ChatGPT TeleBot

ChatGPT TeleBot is a free, self-hosted Telegram bot built with Node.js that puts OpenAI’s ChatGPT inside your Telegram chats. Published on GitHub, where it has collected more than 200 stars, the project gives anyone a simple way to run their own ChatGPT-powered bot instead of relying on a third-party bot service.

Overview

The bot is a small JavaScript application that you run on your own machine or server. Setup takes three ingredients: a bot token from Telegram’s BotFather, an OpenAI API key, and Node.js 18 or later. After cloning the repository and installing the dependencies, you copy your credentials into a .env file and start the process with a single node command — or keep it alive around the clock with the pm2 process manager. From then on, people who message the bot receive replies generated by ChatGPT, billed against your own OpenAI account. In group chats, the bot stays quiet until a message starts with a trigger name you configure, so it never hijacks ordinary conversation. The project was still being updated in 2026, and its README walks through the whole deployment flow step by step.

Key Features

• ChatGPT in Telegram – direct and group conversations answered by OpenAI’s models through your own API key.
• Group trigger prefix – in group chats the bot only responds when a message starts with the name you configure.
• Self-hosted and private – the bot runs on your own hardware or VPS; no third-party bot service sits in between.
• Simple .env configuration – bot token, API key and group settings live in one small file.
• pm2 friendly – designed to run as a long-lived background process in production.
• Lightweight Node.js stack – a single small JavaScript codebase that is easy to read, fork and modify.

💳 Pricing

ChatGPT TeleBot is free to download and run from GitHub — there is no subscription and no paid tier. Your only running cost is OpenAI API usage, charged by OpenAI according to the model you configure, plus whatever server you choose to host the bot on.

Who Is It For

It suits developers, community managers and hobbyists who want a ChatGPT assistant inside a Telegram group or DM without paying for a hosted bot service, and who are comfortable editing a .env file and running a small Node.js process.