Telegram Ads pricing 2026 — what it actually costs

Telegram Ads pricing varies more than most digital channels — by a factor of 10× depending on niche, geo and cabinet. This guide gives you the honest 2026 numbers.

#Headline numbers

The only price Telegram itself publishes is the floor: a minimum CPM of 0.1 (ads.telegram.org/getting-started). The page still writes "0.1 Toncoin" — since 15 June 2026 the coin is called Gram (GRAM), with no swap or migration (@gram). Everything in the CPM-estimate column below is a third-party estimate, attributed, not our measurement.

Ranges are wide because pricing is auction-based, and because these are outside estimates rather than a published rate card.

#Entry budgets: what resellers say

Telegram does not publish a minimum budget or deposit. The numbers people repeat come from resellers:

• **Direct contract with Telegram** — around €2 million, of which €1 million is a deposit, according to resellers (eLama). Telegram does not confirm these figures; they apply only to advertisers who want their own direct account.
• **Through a reseller** — Click.ru accepts a first top-up from €250 (before commission and VAT) since 9 February 2026 (Click.ru); other resellers ask for €500; eLama lets you start with no upfront payment and pay monthly for actual spend.
• **Gram cabinet** — practitioners cite a deposit of about 20 Gram and recommend 150–200 Gram for a meaningful test (aksanov.digital).

Minimum CPMs in the euro cabinet move: for advertisers from Russia they were cut from €1.00 to €0.70 on 17 February 2026 (ppc.world), and since 28 August 2026 resellers quote €0.60 for country or language targeting, €0.30 for Politics & Incidents and €0.75 for targeting channels, bots and search.

#EUR cabinet — niche modifiers

We do not measure CPM, so these are third-party figures, not ours. ADSLY (2026-04) puts the per-niche band at roughly $0.5–6, and notably the other way round from how this page used to present it — crypto and Web3 on TON sit at the cheap end ($0.5–1.5), while the competitive money verticals sit at the top ($3–6):

• **Finance / fintech, e-commerce** — the top of the band; these are the verticals bidding hardest for the same inventory
• **iGaming / casino** — not a pricing question: gambling is banned by Telegram's ad policies in every cabinet
• **Crypto / Web3 on TON** — the cheap end, per ADSLY: inventory for TON-ecosystem projects is abundant relative to demand
• **News / media, local** — the floor end; inventory is plentiful

Treat the ordering, not the exact numbers, as the takeaway: it comes from one third-party source with one date, and niche premiums move with demand cycles. Your own cabinet is the only place a number becomes yours.

#EUR cabinet — geo modifiers

Multiplier on niche CPM baseline:

• **DE / FR / IT** — 1.0× (baseline)
• **US / UK** — 1.3–1.5× (highest competition)
• **MENA (UAE / SA)** — 1.1–1.4× (rising)
• **CIS (RU / BY / KZ)** — 0.6–0.9× (depends on niche)
• **LATAM** — 0.7–1.0×
• **SEA / India** — 0.5–0.9× (cheapest broad-reach)

A €2 CPM crypto creative in Germany is €1.4 in Russia, €0.9 in India, €3 in the US.

#Gram cabinet pricing (formerly the TON cabinet)

The Gram cabinet is harder to benchmark publicly because:

1. Targeting is explicit lists only — channels, bots and search keywords — so CPM depends entirely on which ones you list

2. Crypto-channel inventory varies wildly by niche, and contested channels clear far above the 0.1 Gram floor

3. Spend is settled in Gram, whose exchange rate floats, so the same CPM costs a different amount in euros from month to month

We do not observe these prices — cost never leaves the advertiser's cabinet. There are no wallet or token-holder segments to buy: the cabinet has no geo, interest or retargeting options, only the lists you build. The one third-party figure worth knowing is ADSLY's estimate: crypto channels in the TON (now Gram) cabinets from about $0.5–1.5 CPM (2026-04).

#Stars cabinet pricing

The Stars cabinet spends Telegram Stars (XTR) from the balance of a channel or bot you own, and it can only promote that same channel or bot. Telegram prices Stars for ads at a 30% discount: one Star buys $0.02 of ad credit, while withdrawing it pays $0.013 (Telegram API). If your channel or bot earns Stars, spending them on its own ads is therefore cheaper than withdrawing and paying in another currency.

#Hidden costs nobody mentions

Things you only learn after burning budget:

1. **Reseller commission** — typically 15–20% on top of spend in the euro cabinet, plus local taxes such as VAT

2. **Currency conversion losses** — Telegram billing in EUR while you spend in USD = 1.5–2 % spread cost; in the Gram cabinet you also carry the floating Gram exchange rate

3. **Identity checks** — topping up the Gram cabinet through Fragment may require identity verification before your first campaign

4. **Cabinet-specific targeting work** — the sponsored message is the same in every cabinet, but the Gram cabinet needs hand-built channel, bot and keyword lists instead of geo and interest segments

5. **Moderation rework** — 20–30 % of creatives get rejected on first submission; expect ≈2 hour rework cycle

#How to budget realistically

For a **B2C launch test** (validate creative + targeting):

• EUR cabinet: €5K–10K over 30 days, 3 creative variants, single geo
• Will produce: 2–5M impressions, useful CTR + CR signals

For a **mini-app launch** (Catizen-class):

• Pilot: €30K–80K across the euro, Gram and Stars cabinets over 60 days
• Scale: €100K–500K/month once unit economics proven

For a **brand awareness sweep** (already proven product):

• EUR cabinet: €20K–100K/month, 5+ creative variants, multi-geo
• Optimise for reach, not direct response

#Why we publish no CPM benchmarks

We do not publish CPM percentiles: cost is never exposed to third parties, so there is no cost data to build them from. What the public archive does expose is creative volume per niche and geo — see tgadsspy.com/api/v1/ads.