How to Use Telegram Bots to Send Automatic Replies

Start With the Reply You Need to Send

A message arrives at midnight asking for your opening hours. Another lands while you are in a meeting. A third is the same question you answered ten times this week. None of them needs your full attention, but each one is waiting.

Answering the predictable part quickly is not the same as ignoring people. It lets a real conversation start when it matters.

Three questions to answer first

1. Who triggers the reply? A stranger making first contact, a customer outside working hours, or a group member who typed "price".
2. What should it say? A short greeting, a schedule, a menu of options, or a specific answer pulled from your list of common questions.
3. When does a person take over? Some replies can end there. Others need a handoff, and you should decide what triggers it before you build anything.

Your answers pick the tool, not the other way round.

Two routes, and they can work together

The first route is built into a Telegram Business account: greeting messages for new contacts, away messages for the hours you set, and quick replies you save and reuse. No code involved.

The second is a bot you create through BotFather and connect to the Bot API. It takes more work and scales further: keyword triggers, buttons, menus, lookups from your own systems, and a handoff to a person.

The two can run at once, with a built-in greeting handling first contact and a bot handling everything after it.

What this covers

The sections below cover private chats and group behaviour, a worked reply flow, and the security side of running a bot. Group behaviour matters early if you run a community: a Telegram group can hold up to 200,000 members (telegram.org), and that is exactly where the same question arrives again and again.

What an Auto Reply Bot Can Do on Telegram

An auto reply bot is a Telegram account run by code, or by a no-code tool, that answers messages for you. Most useful setups combine a few of the patterns below.

Greet a first-time contact

Someone opens your bot and gets a short welcome plus one clear next step, such as "Tap Menu to see prices" or "Send your order number to check status". The person is not left waiting for you to be online.

Cover the hours you are offline

An away reply names the situation and a time: closed until 09:00, back on Monday. It sets an expectation instead of leaving people unsure whether anyone is reading.

Answer a keyword

A word in the message, like price, delivery or hours, triggers the matching reply. Three to ten triggers cover most routine questions, and each one is easy to edit later.

Route a vague question with buttons

Inline buttons give the person two or three paths: Buy, Support, Something else. A tap is quicker to answer than a paragraph, and it tells you what the message was actually about.

Look something up

The bot fetches an order status or booking time from a spreadsheet or database and sends it back in the chat. This is where fixed replies stop being enough and a small integration earns its place.

Collect a few details

Two or three questions, asked one at a time, stored with the person's Telegram ID. Short sequences get finished; long forms get abandoned halfway.

What a bot cannot do

A bot cannot open a private chat with someone who has never messaged it or pressed a start link. Every private conversation has to begin from the person's side.

For free-text answers rather than fixed replies, see How to Add an AI Assistant (ChatGPT) to Your Telegram Bot.

Built-In Business Replies or a Custom Bot: Which Route Fits

A Telegram Business account already ships with three reply tools: a greeting message for people who message you for the first time, an away message that answers outside the hours you set, and saved quick replies you insert manually with a short command. All three are configured inside the app, need no code, and send from your own account rather than from a separate bot. Menu names and exact wording shift between apps and app versions, so look for the business section in Settings rather than following a fixed path.

What a bot adds

A bot answers based on what the person typed, not just on when they wrote. That means keyword triggers, menu buttons, lookups against stored data such as an order number, coverage inside groups, connections to outside tools, and a written log of what was asked. It also runs under its own name and profile, separate from your personal or business account.

Rule of thumb

If the reply is fixed and depends only on first contact or the clock, use the built-in replies. If it depends on the text someone sends, on stored data, or has to work in a group, build or install a bot.

Two lighter routes sit in between. A no-code automation tool such as Make, Zapier or n8n can hold the logic while your bot token does the sending, which suits light branching without a server. A ready-made bot from a directory such as /directory is configured through its own menus and covers common jobs without any building.

