The short answer
Telegram runs three separate ad accounts, not one. They use different currencies, different price floors and different minimum deposits. And here is the part that actually decides which one you use. They have different rules about where your ad is allowed to send people.
If you want to grow a Telegram channel or bot, you can start for about RM109. If you want to send traffic to your own website, the cheap route is closed to you. You are looking at a €500 deposit, around RM2,359.
That one fork explains why published minimums for this platform range across five orders of magnitude. Almost nobody separates the accounts, so almost every figure you read is quoted without the condition that makes it true.
Why every source gives a different number
Here are the three accounts side by side. Ringgit conversions on this page use the rates at the bottom of the table, captured on 10 August 2026.
| TON account | Euro account | Stars account | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Funded with | Toncoin (crypto) | Euros | Telegram Stars |
| Minimum CPM | 0.1 TON ≈ RM0.55 | €1.50 ≈ RM7.08 | ≈ €0.92 ≈ RM4.34 |
| Minimum deposit | 20 TON ≈ RM109 | €500 ≈ RM2,359 | None stated |
| Moderation | Automated | Manual review | Highest approval rate |
| Targeting depth | Limited | Full. Country, language, device, interests | Limited |
| Can link to your website | No | Yes | Limited |
Then there is the number that causes the most confusion of all. €2 million. That figure is real, but it is the threshold for a direct contract with Telegram itself, roughly RM9.4 million. It has nothing to do with what a Malaysian SME can open. When a guide quotes it without that context, it is describing a door you were never going to walk through.
The account structure above is corroborated across Magnetto, Trilokana and ADSLY. We have not audited the floors ourselves, and we would rather say so than present them as verified.
The restriction that decides it for most businesses
Read this part twice. It is buried or missing in most of what gets published on this topic.
The cheap TON account cannot send anyone to your website. It promotes destinations inside Telegram only. Channels, groups, bots, mini apps. So if your goal is traffic to your own site, the no-minimum account is not a budget option. It is not an option at all.
To run an ad that links out to your website you need the Euro account, and that carries the €500 deposit. Which means the honest answer to “what is the minimum budget for Telegram ads” is a question, not a number.
- Growing a Telegram channel, group or bot? Start at about RM109 and scale from there.
- Driving traffic to a website? Budget about RM2,359 before you have run a single impression.
What each minimum actually buys, at the floor. Deposits are easier to judge as impressions than as currency, so here is the arithmetic on the published floor CPMs. The TON minimum of 20 TON at a 0.1 TON floor works out to roughly 200,000 impressions. The €500 Euro deposit at the €1.50 floor works out to roughly 333,000 impressions. Both are ceilings rather than forecasts: a floor CPM is the least you can bid, not what the auction clears at, so treat these as the most your deposit could possibly reach and expect materially fewer in practice.
This is also why the platform suits some Malaysian businesses far better than others. If you already run a Telegram presence, the economics are genuinely good. If Telegram is just another traffic source you are bolting on, you are paying twenty times more to get in, for a channel with a fraction of WhatsApp’s reach here. We come back to that further down, and it does not resolve in Telegram’s favour.
What Telegram actually allows
Straight from Telegram’s own ad platform and its published guidelines, not from a blog summarising them.
- 160 characters maximum, including spaces. That is the whole ad. No image, no video, no headline. One short block of text.
- One optional link, in the form
@link,t.me/linkort.me/link/123. The ad link and any link in the text must lead to the same place. - Half the revenue goes to the channel owner. Telegram says 50% of ad revenue is paid to the owners of channels where ads appear.
The prohibited list is long, and moderation enforces it. Telegram bans gambling, political advertising, religion and sensitive topics, drugs, alcohol and tobacco, weapons and ammunition, uncertified medical services and supplements, adult content, spam software and malware, and anything falling under “products of questionable legality”.
The gambling ban deserves saying plainly, because it comes up constantly in this market. You cannot advertise casino, betting or free-credit offers on Telegram’s official ad platform. Not with a workaround. Not through a reseller. Not with softened copy. If that is your vertical, this platform is not a route, and any agency telling you otherwise is describing a campaign that gets rejected at review or pulled after it runs. We work on sensitive verticals and we still tell clients the same thing. With the paid door shut in this category, the practical alternative is organic, and iGaming and casino SEO covers what that actually involves.
The 160-character limit is worth sitting with too. It is a much harder creative constraint than advertisers expect coming from Meta or TikTok. No image is doing the persuading. Your offer has to be legible in one line.
What it costs in ringgit
Telegram prices its main account in cryptocurrency, and that has a consequence nobody flags. Your cost in ringgit moves even when your CPM bid does not.
Here is a concrete example of how badly this dates published figures. Several current guides say the 0.1 TON minimum CPM is “approximately $0.36”, a conversion that implies TON trading around $3.60. On 10 August 2026, TON is US$1.34. The same 0.1 TON bid is about US$0.13, or RM0.55. The bid is identical. The published dollar figure is out by nearly three times, because it was written at a different TON price and never revisited.
| Rate | Value |
|---|---|
| 1 TON | US$1.34 · RM5.46 · €1.16 |
| €1 | RM4.72 |
| US$1 | RM4.09 |
On clearing prices rather than floors. Published figures put English-language inventory at roughly 2 to 2.5 TON CPM, about RM11 to 14 per thousand impressions, with Arabic-language channels, Kazakhstan and Brazil among the cheapest markets. We found no credible published CPM benchmark for Malaysia specifically, and we are not going to invent one. Treat the floors as floors, and expect to clear well above them in any competitive placement.
