Name: Octop Telegram
Availability: InStock
Author: onepush

Deploy and Host self hosted Octop Telegram (Telegram Bot Hosting for AI Agents) on Railway

This template deploys a self-hosted Octop instance on Railway so you can connect an Octop expert to a Telegram bot.

About Hosting Octop Telegram open-source software on Railway (self hosted self-hosted Telegram channel for an Octop AI expert template)

When you deploy this template, the Octop instance lives in your own Railway project, so the admin account, the agent workspaces, the knowledge indexes and the Telegram channel configuration all sit in volumes and a Postgres 18 database you control.

Why Deploy Octop Telegram, the OpenClaw alternative on Railway (Railway Free Trial)

If you already run OpenClaw and want a Telegram bot backed by an agent you control, Octop Telegram gives you a self-hosted instance you can inspect, back up and redeploy.

Railway is a singular platform to deploy your infrastructure stack. Railway will host your infrastructure so you don't have to deal with configuration, while allowing you to vertically and horizontally scale it.

By deploying Octop Telegram on Railway, you are one step closer to supporting a complete full-stack application with minimal burden. Host your servers, databases, AI agents, and more on Railway.

Railway vs Other Hosting Providers and VPS for Octop Telegram self hosting

Octop Telegram needs a long-lived process to keep the bot connected. This table compares Railway with common alternatives.

Provider	What You Get with Railway	What You Get with the Other Provider
DigitalOcean	Octop and Postgres 18 deployed from the template, with a public HTTPS domain and volumes set up.	A Droplet you manage, so you install Docker and keep the Telegram process running yourself.
AWS	A running Octop service and Postgres, with variables and volumes set in the dashboard.	Full EC2 and networking control, but you configure the instance, database, and restarts.
Hetzner	Template deploys with automatic restarts and no shell needed.	Low-cost servers where you handle the OS, Docker, backups, and reboot recovery.

A VPS can run Octop Telegram for less, but you take on the supervision that keeps the bot online.

Common Use Cases for hosted Octop Telegram

Team Q&A bot: Point a Telegram bot at an expert loaded with your internal wiki or runbooks, so staff can ask a question from their phone and get an answer grounded in your documents without opening the dashboard.
Personal assistant on your phone: Bind an expert to a bot only you talk to, then use Telegram as a quick chat window for notes, reminders and lookups while the agent keeps its memory between sessions.
Customer support in a group: Add the bot to a Telegram group and let a support expert answer common customer questions, handing anything it cannot resolve to a human teammate.
Scheduled reports: Use cron on an expert so it posts a daily summary or status digest into a Telegram chat, with the Railway service staying online so the scheduled run always fires.
One bot per expert: Give each expert its own BotFather token and channel, so a sales expert, a research expert and a coding expert each sit behind a separate Telegram bot under the same Octop deployment.

Dependencies for Octop Telegram Docker hosted on Railway

This template runs two services: the Octop application and a Postgres 18 database.

Deployment Dependencies for Managed Octop Telegram Service (Octop app + Postgres 18)

The Octop service uses ghcr.io/onepush-dev/octop:1.0.3b1, built from upstream's ghcr.io/tencentcloud/octop:1.0.3b1 pinned by digest, with a volume at /data/.octop. Postgres 18 holds the control plane and agent memory.

Implementation Details for Octop Telegram (Using Octop official docker image)

The template generates OCTOP_DEFAULT_PASSWORD as the first-boot admin password; editing it later does not reset the account. Back up both volumes before upgrading the image tag.

How does Octop Telegram compare against other ways to connect an AI agent to Telegram

Octop Telegram vs OpenClaw Telegram (Octop vs OpenClaw Alternative)

Shared goal: Both put an AI assistant behind a Telegram bot, so the chat experience is similar.
Octop side: The bot is a channel on an expert you manage in the dashboard, and the Railway service keeps it connected between chats.
OpenClaw side: It is more established, with a larger community and more guides, so it is the safer pick if you want the most examples.

Octop Telegram vs Hermes Agent Telegram (Octop vs Hermes Agent Alternative)

Setup model: Octop binds a Telegram channel per expert, so one deployment can run several bots that each talk to a different agent.
Hermes side: Hermes Agent focuses on a single agent, which is quicker to set up if you only want one bot.
Trade-off: Octop asks you to learn the expert and channel model first, which takes a little longer on day one.