When a bot has to pass a conversation to a person or push it into a CRM, the connection usually runs through a webhook and an API key. How to Connect Telegram to a CRM (HubSpot, Pipedrive and Others) covers that handoff.

Setting Up Greeting, Away and Quick Replies in Telegram Business

Three reply types are already built into a Telegram Business account, and none of them needs a bot.

Where the settings live

Open Telegram's Settings and look for the Telegram Business section. Menu names and the exact placement of each option differ between the mobile apps, desktop and web versions, and they change between releases, so treat the path as a general direction rather than a fixed sequence of taps. You have to connect or enable the business features on the account first. Until that is done, the reply options do not appear at all.

What each reply does

Greeting message

Switch the greeting on and write a short text. It only fires for people who have not messaged you before, so existing contacts never see it. Keep it to one sentence of context ("Thanks for getting in touch about the shop") and one action ("send your order number and I'll check it").

Away message

Set a start and end time and choose the days it applies to. That makes it run outside working hours and stop on its own when you are back, instead of sitting there answering people at midday. Say when you will reply and give a way to reach a person sooner if the matter is urgent.

Quick replies

Save short texts under a shortcut, then type the shortcut in any chat to insert the saved text. This is manual, not automatic, so pair it with the away message rather than relying on it to cover an empty inbox.

Write short, then test

One sentence of context, one action, no long paragraphs. Always include a route to a human. Test with a second account: the greeting should fire in a genuinely new chat, and the away message should appear only inside the hours you set.

Building a Custom Auto Reply Bot With BotFather

When the built-in replies stop being enough, you build a bot. BotFather is Telegram's own bot for creating and configuring other bots, and everything below happens in a chat with it.

Create the bot and handle the token

Open BotFather in Telegram, press Start, and send `/newbot`. It asks for a display name (what users see, for example "Shop Support") and then a username, which must end in `bot`, such as `shop_support_bot`.

BotFather replies with a token, a long string that is the bot's password. Copy it once and put it in a password manager or an environment variable on the machine that will run the bot. Never commit it to a public repository, paste it into a screenshot or send it in a chat message. If it does leak, use `/revoke` in BotFather to get a new one and switch the old one off.

Set the command menu and group privacy

Send `/setcommands`, pick the bot, and publish the commands you want listed:

start - Open the menu help - How to reach a person price - Current prices and delivery

Users then see a menu button instead of guessing what the bot understands. Menu placement varies slightly between apps and versions.

`/setprivacy` controls what the bot receives in groups: with privacy on, it only sees commands and mentions; with privacy off, it sees every message. Leave it on unless the bot genuinely needs to read all group traffic.

Optional polish

`/setdescription` writes the text shown before a user starts the bot, `/setabouttext` fills the short profile line, and `/setuserpic` uploads an avatar. Ten minutes here makes the bot look like part of your business rather than a test project.

Connect the token to code

Point a Bot API library in your language (python-telegram-bot, grammY, aiogram, Telethon's bot mode and others) at the token, or connect it through a no-code platform. Keep the first version small: a `/start` handler that sends your greeting and menu, a keyword handler for questions like "price" or "delivery", and a fallback branch that answers everything else and offers a human.

The Bot API is the right layer for this because it is designed for bots that receive updates. A userbot, which drives a personal account, is a different tool with different risks; the difference is explained in Telegram Bot API vs MTProto vs Userbots.

Webhook or Long Polling: How Your Bot Gets Its Messages

Telegram does not push messages into your code by magic. It keeps a queue of updates for your bot, and your program either asks for that queue or tells Telegram where to deliver it. Those are the only two options, and they change how you host the bot, not what it can do.

Long polling: your program asks

Long polling means your program calls the Bot API's getUpdates method and keeps the connection open until Telegram has something to hand over, then asks again. It works from a laptop, a home server or a small VPS with no public address, no certificate and no firewall rules. The catch is that the process has to stay alive: close the terminal and the bot goes silent. If two copies of the same script run at once, both will pull from the same queue and answers will scatter.

