platform: the platform's timer decides when the request is made.
A third trigger sits beside replies and clocks, and it is often what a business needs: an event in another system. An order ships, a booking is 24 hours away, a payment fails. The practical answer to how to auto send message in Telegram for those cases is a bot wired to the system where the event happens. A telegram auto send message of this kind is composed at the moment of sending, so it never carries a stale price or time.
What can a Telegram auto message sender reach, and how fast?
A telegram auto message sender built on a bot reaches the people who started that bot and the chats an admin added it to, at rates Telegram publishes. Nothing in the Bot API widens that audience. The Bots FAQ gives three figures, phrased differently on purpose: one is advice, one is a cap and one is approximate.
| Where | Telegram's wording | Kind of limit |
|---|---|---|
| One chat | "avoid sending more than one message per second" | Advice; short bursts may pass |
| One group | "not be able to send more than 20 messages per minute" | Cap |
| Bulk notifications | "more than about 30 messages per second" | Approximate ceiling |
| Paid broadcasts | "up to 1000 messages per second" | Paid, 0.1 Stars per message over the free rate |
Division on those figures sets expectations. At about 30 messages per second, a notice to 10,000 subscribers takes roughly 5.6 minutes and a notice to 100,000 takes about 56 minutes, before retries. Going over returns HTTP 429 with a wait time, covered in the guide to flood wait errors and sending limits. Paid broadcasts need at least 100,000 Stars on the bot's balance and at least 100,000 monthly active users, per the same FAQ.
Planning that queue for people who asked to receive it is the work behind broadcast messaging to an opted-in list. It is a different product from the other thing sold under this name.
Telegram group auto message sender: three builds, one of them a problem
A telegram group auto message sender is one of three things: Telegram's own welcome message, a bot an admin added to the group, or a user account posting on a timer into groups it does not run. The first two are documented features with stated limits. The third is the one most "auto sender" adverts are selling.
The native option is new. On 25 August 2026 Telegram added welcome messages for groups and channels, set under Edit > Welcome Message in the chat's profile. Telegram's announcement says: "When a user joins, only they can see the message." For years a greeting for new members was the standard reason to install a group bot, and that reason has gone.
For Telegram auto reply inside a group, and for recurring posts, a bot is still the tool. Two documented rules shape it. The Bots FAQ caps a bot at 20 messages per minute in a group, one every three seconds on average. And the Bot Features page states that "all bots added to groups run in Privacy Mode", seeing only commands, replies to the bot and messages sent through it. A keyword responder that stays silent in a group has usually met privacy mode; admin rights or a BotFather setting changes it.
The third build posts promotional text into other people's groups from user accounts, often many at once. The mechanics and the risk to the accounts are covered in how shill bot tooling operates. Such posting tends to arrive in a package with tools that pull members across from other groups, examined in what member add bots do to a group. Group admins respond by removing and reporting the accounts, and the guide on whether mass report bots work explains what a report does and does not do.
Which Telegram auto reply setup fits which job?
The right Telegram auto reply setup depends on who is writing in and what the answer has to contain. A sole trader with fixed opening hours needs the Business away message and nothing more. A support desk with repeat questions needs a bot. A person who must keep answering from a personal account needs a connected bot.
| Job | Fit |
|---|---|
| Tell night-time enquirers when you reopen | Business away message, outside opening hours |
| Send new contacts a price list | Business greeting message with a file |
| Answer repeat questions with different replies | Standalone bot with keyword or menu rules |
| Answer in your own chats while you are busy | Connected bot, inside the 24-hour window |
| Greet people joining a group or channel | Native welcome message |
| Post the same notice every Monday | Premium repeat schedule, or a bot timer |
| Notify customers when an order ships | Bot triggered by the order system |
| Message people who never wrote to you | None. No documented feature does this |
The last row is where automation projects go wrong. Every option above answers or notifies people who are already in the conversation. None of them produces an audience. A quiet inbox with a well-built responder is still a quiet inbox, and the fix sits upstream in channel growth and Telegram marketing.