Octop Telegram vs Telegram bot frameworks (Octop vs python-telegram-bot and grammY)

Control: Libraries like python-telegram-bot or grammY give you full control over handlers and update routing.
Octop side: You skip writing and hosting bot code, since the channel routes messages to a bound expert with memory and tools.
Honest limit: If your bot needs custom Telegram features beyond chat, a framework is the better fit.

Octop Telegram vs ChatGPT in Telegram (Octop vs ChatGPT Telegram Bots Alternative)

Hosting: Third-party ChatGPT bots run on someone else's infrastructure, while Octop runs on your own Railway service with data in your own Postgres.
Model choice: Octop works with OpenAI-compatible APIs, DashScope, Ollama and Anthropic presets, so you are not tied to one provider.
Convenience: A ready-made ChatGPT bot is faster to start and needs no server, which is its real advantage if you just want a chat window.

How to use Octop Telegram (the OSS multi-agent AI assistant)?

In Telegram, open BotFather, send /newbot, follow the prompts and copy the Bot Token it gives you (it looks like a long string with a colon in the middle).
Open your Octop dashboard, log in as admin with the OCTOP_DEFAULT_PASSWORD value, and switch to English from the avatar menu (top right) if the UI opens in Chinese.
Go to the Channels page, enable Telegram, and paste the Bot Token you copied.
Open the target expert's settings and attach the Telegram channel, since channels are per agent and only the expert you bind will answer.
Message your bot in Telegram and confirm the bound expert replies.
Keep the Octop Railway service running so the channel stays connected, because the bot only answers while the process is up.

How to self host Octop Telegram on other VPS Services (Octop self hosting guide)

These steps assume a Linux VPS with Python 3.12 or newer.

Clone the Repository

Pull the upstream source from GitHub and move into the folder.

git clone https://github.com/TencentCloud/Octop.git
cd Octop

Install Dependencies

Install the package with pip.

pip install octop

Configure Environment Variables

Set a real admin password and the home folder before the first start, then point CORS at your public address.

export OCTOP_HOME=/data/.octop
export OCTOP_DEFAULT_PASSWORD=your-password-here
export OCTOP_CORS_ORIGINS=https://your-domain

Start the Octop Telegram Application

Run the server, then create a bot in BotFather and paste its token into the Channels page for your expert.

octop init
octop run

Railway handles the always-on process, the public HTTPS domain, and the Postgres volume for you, which is why the Telegram bot keeps answering without any babysitting.

Official Pricing of Octop Telegram (Octop pricing)

Octop is open source under the MIT license, so there is no Octop license fee and no paid tier. Creating a bot through BotFather costs nothing. Check Railway's pricing page for current rates.

Octop Telegram cloud vs self hosted comparison (Pricing, features, costs, and more)

Self hosting Octop Telegram means you own the bot, the agents and the data, but also the uptime.

Monthly cost of self hosting Octop Telegram on Railway

Your bill on Railway comes from the two services in the template: the Octop app and the Postgres 18 database, each with its own volume. Back up both volumes before upgrading the image tag.

System Requirements for Hosting Octop Telegram on a VPS

Plan for a modern multi-core CPU, a few GB of RAM, and enough disk for the database, workspaces and documents.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Do I need a public domain for the Telegram bot?

Yes, the Octop service gets a public HTTPS domain on Railway, and you set that domain in OCTOP_CORS_ORIGINS so the dashboard works. The bot itself needs no separate domain from you.

Why does the bot stop replying when the service is down?

The Telegram channel runs inside the single Octop process, so when the Railway service is stopped or crashed, nothing is listening for messages.

Where do I paste the Bot Token?

Open the Channels page in your Octop dashboard, enable Telegram, and paste the Bot Token from BotFather. The token goes in the dashboard, not in a Railway service variable.

Can one expert have multiple channels?

Yes, channels are configured per expert, so one expert can have Telegram alongside other channels such as the web dashboard. Each Telegram bot you create connects to the expert you bind it to.

Does a redeploy disconnect the bot?

No, a redeploy keeps your login and agents, and channels reconnect when the process starts again. Back up both volumes before you upgrade the image tag.

What happens to conversation history after a restart?

State is rebuilt from the control-plane database on boot, so your expert and its channel come back.