How to withdraw Telegram Stars: limits and real rate (2026)
A Star costs more to buy than it pays out. The official minimum, the 21-day hold, the payout rate Telegram publishes, and what that means for planning.
Start earning from your channel
Connect a channelTL;DR. A Telegram Star has two prices, and most guides only quote one. Buyers pay $19.99 for a 1,000-Star store pack (Telegram’s own table) or $14.10 at Telegram’s sell rate; Telegram’s developer terms say a developer receives $0.013 per Star as a reward — $13.00 per 1,000. Plan revenue on that last number. Withdrawal needs 1,000 Stars minimum, Stars are held up to 21 days after they arrive, and Fragment pays out in cryptocurrency (Gram, formerly Toncoin) rather than to a bank account. None of this is hidden — it’s just spread across three different documents.
You sold something. The Stars landed. Now you want the money, and every guide you open explains the same four taps: open Fragment, connect a wallet, confirm, done. (If they haven’t landed yet, the earlier question is how to get Telegram Stars — this page assumes they’re already on your balance.)
That part is easy. The part that costs people money is arithmetic they did before ever getting to Fragment — planning a month’s revenue at the price buyers pay, then discovering the payout is 35% smaller than the store price. Here’s the whole picture, with the sources.
A Star has two prices
This is the single most consequential fact about Stars, and it’s the one most often skipped.
What a buyer pays. Two published figures. In the App Store or Play Store, Stars come in packs, and Telegram’s own pricing table puts a 1,000-Star pack at $19.99 — for a USD purchase with 0% VAT; local tax and the payment provider can move it. At Telegram’s own sell rate, stars_usd_sell_rate_x1000 = 1410 in the client configuration, 1,000 Stars are $14.10.
What you receive. Telegram’s terms for bot developers state it plainly: developers can receive an equivalent of 0.013 USD worth of rewards for each Telegram Star.
Neither gap is a platform fee anyone is hiding from you, and nothing is withheld at withdrawal. For a store pack, Telegram’s own table itemises it: 30% to Apple or Google plus a line Telegram calls administrative costs — $6.00 and $0.99 on a $19.99 pack. Against Telegram’s own sell rate the gap is $1.10 per 1,000 Stars, about 7.8%, with no breakdown published; the terms say the payout value is set independently of what Stars cost to buy. AdminHub takes 0% of it either way — we charge for the Pro plan, not for transactions.
The practical consequence: if you price a product at 500★ and plan on the $9.99 a buyer paid for a 500-Star store pack, you will be planning with the wrong number. The same 500★ is $6.50 on the way out.
We know this trap first-hand — our own affiliate page quoted earnings at the buy-side rate until we checked the terms and corrected it to the published payout rate.
The three limits that decide when you can cash out
Telegram publishes these as client-config parameters, which is why they rarely make it into articles.
| Limit | Value | What it means in practice |
|---|---|---|
| Minimum per withdrawal | 1,000 Stars | A balance under this can’t be cashed out at all — it waits |
| Maximum per withdrawal | 25,000,000 Stars | Not a constraint anyone is likely to meet |
| Holding period | up to 21 days | Counted from when each payment arrives, not from when you ask |
The holding period is the one that surprises people. It runs per payment, not on the balance as a whole. A channel earning steadily always has a rolling portion that isn’t withdrawable yet — not because anything is wrong, but because those particular Stars haven’t aged. If you plan to withdraw on the first of every month, the Stars from the last three weeks won’t be in that payout.
A worked example, because the gap is bigger than it sounds
Say you sell a guide at 500★ and it finds 100 buyers in a month.
Your balance shows 50,000★. At store pack prices your buyers paid $999 for those Stars (100 packs at $9.99), and at Telegram’s sell rate they are worth $705 — those are the numbers people carry into a spreadsheet. At the published payout rate it is $650.
Three hundred and fifty dollars is not a rounding error; it’s the difference between a plan that works and one that doesn’t. And the mistake is easy to make honestly, because the buy-side figure is the one that appears everywhere: in the checkout the customer saw, in most third-party Stars calculators, and in a lot of otherwise-careful articles.
Then apply the timing. If those 100 sales arrived evenly through the month, on the last day of the month roughly the last three weeks of them — around 35,000★ — are still inside the 21-day window. What you can actually move that day is closer to 15,000★, about $195.
Nothing has gone wrong in that scenario. It is simply what the published rules produce, and it is why “I’ll withdraw at month end” tends to disappoint the first time.
The payout is cryptocurrency, not a bank transfer
Fragment is Telegram’s official route out. You connect a TON wallet, confirm, and Telegram’s USD amount — $0.013 per Star — is converted by Fragment into Gram, the coin formerly listed as Toncoin, at the CoinMarketCap rate, refreshed about every five minutes under Fragment’s terms.
What Fragment does not do is put money in your bank account. Going from TON to your local currency is a separate step — an exchange or an off-ramp — with its own fees, its own verification, and its own timing. Any plan that ends at “and then it’s in my account by Friday” has an unbudgeted step in the middle.