Webhook: Telegram posts to you

With a webhook you give Telegram an HTTPS address, and each new update is posted there as a request. Your program only runs when a message arrives, which suits a server or a serverless function and keeps replies close to instant. It needs a reachable host and a valid certificate for that domain (Telegram also accepts a self-signed certificate you upload, matched to your host). If the host goes down, updates wait until it returns.

Choosing between them

The switch is one call: setWebhook with your address to register it, deleteWebhook to return to polling. Do not run both for the same token at once. Updates can be missed or handled twice, and the symptom looks like a broken bot rather than a configuration mistake.

Keep the handler fast

Whichever route you pick, answer the user first. Send the reply, then do the slow work (writing to a database, calling another API, notifying a person). A handler that blocks for ten seconds will make the next few messages feel broken.

For the wider picture of what a bot can access, see Telegram Bot API vs MTProto vs Userbots.

A Worked Reply Flow: Greeting, Menu, FAQ, Fallback and Handoff

Take a small repair shop, open Monday to Saturday, 9:00 to 18:00, closed Sunday. The shop's bot has one job: sort each incoming message into prices, a booking, or a person. The example times, prices and wording below are placeholders; swap in your own.

Step 1: The /start greeting

When someone opens the bot for the first time, Telegram sends `/start` to it. The bot answers with three short lines and three buttons:

• "Fix-it Repairs. I can send our price list, take a repair booking, or pass your message to staff."
• Buttons: Prices, Book a repair, Talk to a person.

Each button carries a callback value such as `menu_prices`, so the bot can tell which one was tapped.

Step 2: Menu routing

Every button leads to one short message, not a wall of text. Prices sends a five-line list and a See the full list link. Book a repair asks two questions, device type and preferred day, then confirms. Talk to a person goes straight to the handoff step below. Long answers get a link or a second button, never a single screen of scrolling.

Step 3: Keyword FAQ

If a message contains price, cost or how much, the bot sends the price list and then repeats the menu. That covers people who type instead of tapping a button. Keyword matching should be lowercase and tolerant of extra words, so "how much for a screen?" still matches.

Step 4: Fallback

If nothing matches, the bot says so once, in plain words, and offers the menu again. If the same chat misses twice in a row, the bot offers a person instead of looping. A fallback that repeats the same message forever is worse than no bot.

Step 5: Handoff to a person

Handoff does three things: post the question to a staff group with the user's name and ID, tell the user that someone will reply, and mark the chat as paused so automatic replies stop there. The pause stays until a staff member closes the ticket from the group, for example with a Close button.

Deep links with a start parameter

A link such as `t.me/FixItRepairsBot?start=prices` opens the bot and puts people straight into one branch. The bot receives it as `/start prices` and reads the word after the command. Use these links in a channel post about a discount or a website's "Get a quote" button.

Telegram passes the start value once, in that first message. It is not stored with the chat, so the bot has to save it itself if it matters later, for example to tag a booking with the campaign that brought the person in.

Related: Telegram Bot API vs MTProto vs Userbots explains what a bot can and cannot see.

Auto Replies in Groups: Admin Rights, Privacy Mode and Mentions

Add the bot to the group the way you would add a person, then decide how much of the conversation it should see. A bot that only answers a command needs nothing extra. A bot that must read every message, delete spam or pin an answer has to be promoted to admin, because those actions require admin rights.

Privacy Mode Is On by Default

Telegram enables privacy mode for every new bot. In that state the bot receives commands addressed to it, replies to its own messages, and mentions of its username, but not the general chatter around it. That is why a freshly added group bot can look deaf to questions asked in plain text.

To turn privacy mode off, open BotFather, send `/setprivacy`, choose the bot and disable it. Then remove the bot from the group and add it again. The setting is read when the bot joins, so the change only takes effect after it rejoins. Menu wording differs slightly between Telegram apps, but the command is the same.

