If you are writing a Telegram bot from scratch, you will encounter three frameworks more than any others: grammY (TypeScript/JavaScript), Telegraf (TypeScript/JavaScript), and python-telegram-bot (Python). Each has a different design philosophy, a different performance profile, and a different sweet spot.
Here is a practical comparison for 2026.
grammY
grammY is the newest of the three, built from the ground up with TypeScript and modern JavaScript in mind. It uses a middleware architecture similar to Koa or Hono, where every update passes through a chain of handlers.
Strengths:
- First-class TypeScript support with accurate, auto-generated types from the Bot API schema
- Excellent documentation with interactive examples
- Built-in support for webhooks and long polling
- Plugin ecosystem: sessions, conversations, inline keyboards, rate limiting, and more
- Handles all Bot API methods including the latest additions quickly after Telegram releases them
- Context flavoring allows TypeScript-safe plugin composition
Weaknesses:
- Younger ecosystem than Telegraf; fewer third-party tutorials
- Some plugin APIs changed significantly in v1.x
Best for: TypeScript developers, new projects, bots that need accurate typing on all Bot API responses.
BotForge uses grammY for all generated bots because the type safety catches mistakes at generation time and the middleware chain makes complex feature composition clean.
Telegraf
Telegraf is the original JavaScript/TypeScript framework for Telegram bots and has years of production usage behind it. Its API was the reference point that grammY was partly designed in response to.
Strengths:
- Large ecosystem of tutorials, Stack Overflow answers, and community plugins
- Familiar to many JS developers who started with it
- TypeScript support improved significantly in v4
Weaknesses:
- Type accuracy is less complete than grammY - some methods return `any` or imprecise types
- Plugin ecosystem has stalled somewhat as grammY attracted newer contributors
- Some Bot API features lag behind official releases
- The v3 to v4 migration was disruptive and broke many community resources
Best for: Developers familiar with Telegraf who are maintaining existing bots; projects that need to hire from a larger pool of developers with prior experience.
python-telegram-bot
python-telegram-bot (PTB) is the dominant framework in the Python ecosystem and one of the oldest bot libraries overall. Version 20 was a significant rewrite to async/await using Python's asyncio.
Strengths:
- Mature, battle-tested codebase with a decade of production usage
- Excellent documentation including a comprehensive wiki
- Full async support since v20
- Strong community and responsive maintainers
- ConversationHandler makes multi-step flows (like wizards and quizzes) ergonomic
Weaknesses:
- Python is slower than Node.js for I/O-heavy workloads at scale
- Type hints are less enforced at runtime than TypeScript compile-time checks
- Memory usage is higher per instance than a Node.js equivalent
Best for: Python developers, data-heavy bots that integrate with pandas/numpy/ML libraries, teams that prefer Python's readability.
How they compare on key dimensions
| Dimension | grammY | Telegraf | python-telegram-bot |
|---|---|---|---|
| Language | TypeScript / JS | TypeScript / JS | Python |
| TypeScript types | Excellent | Good | N/A |
| Bot API coverage | Fast updates | Moderate | Fast updates |
| Documentation | Excellent | Good | Excellent |
| Plugin ecosystem | Growing | Mature | Mature |
| Performance | Excellent | Excellent | Good |
| Learning curve | Low-Medium | Low | Low |
Which should you choose?
Choose grammY if you are starting a new TypeScript or JavaScript project. The type safety alone saves hours of debugging, and the documentation is the best of any Telegram framework.
Choose Telegraf if you are maintaining an existing Telegraf bot or hiring from a team already familiar with it. Migrating a working bot carries more risk than benefit.
Choose python-telegram-bot if your team writes Python or your bot integrates with Python data tooling. PTB's ConversationHandler is also the most ergonomic way to build multi-step interaction flows in any language.
What about no-code?
If you do not want to write or maintain framework code at all, BotForge generates a complete grammY bot project from a web wizard. You get the production-quality TypeScript code, the launcher scripts, and the hosting guide - without touching the framework directly.
Build your grammY bot without writing framework boilerplate at tgbotforge.com.