How to find your Telegram chat ID for sending messages

Discover the numeric chat ID of a person, group, or channel so your bot knows where to send messages.

5 minBeginner

To send a message with a Telegram bot you need two things: the bot token and a chat ID. The chat ID is the numeric address of a destination, whether that is your own DM with the bot, a group, or a channel. This guide shows the fastest reliable way to find it.

What you need

A bot token from BotFather
The bot added to the chat you want the ID of
curl or any browser to call the API

Step 1: Send a message to the bot first

Telegram only reveals a chat to your bot after that chat has interacted with it. For a private chat, open your bot and press Start or send any text. For a group, add the bot to the group and post one message that mentions it.

Step 2: Call getUpdates

Hit the getUpdates endpoint. It returns the recent messages your bot has received, and each one carries the chat ID you are looking for.

zsh - getUpdates

$curl "https://api.telegram.org/bot$TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN/getUpdates"

{"ok":true,"result":[{"update_id":501,"message":{

"chat":{"id":58291043,"first_name":"Sam","type":"private"},

"text":"hello"}}]}

JSON response - where the ID lives

message:

chat:

id: 58291043 <-- this is the chat ID

type: private

text: "hello"

The number under chat.id is what you copy.

Group and channel IDs are negative

A private chat ID is a positive number. Group IDs are negative, and supergroup or channel IDs start with -100. That leading minus is part of the ID, so keep it.

Step 3: Test it with sendMessage

Confirm the ID by sending yourself a test message. If the bot replies in the chat, the ID is correct.

curl "https://api.telegram.org/bot$TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN/sendMessage" \
  -d chat_id=58291043 \
  -d text="Chat ID confirmed."

Result

You captured the chat ID and proved it routes correctly. Store it next to your token. From here you can script alerts, reminders, or AI replies to that exact destination.