One limit applies in both modes: bots do not receive messages sent by other bots. If you run several in one group, they cannot trigger each other.

The Lighter Option: Answer Only When Asked

Leave privacy mode on and teach members to mention the bot or use a command such as `/faq`. The bot replies when called and stays quiet otherwise. This is easier to explain to a group and less likely to fire on ordinary conversation.

Why It Pays Off in Larger Groups

Telegram groups can hold up to 200,000 members (telegram.org), and the same handful of questions arrives every week. A group FAQ bot answers them in the chat without a moderator retyping anything. Telegram's August 2026 release added Welcome Messages for new members of groups and channels, and Buttons in Messages that make any text interactive (telegram.org), both useful for onboarding: a welcome post that ends in three buttons, one of which calls the bot's FAQ.

Decide Who Can Trigger Heavy Actions

Some replies cost something: a lookup in an internal system, a ticket opened, a message sent onward. Decide which members or admin roles may trigger those, and have the bot check the sender before acting. Ignore commands from people who should not run them, and answer with a short refusal rather than silence, so the rule is visible to the group.

Testing, Token Safety and What the Bot Should Store

Test in the order a real user meets your bot. Each check isolates one trigger, so a failure points to a single place.

A five-step test

1. A brand new chat with an account that has never messaged you, to see the greeting appear once.
2. A chat outside your working hours, to confirm the away reply fires and stops again when the schedule ends.
3. A keyword message such as "price" or "hours", to check the FAQ answer matches the right trigger.
4. A nonsense message, to see the fallback appear instead of silence.
5. A mention in your test group, to confirm the bot reacts to @mentions and not to every line of chat.

Check the handoff

Trigger the human handoff and read what the user sees. They should get a clear line: someone will reply, and roughly when. Then keep typing. If the bot answers again in the same chat, your pause or mute state is not working. Let the bot resume only when a human releases the chat or a timer expires.

Logging

During testing, log what the bot receives: update type, chat id, user id, the text, and which rule matched. Read the log after each test so you know what the handoff and fallback actually triggered on. Before launch, remove debug logging or turn it down to errors only, and make sure no message text or identifiers land somewhere you cannot delete them.

Token safety

• One token per bot. Do not reuse a token across bots.
• Separate tokens for test and live, so a broken test deploy cannot touch live traffic.
• Keep tokens in environment variables, never in code you push to a repository.
• If a token leaks, open BotFather, select the bot, and revoke the current token immediately. The old token stops working and you issue a new one.
• Never paste a token into a public issue, a screenshot, a support chat or a client-facing page.

What the bot stores

Collect only what the reply needs: a chat id to send the answer, a language flag for the right text, a timestamp for the away schedule. Say in the greeting or the menu what you keep and how long, and delete a user's data on request. Never ask for a password, a login code or a one-time code in chat, and never store one if someone sends it anyway.

Keep a plain list of every trigger and its reply in a shared document, with the words that fire it and the answer text. Someone who does not read code should be able to update a price or a phone number without touching the bot.

For the wider setup, see how to add an AI assistant to your Telegram bot and how to connect Telegram to a CRM.

Where to Find Bots That Already Do This

Once you know what your reply should do, the next step is finding a bot that already does it, or making sure people can find yours. Telegram Channels (telegramchannels.io) is a public directory of Telegram channels, groups and bots in one place, searchable by category and language. If you want an auto reply bot for a shop, a booking flow or a support desk, browsing by category is faster than guessing bot usernames in Telegram search.

What the listings mean

Every listing is reviewed by a person before it goes live, so a search returns entries someone has checked. That is a filter on the listing itself, not a judgement of quality: read the description and test the bot before you rely on it.

Anyone can submit a bot for free, with or without an account. If you build one, that is the simplest way to make it findable.

A channel owner can claim a listing by adding the site's bot as an admin of the channel. The verified badge says only that the owner proved they run it, nothing about the content or how good the bot is.

