How to find a Telegram chat ID: user, group, channel, topic

TL;DR. Your own ID: press Start in @getid_adminhub_bot. A person or a bot: pick them with the bot’s Person or Bot button. A public channel or group: paste its @username into the chat ID finder. A private one: paste a link to any of its posts (t.me/c/…) — the ID is built from the link. A topic: /id@getid_adminhub_bot inside it. Channel and supergroup IDs start with -100; copy them with the minus.

A chat ID is the number the Bot API uses to say where a message goes. Every integration that posts to Telegram — a script, an automation, an AI agent — asks for one next to the bot token. The catch is that Telegram’s regular apps don’t show it, so this guide goes through each kind of chat and the quickest way to get its number.

The fastest way for each kind of chat

Whose ID	Fastest way	Also works
Yours	Press Start in @getid_adminhub_bot	Message your own bot, then read its updates in the token checker
Another person	The bot’s Person button — pick them from your chats	Forward one of their messages to the bot — unless they hide their account in forwards
A bot	The bot’s Bot button	For your own bot: paste its token in the token checker
A public channel or group	Paste its @username or t.me link in the chat ID finder	The bot’s Channel / Group button
A private channel or supergroup	Paste a link to any of its posts (t.me/c/…) in the finder	The bot’s Channel / Group button (My channel / My group list only the ones you created)
A topic in a forum group	Send /id@getid_adminhub_bot in the topic, with the bot in the group	Read message_thread_id in your bot’s updates
Chats that wrote to your own bot in the last 24 hours	Paste the bot’s token in the token checker — with the bot stopped and no webhook set	—

Why the person row goes through Telegram itself: a person’s ID is not public on the web. The Bot API documents username lookup for channels, supergroups and bots, not for people, and a bot learns a person’s ID from what reaches it — for instance when the person writes to it, or someone picks them in a chat picker or forwards one of their messages (unless they hide their account in forwards). The picker buttons in @getid_adminhub_bot work that way: you choose from your own chat list, the bot replies with the ID, and it joins none of the chats you pick.

What the numbers mean

Telegram’s reference for Bot API dialog IDs puts every chat on one number line, so the sign and size of the number tell what kind of chat it is:

• A person (and a private chat with them): a positive number, for example 987654321.
• A basic group: the internal ID with a minus sign, -4123456789.
• A supergroup or channel: minus the sum of 1,000,000,000,000 and the internal ID. With internal IDs of today’s length that reads as -100 and then the internal number: -1001234567890.

The number from a private post link, t.me/c/1234567890/45, is the internal one; the chat ID is built from it, which is exactly what the chat ID finder does when you paste such a link — and what the link generator undoes when it builds a t.me/c/ link from an ID. An ID can be longer than 32 bits but never more than 52, so store it as a 64-bit integer, not a 32-bit one.

You may not need the number at all

For a public channel, a supergroup with a username, or a bot, the Bot API’s chat_id accepts the username itself: @yourchannel works wherever the number does. The number is needed for everything without a username — a private chat with a person, a private channel, a basic group — and it is the safer choice anyway: a username can be changed or given up, the ID cannot.

When a chat ID changes

Once. When a basic group is upgraded to a supergroup, it gets a new ID starting with -100, and the old one stops being the right address. Telegram answers a request to the old ID with an error that carries the new one in migrate_to_chat_id, so a well-behaved script can switch over by itself. If your bot was in the group at that moment, the token checker shows the new ID next to the old one.

Usernames move; IDs do not. A channel that renames itself or changes its @username keeps the same chat ID.

Common mistakes

• Dropping the minus. 1001234567890 is not the same chat as -1001234567890. Copy the whole number.
• Using the number from a t.me/c/ link as is. That is the internal ID; the chat ID is -100 plus it (or, precisely, minus the sum above).
• Keeping a group’s old ID after it became a supergroup.
• Posting to a channel where the bot is not an admin. The ID can be right and the request still refused: to post in a channel, the bot has to be one of its administrators.
• Confusing the bot’s ID with the chat ID. Your bot’s own ID — what getMe returns — is where messages come from, not where they go.

If you are setting up a bot from scratch, the bot token guide covers the other value every integration asks for.

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Sources, checked October 2026: Bot API dialog IDs — the ID ranges of people, groups, supergroups and channels; Telegram Bot API — sendMessage (chat_id as a number or @username, message_thread_id), getChat (usernames of supergroups and channels), KeyboardButtonRequestUsers and KeyboardButtonRequestChat (the chat pickers), MessageOrigin (forwarded messages), ResponseParameters (migrate_to_chat_id); t.me and tg:// links — private post links.