Paid reach is one upstream route. Telegram's own ad platform puts a sponsored message in front of channel readers who can then tap through to a bot, and the published minimums are collected in Telegram Ads cost figures. Buying that through an intermediary changes the fee and not the mechanics, as set out in what a Telegram ads agency actually provides. A Telegram auto reply earns its keep after that click, when the person who tapped gets an answer in seconds.
Consent law sits above all of it. Rules on commercial messages are set by the recipient's country and apply whatever a platform permits, so a welcome sequence that turns into weekly promotions needs its own opt-in. This guide is not legal advice. How reply automation, broadcast and growth fit together is laid out on the overview of Sendhaus Telegram services, and the requests that get turned down are listed under how Sendhaus works and what it declines.
Frequently asked questions
Does Telegram have a built-in auto reply?
Yes, for Premium accounts. Telegram Business, announced on 31 March 2024, includes a greeting message for people who write for the first time and an away message for closed hours or holidays. Both are set under Settings > Telegram Business and are sent from your own account. Telegram's announcement states the Business features are available for free to Premium subscribers. An account without Premium needs a bot instead.
Is Telegram auto reply free?
It depends on the route. Greeting and away messages require a Telegram Premium subscription. A bot costs nothing to register with @BotFather, and Telegram's Bots FAQ says bots can message their users at no cost within the published rate limits, but the server the bot runs on is paid for by its owner. Connecting a business bot to an account does not require Premium, according to Telegram's API documentation.
Can a Telegram bot send the first message to someone?
No. Telegram's bot introduction states: "Bots can't start conversations with users. A user must either add them to a group or send them a message first." An auto reply bot or an auto message bot answers people who have already opened the chat, and it can post in groups and channels where an admin added it. No Bot API method reaches a person who has never interacted with the bot.
Why does my auto reply bot ignore messages in a group?
Privacy mode is the usual cause. Telegram's Bot Features page states that all bots added to groups run in Privacy Mode by default and see only commands meant for them, replies to their own messages and messages sent through them. A keyword responder never receives ordinary group messages in that state. Making the bot a group admin, or disabling privacy mode in @BotFather and re-adding the bot, changes what it receives.
Can a connected business bot follow up on old chats?
No. The Bot API defines the reply right of a connected bot as sending and editing messages in the private chats that had incoming messages in the last 24 hours. A chat with no incoming message inside that window is outside the bot's reach until the person writes again. Telegram's API documentation also states that currently just one business bot may be connected to a user account.
Can Telegram send an automatic message when someone joins a group?
Yes, without a bot. On 25 August 2026 Telegram added welcome messages for groups and channels, set from the chat profile under Edit > Welcome Message. Telegram's announcement says that when a user joins, only they can see the message, and that several messages and media can be included. Before that update, greeting new members was done by a group bot, which is still an option for replies that depend on what the member writes.
Sources
- Telegram blog, Telegram Business, 31 March 2024 — greeting messages, away messages, quick replies, chatbots for business and the Premium condition.
- Telegram API, Telegram Business — the away schedule types,
no_activity_days,offline_onlyand the recipient filter. Read 11 October 2026. - Telegram API, connected business bots — one bot per account, no Premium requirement, per-chat pause.
- Telegram Bot API —
BusinessBotRights.can_replyand its 24-hour wording, the two ways of getting updates, and the 24-hour update retention. - Telegram Bot Features — Secretary Mode and the privacy mode rules for bots in groups.
- Telegram Bots FAQ — one message per second per chat, 20 per minute per group, about 30 per second in bulk, paid broadcasts, and the developer-skill statement.
- Telegram Bot Platform introduction — bots cannot start conversations with users.
- Telegram blog, 25 August 2026 — native welcome messages for groups and channels.
- Telegram API, messages.sendMessage —
SCHEDULE_BOT_NOT_ALLOWED. - Telegram Terms of Service — the spam clause.
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