How we count
Every number in the catalog comes from public feeds crawled by our crawler. Here are the formulas, periods and thresholds: what is behind each number and when we do not show it. A number can be trusted only when you can see how it was obtained.
Where the data comes from
The crawler walks open Telegram groups and channels through the official API — only venues anyone can open without an invitation. The catalog includes venues with posts in the index and large ones (1,000+ subscribers) even without posts.
Excluded: venues hidden on request, venues marked by Telegram as scam, and service venues. The catalog and statistics are numbers about venues: they do not show individual people.
Subscribers and growth
Subscribers — the number of channel subscribers or group members from the latest crawl.
Growth — the difference with a daily snapshot: over a day, a week and a month. Snapshots are collected since 29.09.2026, so weekly growth exists since 06.10.2026 and monthly since 29.10.2026. While history is shorter than a week, the “Fastest growing” ranking uses daily growth.
Posts and activity
Posts in 30 days — unique posts of the venue in the index over the last 30 days; for a group these are members' messages.
Writers — how many different people wrote in the group in 30 days. For a group this is the main sign of life: message volume is easy to inflate with flooding, the number of writers is not.
Channel posts
Posts a channel publishes as itself are not part of the search index: the index consists of group messages and author-signed posts. So for most channels we show subscribers, growth and citations, and posts, reach and ER only when the channel's posts are in the index.
If a channel has no posts in the index, it does not mean the channel is silent — and we never say so.
Reach
Average reach — the average number of views of a channel post in 30 days. Only posts for which Telegram shows views are counted. Shown for channels with 50+ subscribers.
ER — engagement
ER = average post reach ÷ subscribers × 100%. Computed for channels with 100+ subscribers and at least three posts in 30 days.
If reach is five or more times the audience, we do not show ER and say so on the venue page: such a ratio almost always means inflated views, not engagement.
The “Best engagement” ranking includes channels with 5,000+ subscribers, at least five posts in 30 days and ER up to 100%; the “Biggest reach” ranking — channels with 1,000+ subscribers, at least three posts and reach no more than twice the audience.
Citations
Citations — how many other venues forwarded this venue's posts: in 30 days and all time. Self-forwards are not counted.
The statistics page shows who cites the venue and whom it cites — catalog venues only; forwards from people are not shown.
Conversation in a group
Reply to others — share of writers who replied to someone else's message at least once in 30 days. Messages answered — share of messages that got a reply. Replies per thread — how many replies an answered message gets on average.
Together they tell a live discussion from a notice board where people post but do not talk. Computed for groups where at least three people wrote in 30 days.
Score and catalog rank
Rank in the catalog, in a topic and in a language — by the combined score:
score = lg(1 + subscribers) + activity + lg(1 + venues citing in 30 days)
+ 0.6 · lg(1 + average reach) + 0.3 for Telegram's check mark
− 0.6 for a group with no messages in 30 days
channel activity = 0.6 · lg(1 + posts in 30 days)
group activity = 0.7 · lg(1 + writers in 30 days)The logarithm evens out scale: a channel with a million subscribers is not a thousand times “better” than one with a thousand. Group activity counts writing people, not message volume — otherwise flood chats would rise to the top.
Topic and language
Topic — one of the catalog's 18 sections. Sources in order: keywords in the venue title and description; a model (gemini-2.5-flash-lite) reading the card and three recent posts; the forward graph — if the venue exchanges posts with at least three venues that have a topic and 70% of them share one.
The venue's language — by the language of its posts.
A venue owner can verify the venue in the dashboard and correct its topic and language — the owner's word overrides any automatic one.
Freshness
The catalog is rebuilt four times a day — at 02:50, 09:15, 15:15 and 21:15 UTC; the night build also recomputes totals over each venue's whole history. A venue statistics page is kept up to 12 hours.
Catalog pages state the time of the data. If crawling pauses, the catalog shows the latest computed numbers with their date rather than empty pages.
Zero and “no data”
Zero is a result: we looked and found nothing. “No data” means there is nothing to count: the venue was not crawled over the period, a channel has no posts in the index, or history is shorter than the period. A metric we are not sure about is not shown at all.
18+
18+ venues are visible only in their own section: they are absent from general rankings, languages and search.
Removal from the index
An account owner or a venue admin can remove it from the index — the procedure and response time are on the removal page.