Telegram Bot and Mini App Trends: August 2026

Telegram shows a bot's monthly users once it passes 10,000 MAU. I collected those public numbers to map the main Telegram bot trends in August 2026.

This is the next snapshot in my Telegram bot market research. In spring, I counted 183 AI bots on Telegram with a combined 44.3 million MAU. This time I looked beyond AI: gift casinos, Telegram Stars resellers, group moderators, dating bots, video downloaders, VPNs, and doorway bots.

Telegram bot trends in August 2026: quick answer

The biggest Telegram bot trends in August 2026 were clear: gift casinos doubled, Stars resellers lost 39%, GroupHelp clones dominated the group-moderation category, and 104 doorway bots collected 20.27 million MAU by redirecting users to other bots.

MAU means monthly active users: people who interacted with a Telegram bot during the previous month. Activity inside a Mini App does not seem to be included in this number.

Adding MAU across bots is not the same as counting unique people. One person can use several bots. Still, the public MAU number is useful for tracking direction and comparing categories over time.

Thanks to @zerosky for helping with the data analysis.

This article contains several referral links to bots. I may receive a bonus if you use them. Habr removed the original Russian post because it included a referral link, so the research now lives on my own site.

Telegram bot market map for August 2026

If you see another Telegram bot or Mini App trend that belongs in this map, send it to me. I will try to include it in the next report.

Taken together, these Telegram bot trends show a market moving away from broad utility categories and toward focused products or aggressive distribution. They also help explain wider Telegram Mini Apps trends in 2026, although bot MAU does not capture every action inside a Mini App.

Telegram gift casinos grew 104% in one month

Sixteen gift-casino bots grew from 1.85 million to 3.78 million MAU. The category added almost two million monthly users in August.

The basic flow is simple: deposit Telegram Gifts, play a game, and try to win a more expensive gift. Telegram lets users display gifts on their profiles or convert eligible gifts into Stars; the platform documents both Telegram Gifts and Telegram Stars.

These products are more than simple loot boxes. They include Crash, Mines, slots, PvP games, and gift upgrades. A case is often just the front door. Gifts are treated as valuable assets: Plush Pepe was priced at 553,350 Stars during my check.

There is no blockchain deposit in this flow. You send a gift to a receiving bot, and the product turns it into a Stars balance inside the casino.

Twelve of the sixteen bots grew. This was not one lucky winner; almost the whole category moved up. The teams also appear to be separate. Each product has its own channel, support account, and deposit bot. I found only one pair that may share an owner.

The curves for @epic_gift_bot and @GorillaCaseBot were smooth, with no daily jump above 8%. That looks like organic or viral growth rather than a large paid campaign.

@virus_play_bot grew 5.5 times, from 240,000 to 1.32 million MAU. Its chart moved in steps, so the marketing activity is easier to see.

This is a description of the market, not a recommendation to gamble or deposit gifts into these bots.

Among all Telegram bot trends in this report, the casino category has the broadest growth: twelve of sixteen tracked bots moved up together.

Telegram Stars resellers fell 39%

Telegram Stars resellers grew 4.5 times in July because several bots launched free-Star giveaways. In August, the category lost 39%. Most of the change came from only three bots.

This type of campaign attracts users quickly, but many of them do not pay. They leave as soon as the free offer ends or a paywall appears.

@mopsstarsbot sells Telegram Stars. On July 12, it launched a giveaway and grew from 436,000 to 2.29 million MAU in one day. The campaign continued for a month, and the bot reached 3.03 million MAU.

One month later, the rolling MAU window moved past the first campaign day. On August 13, the visible number fell 58%. This suggests that most of the measured activity happened on that single day.

Two weeks after the first spike, the chart shows slower growth, perhaps from another campaign. A similar decline starts near the end of the month.

Public data cannot tell us whether the campaign made money. At the time of the snapshot, only 8% of the acquired users remained. @starsfreerubot and @starsov ran similar campaigns in July.

This is a useful warning when reading Telegram bot trends: one promotion can move the public MAU number for an entire category.

Doorway bots captured Telegram search traffic

While checking Telegram Stars resellers, I found a strange growth tactic. Many bots had visible MAU, but opening them produced only one message: “the bot has moved,” followed by a link to another bot.

