Forwarding messages from WhatsApp* to Telegram

Dublikatich copies new messages from a WhatsApp group into a Telegram channel or group: text, albums, voice messages, replies and edits. Below is a three-minute video and the same setup step by step.

Set up copying Setup, step by step ↓

Video, 3:23, in Russian. Setting up copying from WhatsApp to Telegram, and then to Max as well.

Setup, step by step

Setup happens entirely in Telegram and takes a couple of minutes. Nothing to install.

Open the bot
Open Dublikatich in Telegram and tap "Set up copying". When it asks where to copy from, choose WhatsApp.
Copy the group's link
In WhatsApp, open the group, tap its name, then "Add members", "Invite via link" and "Copy link". If that option is missing, a group admin can send you the link.
Send the link to the bot
Paste the link into the chat with the bot. It checks the link, shows the group's name and joins. This usually takes a few seconds.
Choose a group or channel
Choose Telegram and tap "Add to Telegram group" or "Add to Telegram channel". Telegram opens the list of your groups or channels: pick where to copy to.
Make the bot an admin
Telegram offers admin rights: post, edit and delete messages. Leave them as they are and make the bot an admin. The bot then shows where it will copy from and to. Tap "Confirm", and copying starts.
Check it
Post something in the WhatsApp group. A few seconds later the copy appears in Telegram, looking the same.

Part 1. The beginning

How Dublikatich came about

I wrote Dublikatich in 2022, before the vibe-coding era. I wrote it for my wife: she runs an online shop and talks to her customers through messengers, where she also shares news and new arrivals. Tatiana in the video is modelled on her.

"Could you write a bot that forwards messages from WhatsApp to Telegram?" That was the request. I thought it was a weekend job. How wrong I was.

It sounds simple, but there were plenty of pitfalls. There are no official bots for WhatsApp, and the only more or less sane way to work with it goes through web.whatsapp.com: in effect, you work out how the web version is built. There is no API, the protocol can change at any moment, and everything breaks.

You would think a message coming from the server looks the same wherever it was sent from. It doesn't: a message sent from iOS could differ from one sent from Android. At least, that used to be the case.

Albums became a pain of their own. Sometimes they arrive by the book: first a parent event announcing that photos from this album are coming. Sometimes there is no parent, although the photos were sent as an album and look like one. And then there is the order: the photos arrive shuffled, and any other event, even another message, can land between the third and the fourth photo.

A month of such "weekends" and a few sleepless nights later, the bot was ready. Then came constant watching and fixing, watching again and fixing again, and a steady supply of edge cases. After a year and a bit, copying from WhatsApp to Telegram was polished.

Then my wife told friends and colleagues about the bot, and the load grew. I did not want to pay for an expensive server, so I optimised everything I could: 1 vCPU, 1 GB of memory, 10 GB of disk. Files cannot be stored on the server, and heavy albums cannot be held in memory, so video and photos are streamed. Queues, pools, events. When there are more users, the wait grows, not the load on the machine. Just what I needed.

Then came new requests: "Can it go the other way, from Telegram to WhatsApp? It's the same thing, should be easy." This time I was not naive and did not even hope to finish quickly.

Telegram was no trouble: its bots are a pleasure to work with, with few oddities, stable and reliable. The difficulties began with sending to WhatsApp. I read WhatsApp through my own service account, in effect a separate phone with its own number that is always online. Reading messages is safe; sending is risky. One group is probably fine. But several groups, with 20 to 200 messages a day each? That is how you get banned. So I had to connect users' own devices: whoever really needs to copy from Telegram to WhatsApp posts under their own name.

I thought people would worry about their data. Maybe they do. I worried more about keeping the load down and spending as little memory as possible on events from users' devices. There can be hundreds of groups and thousands of events, and I need one group. A dozen hours of experiments, and a good way was found.

And then I decided it was time to charge for the hundreds of hours I had spent. That is how Dublikatich became a full service. And this is only the beginning.

Ilya, author of Dublikatich

Moving old chats or copying new messages

"Moving WhatsApp to Telegram" usually means one of two things. Either taking the old conversation along, so the history is at hand. Or carrying on in WhatsApp and getting each new message in Telegram straight away. These are different tasks with different tools.