Telegram’s terms also carry a caveat worth reading before you build a business on this: Fragment may be unable to issue rewards for certain users or in certain countries, for regulatory reasons. Check that your country is served before the balance matters.
Who can withdraw
Withdrawal is for the earning side — creators, channel owners, bot owners. Someone who bought Stars to spend on stickers or paid posts can’t convert them back; that’s a one-way door by design, and it’s what keeps Stars from being an informal currency exchange.
If you sell through AdminHub, the Stars land on your bot’s balance, not ours. We never hold your money — the payment goes bot to bot, and the withdrawal is yours to make. That’s a structural point, not a promise: we technically can’t touch it.
Withdrawing isn’t the only option
Stars can also be spent inside Telegram — most usefully on Telegram Ads for your own channel or bot.
This is worth an actual decision rather than a default. Spent on Telegram Ads, a Star is credited at $0.02 under section 6.2.3 of the developer terms — above either buy rate. Withdrawn, it carries the $0.013 payout rate. For a channel that’s growing and buying ads anyway, keeping revenue in Stars can be meaningfully better than cashing out and buying the same ads with a card.
That is not advice to never withdraw. It’s a reason to notice that “cash out everything monthly” is a choice with a price, not the neutral default.
And if what you actually want is reach rather than ads specifically, cross-promotion with other channels costs no Stars at all — you trade audience instead of buying it.
What to do now
- Check your country is served by Fragment before revenue depends on it.
- Plan at $0.013 per Star, not at what buyers pay. Every projection built on the store price is about 35% optimistic; on Telegram’s sell rate, 7.8%.
- Expect a rolling 21 days to be unavailable at any moment. Don’t schedule obligations against Stars that arrived last week.
- Decide deliberately between withdrawing and spending in-platform — if you buy Telegram Ads anyway, the arithmetic may favour keeping Stars.
Sources for every figure here: Telegram’s terms for bot developers, section 6.2.4, for the 21-day hold and the $0.013 reward rate; Telegram’s client configuration reference for the 1,000-Star minimum, the 25,000,000-Star maximum, stars_usd_withdraw_rate_x1000 = 1300 and stars_usd_sell_rate_x1000 = 1410; the Star Pricing table on Telegram’s Bot Payments page for store packs; Fragment’s terms, section 6, for the conversion. Checked 9 September 2026.
For what you can sell to earn those Stars in the first place, see how to sell on Telegram — and for which products are allowed to take Stars at all, Stars vs card payments. If the answer is recurring income rather than one-off sales, that shape is a paid channel. And if selling is not yet the decided route — an audience, a product and a skill each pay differently — the wider map is how to make money on Telegram.
Stars also arrive the other way, without a sale — Earn 50% forever: AdminHub affiliate program (2026).
What people usually ask
- What is the minimum number of Stars I can withdraw?
- 1,000 Stars on the channel or bot balance. Telegram publishes this as the stars_revenue_withdrawal_min config parameter, with a ceiling of 25,000,000 Stars per withdrawal at the other end.
- How long do I have to wait before Stars can be withdrawn?
- Up to 21 days after they arrive. Telegram's terms for bot developers put it as Stars in your balance may not become available for advertising credits or rewards for up to 21 days after their receipt. The clock runs per payment, not per balance, so a balance that keeps growing has a rolling share that isn't withdrawable yet.
- How much does one Telegram Star cost to buy?
- Two published figures. In the App Store or Play Store, Stars come in packs, and Telegram's own pricing table puts a 1,000-Star pack at $19.99 — about $0.02 per Star, for a USD purchase with 0% VAT; local tax and the payment provider can move it. At Telegram's own sell rate, stars_usd_sell_rate_x1000 = 1410 in the client configuration, 1,000 Stars are $14.10. Neither is the number you receive.
- How much is one Star worth when I cash it out?
- 0.013 USD, stated in Telegram's developer terms as the reward equivalent per Star and as stars_usd_withdraw_rate_x1000 = 1300 in the client configuration — $13.00 per 1,000 Stars. That is a different number from what a buyer paid: $19.99 per 1,000 as a store pack, $14.10 at Telegram's sell rate. Nothing is deducted at withdrawal, by Telegram or by AdminHub.
- What currency does the payout arrive in?
- Cryptocurrency, to a TON wallet. Fragment is Telegram's payout route; its terms leave the choice of coin to Fragment and convert the USD amount at the CoinMarketCap rate for Gram — the coin formerly listed as Toncoin — refreshed about every five minutes. Getting from there to a bank account is a separate step through an exchange, not something Telegram does for you.
- Can everyone withdraw, everywhere?
- No. Withdrawal is for creators and channel or bot owners, not for people who bought Stars to spend. Telegram's terms also note that Fragment may be unable to issue rewards for certain users or in certain countries for regulatory reasons.
- Is withdrawing the only thing I can do with earned Stars?
- No — Stars can also be spent inside Telegram, including on Telegram Ads for your own bot or channel. Spent that way they carry their buy-side value rather than the payout rate, which is why the choice is worth making deliberately rather than by default.