Example names included “STARSOVBOTT — KUPITskk ZVEZDYyc PODARKIppn” and “StarFall — Звезды Телеграм KUPITog.” They mix Latin and Cyrillic characters, place keywords in capitals, and add random letters to the end of words. Usernames are also random: @gwoqeiwqbot, @sjdlwpabot, and @ffyhddbot.

I counted 104 doorway bots with more than 10,000 MAU each. Together, they had 20.27 million MAU. That is larger than the entire Telegram Stars reseller category in the market map above.

Fifty-nine of those bots used Starsov branding and had a combined 12.10 million MAU. Another ten redirected people to @mops with a message offering cheap Stars, Premium, and TON in a new bot.

It is convenient when all five bots in Telegram search for “buy Telegram Stars” redirect to your product. This is classic search engine optimization inside Telegram: many keyword-shaped entry points feeding one store.

This Telegram bot trend is less about product engagement and more about controlling discovery inside Telegram search.

GroupHelp clones hold 93% of the moderation audience

Group moderation also has a clone pattern, partly because of Telegram Bot API limits. GroupHelp is the largest cluster. The main @GroupHelpBot had 2 million MAU, while one official clone, @GHClone1Bot, had 2.5 million.

Few chats are likely to add several GroupHelp clones at once, but the real user count is still hard to estimate. Bots inside group chats can build large MAU numbers because messages from group members may count as interactions even when nobody mentions the bot directly.

The group-moderation category is therefore dominated by very large GroupHelp bots. The open question is whether the clones exist only because of technical limits or also work as marketing: fast growth leads to directory placement, which brings more users.

If you are building this type of product, my Telegram Bot API vs MTProto comparison explains which methods are available to bots and where the platform limits start.

AI wrappers, giveaway bots, and VPNs are down about 60%

General AI wrappers and giveaway bots reached their peaks in December 2025. VPN bots peaked in April 2026. By August, the three categories were down 61%, 59%, and 62% from those peaks. Blocking and regional restrictions may explain part of the decline.

One small counter-trend: classic fortune-telling bots are not growing, but bots that mention AI in their descriptions are. @arcanagurubot grew from 46,000 to 164,000 MAU.

The same split appears elsewhere in the Telegram bot market. General all-in-one AI wrappers are losing users, while focused bots for one clear use case continue to grow.

What I will track in September 2026

There are about 15,000 Telegram bots with visible MAU. I want to open and classify more of them, then build a larger map of Telegram Bots and Mini Apps: video tools, AI, group administration, casinos, esoterica, and other categories.

The next step is to group related bots into products, as I did with GroupHelp. This should produce a better estimate of category size and growth. It will also uncover more distribution tactics such as doorway bots.

The next Telegram bot trends report will separate product growth from clone growth wherever the data allows it.

Inside large categories, I also want to find small trends early. AI song generators are one example. The broad AI-wrapper category is falling, but narrow products built for a specific job can still grow.

More practical engineering notes are collected in my Telegram automation topic and the English blog.

Frequently asked questions

What were the biggest Telegram bot trends in August 2026?

Gift casinos were the fastest-growing category, up 104% to 3.78 million MAU. Telegram Stars resellers fell 39%. GroupHelp clones controlled 93% of the measured group-moderation audience, while 104 doorway bots reached a combined 20.27 million MAU.

How is Telegram bot MAU measured?

Telegram displays a monthly user count for bots above 10,000 MAU. The number reflects accounts that interacted with a bot during a rolling one-month window. It is useful for trend analysis, but it is not a unique-user total across the whole Telegram bot market.

Does Telegram bot MAU include Mini App activity?

It appears to count interaction with the bot itself, not every action inside an attached Mini App. That makes MAU a useful but incomplete signal for Telegram Mini Apps trends in 2026.

Why can total category MAU be higher than the real audience?

The same person can use several bots, and one product can operate many official clones. Group bots may also count activity from chat members. Category totals should be read as a directional market signal, not as a count of unique people.

Does fast MAU growth mean a Telegram bot is profitable?

No. MAU shows activity, not revenue, retention, or profit. The MopsStarsBot giveaway produced a large one-day spike, but only 8% of acquired users remained in the public MAU window later.

Which Telegram bots do you use yourself? Send me the names, and I may analyze that niche in the next report.

Follow my Telegram channel for the next market snapshot.