Rankings and paid placements

• Rankings by subscriber count are ordered by real subscriber counts read from Telegram's public pages.
• Top rated rankings are ordered by verified ratings, one star per verified account.
• Featured placements are paid and labelled as such.

Browse the directory, check recently added listings for new bots, or submit a channel or bot of your own.

The rule of thumb, once more

Start with the replies built into a Telegram Business account: greeting, away message, quick replies. Move to a Bot API bot when you need logic (a menu that branches, a keyword FAQ, a fallback), when replies must work in groups, or when the bot has to look something up or store an answer. Built-in replies handle being polite. A bot handles being useful at scale.

Frequently asked questions

Can a Telegram bot send the first message to someone?

No. A bot cannot open a private chat with an arbitrary Telegram user. The person must contact the bot first, usually by pressing Start, or you must add the bot to a group or channel where it is allowed to post. After that, the bot can send messages in that existing chat. A bot also cannot look up a user by phone number and message them. If you need to reach people who have not started the bot, invite them to start it through a link, or use a channel where they already follow you. Telegram Business connected bots work inside chats the business already has; they do not remove the need for the customer to make contact first.

What is the difference between a Telegram Business greeting message and a bot?

A Telegram Business greeting message is a built-in automatic reply on your business account. You write it once in Business settings, and Telegram sends it when someone contacts you for the first time, if the feature is enabled. It is simple: a greeting, away message or quick reply, with no branching logic. A bot is a separate Telegram account run by software. It can read commands, send menus, look up data and pass messages to other services. A bot can also be connected to a Telegram Business account to handle customer chats, but the greeting itself remains a native Business setting. Menu names and options vary between Telegram apps and versions.

Why does my bot ignore messages in a group?

Start with privacy mode. By default, a bot in a group only receives commands addressed to it, replies to its messages, mentions and service messages. It does not see every group message. Open BotFather, use /setprivacy for that bot, and disable privacy mode. Then remove the bot from the group and add it again so the change applies. A bot that is an admin usually receives all messages. Also check that the bot is still in the group, has permission to read and send, and is not being blocked by another admin bot or a webhook conflict. If the bot works in private chat but not in groups, privacy mode is the usual cause.

Do I need to code to set up a Telegram auto reply bot?

Not for simple auto replies. You still create the bot with BotFather and copy its token, but a visual bot builder can handle keywords, menus, buttons, opening hours and handoff to a person without code. You connect the token, draw or select the flow, and publish. Coding becomes useful for custom integrations, payments, databases, complex permissions or logic that the builder does not support. Check what the builder includes before you commit: some charge by contact or message, and exports can be limited. For a small channel or shop, a no-code flow is often enough. Test it in a private chat before adding it to a group or channel.

How do I stop the bot from answering the same person again and again?

Stop the trigger from matching every message. Use a session state or tag that marks the person as already answered, and clear it only when they ask for help again or after a set period. Add a cooldown so the bot sends at most one automatic reply per user per hour, for example. Do not let a broad keyword such as "hi" fire on every line in a long conversation. In a builder, look for settings like "once per user", "wait for reply", "pause bot" or "handoff". Add a command such as /reset to clear the state. Test with two accounts and watch the live log. If the flow repeats after a reply, check for duplicate updates and ignore update IDs already handled.

Is it safe to give a bot builder my bot token?

Treat a bot token like a password. Anyone who has it can control the bot: read updates, send messages, change its webhook and settings. A hosted builder needs the token to run your bot, so you are trusting that service with full access. Use a builder you can identify, check its security and privacy pages, and avoid pasting tokens into group chats, screenshots or unknown tools. If a token leaks, open BotFather, use /revoke to generate a new one, and update the builder. A token cannot be limited to read-only or to one chat through BotFather, so revoking is the main recovery step. Keep separate bots for tests and live use.

Sources

• Telegram
• Telegram News channel preview