ChatGPT Telegram Bot (altryne)

This ChatGPT Telegram Bot by developer altryne was one of the earliest projects to put OpenAI’s ChatGPT inside a Telegram chat. It wraps the ChatGPT conversational model in a Telegram bot so users can talk to the assistant from any Telegram client, on mobile or desktop, without opening a browser. It is an open-source project on GitHub with around 1,600 stars, released in the first wave of ChatGPT tooling in early 2023.

Overview

The bot connects Telegram’s Bot API with OpenAI’s chat models and keeps conversational context per chat, so replies build on the ongoing discussion. It was written as a quick, hackable reference implementation at a time when no official integrations existed, and it inspired many of the Telegram GPT bots that followed. Deployment is a matter of supplying a Telegram bot token and an OpenAI API key and running the Python service, optionally in Docker.

Key Features

• Chat with ChatGPT directly inside Telegram private chats and groups
• Per-chat conversation context for coherent multi-turn replies
• Simple Python implementation that is easy to fork and extend
• Docker-friendly self-hosting with environment-variable configuration
• Works on every platform Telegram runs on, no extra app needed

💳 Pricing

The bot is free and open source under the MIT license. You only pay for your own OpenAI API usage; Telegram bots are free to run.

Who Is It For

Developers and tinkerers who want a minimal, proven starting point for running a ChatGPT-powered assistant inside Telegram.

The project appeared within weeks of ChatGPT’s public debut, when developers everywhere were racing to put the model into the apps they already used. Its README documents the simple setup – a Telegram bot token from BotFather and an OpenAI API key – and the codebase has since served as a reference that many later Telegram bots forked or copied, which is part of why several unrelated bots share this one’s name and general design.