Telegram imports old conversations by itself, and has since 2021. In WhatsApp, open the chat, choose "Export chat" in its menu, then Telegram and the chat to import into. The messages appear with their original dates. The import happens once: anything written in WhatsApp after the export never reaches Telegram.

New messages need a bot that sits in the WhatsApp group and copies each message as soon as it appears. That is what Dublikatich does. It leaves old messages alone.

Why copy when you can forward by hand

If you post products, news or schedules and your readers are in both WhatsApp and Telegram, every post goes out twice. An album of six photos with a price and sizes takes several minutes. Get the price wrong, and you correct it in two places too.

WhatsApp is blocked in Russia, and many buyers have moved to Telegram and Max. Part of the audience still reads WhatsApp, though, and losing it is not an option. The bot takes this work over: you post in one place, and the copies appear in the others.

The options

By hand. Free, but every post goes out twice, and every edit and deletion has to be repeated.
Telegram's import. Suits old conversations. It runs once and does not pick up new messages.
Your own bridge. Coders can build such a bridge themselves from open-source libraries. But believe me, even with the best AI agents, pain awaits you. Then again, I enjoyed building this bridge, for all its difficulties. Maybe you will too!
A bot. Dublikatich is set up in Telegram in a couple of minutes, with nothing to install. It copies everything: text, photos and videos, voice messages, replies, edits and deletions.

What is copied

Text, with its formatting and links.
Photos and videos, albums included. Albums from WhatsApp arrive in Telegram as they were sent. Telegram allows at most 10 photos and videos in one album, so the bot splits a larger album into albums of 10.
Voice messages arrive as voice messages, not files. Documents, stickers, contacts and locations are copied too.
Replies. A reply to a message in WhatsApp is the same reply in Telegram.
Edits and deletions. If you fix a caption or delete a message in WhatsApp, the copy in Telegram changes or disappears too. WhatsApp itself allows editing only in the first minutes after sending.
Long captions. Telegram limits a photo caption to 1024 characters, so a longer caption arrives as a separate message right after the photo.
Optionally, each copy is signed with the author's name.

What Dublikatich does not do

It does not copy old messages. Only what appears in the group after the connection is set up reaches Telegram.
It does not read private chats. The bot works only with groups it was invited to.
It does not post in WhatsApp under its own name. To copy from Telegram to WhatsApp, you pair your own WhatsApp account by QR code, and the copies are posted as you. The story above explains why.

Is it safe for my WhatsApp account

To copy from WhatsApp to Telegram, your account is not involved. Dublikatich's service account joins the group and only reads it. The bot deletes the message with the invite link from your chat with it straight away.

The service account shows in the group as an ordinary member, and any admin can remove it. Copying then stops, and the bot tells you what happened and how to fix it.

If you copy into WhatsApp, your own account posts the messages. The risk appears only at high volume: one, two or three groups are no problem at all. In 4 years of operation, not a single account has been blocked.

Can it copy into Max as well

Yes. The same WhatsApp group can also be copied into a Max channel or group; that is a separate connection. The second half of the video shows how to set it up. You post once in WhatsApp, and the copies appear in both Telegram and Max.

How much it costs

The first 30 days are free, with PRO features and no card required. After that, you choose a plan. Without payment, copying pauses and your settings are kept.

Lite

250⭐ per month

Telegram Stars · auto-renewal via Telegram

≈ 430 ₽ per month

✓Up to 3 connections
✓All directions
✓Cancel any time

Start for free

PRO

500⭐ per month

Telegram Stars · auto-renewal via Telegram

≈ 860 ₽ per month

✓Up to 10 connections
✓All directions
✓30 days free for new users
✓Cancel any time

Start for free

You pay in Telegram Stars. The ruble amount is approximate: it depends on where you buy Stars.

Ready to try?

Set up your first connection in 2 minutes. The first 30 days are free.

Open the bot in Telegram

No card required · cancel any time

Forwarding messages from WhatsApp* to Telegram

Setup, step by step

Open the bot

Copy the group's link

Send the link to the bot

Choose a group or channel

Make the bot an admin

Check it