The tax that is not on your invoice
Two Malaysian tax charges can attach to foreign ad spend, and they behave very differently. We covered this in detail for TikTok. Telegram has one wrinkle those platforms do not.
1. Service tax on digital services, 8%. Malaysia charges 8% on digital services from foreign providers who cross the RM500,000 threshold, a rate that rose from 6% on 1 March 2024. Where a provider is registered, it appears on your invoice and there is nothing else to do. TikTok, Google and Meta all charge it.
We could not verify whether Telegram is registered as a foreign service provider with Royal Malaysian Customs. The MySToDS lookup did not resolve for us, and we are not going to assert it either way. Check whether the 8% shows on your own receipt. That is the reliable answer for your account.
2. Withholding tax, and this one is on you. LHDN treats payment for access to a self-serve advertising platform as a royalty under section 109 of the Income Tax Act 1967, because you are being given a tool to build your own campaigns. The default royalty rate for a non-resident is 10%. A tax treaty can reduce it, which is why Meta (Ireland), Google and TikTok (Singapore) all sit at 8%.
Three things about Telegram specifically.
- Which rate applies depends on the entity you contract with. We could not confirm a treaty rate for Telegram’s contracting entity, so we are not quoting one. Budget on the 10% default until your tax agent says otherwise.
- Registration status does not exempt you. LHDN’s position on payments to foreign platforms applies whether or not the platform is registered in Malaysia.
- Paying in crypto does not remove the obligation. Payments to non-residents for platform access can trigger withholding obligations whatever currency you use. A TON-denominated invoice is still a payment to a non-resident.
You remit it within one month of paying the non-resident, with a 10% penalty if you are late. And remember the service tax is a cost, not a credit. Malaysia has no GST, and SST has no input tax mechanism, so it embeds and stays there.
If you buy through a Malaysian reseller rather than direct, the analysis changes, because you are then paying a local company instead of a non-resident. That is one of the few genuine arguments for using one.
A realistic starting budget
A floor is not a plan. Two honest starting points, depending on which fork you took above.
- Channel or bot growth, TON account. The RM109 minimum deposit gets you in the door. To learn which channels actually convert, budget a few hundred ringgit a month and treat the first month as pure discovery.
- Website traffic, Euro account. The €500 deposit is about RM2,359, and it is your entry ticket, not your test budget. At the €1.50 floor that deposit buys roughly 333,000 impressions. At realistic clearing prices, a good deal fewer. Then add the 10% withholding you owe separately.
Our own view, labelled as opinion rather than dressed up as data. Telegram is a poor choice for a first paid channel in Malaysia, and a good choice for a second or third one, specifically when you already have a Telegram asset to grow. The 160-character format rewards advertisers whose offer is already sharp. It is unkind to anyone still working out their message.
Is Telegram worth it in Malaysia?
We would rather answer this properly than sell you the platform.
Malaysia is a WhatsApp country. WhatsApp holds roughly 80% of Malaysian messaging market share, used monthly by about 90% of internet users. Telegram sits near 14%. That is a real audience, several million Malaysians, but it is not a mass-reach medium here, and any agency pitching it as one is overselling.
Where Telegram genuinely wins in this market is depth, not breadth. Channel and community engagement runs far ahead of feed-based platforms. There is no algorithmic feed suppressing your posts. And an audience you gather stays reachable. That is a durable asset in a way a Facebook follower is not.
So the case for Telegram Ads in Malaysia is narrow but real. It is a good way to grow a Telegram asset you intend to keep. It is a weak way to buy general reach, and an expensive way to buy website clicks. If you do not already have a channel or bot worth growing, the honest recommendation is to build that first and advertise into it afterwards.
Doing it yourself, or using a reseller
Disclosure. We manage Telegram campaigns, so weigh this accordingly.
Self-serve is genuinely accessible now, which was not true a couple of years ago. If you are growing a channel and can fund a TON account, there is little reason to pay anyone a markup to press the buttons for you.
Resellers earn their margin in three places. Getting you into the Euro account without arranging your own €500 float. Getting borderline creative through manual moderation. And, if the reseller is Malaysian, simplifying your withholding position, since you are then paying a local company.
One thing to avoid, firmly. There is a visible trade in resold and “verified” Telegram ad accounts, sold as a way around the minimums and the moderation queue. Do not buy one. You inherit an account you do not control, the policy exposure stays yours, and the underlying restriction does not go away because someone sold you a different login. Gambling and the other prohibited categories are still banned. We have written about what happens when ad accounts get restricted, and recovering an account that was never in your name is much harder.
FAQ
What is the minimum budget for Telegram ads?
It depends which account you need. The TON account takes about 20 TON to start, roughly RM109 at August 2026 rates. The Euro account, the only one that can link to a website, needs a deposit of around €500, roughly RM2,359. The €2 million figure you may have seen applies only to direct contracts with Telegram.
How much do Telegram ads cost per 1,000 impressions?
The floor is 0.1 TON on the TON account, about RM0.55, and €1.50 on the Euro account, about RM7.08. Those are minimums, not typical prices. Published figures put English-language inventory around 2 to 2.5 TON, roughly RM11 to 14. No reliable Malaysia-specific benchmark appears to be published.
Can I pay for Telegram ads without cryptocurrency?
Yes. The Euro account is funded in euros, and the Stars account uses Telegram’s internal currency. Only the TON account needs Toncoin. Paying in euros does not remove any Malaysian withholding tax obligation.
Can Malaysian businesses run Telegram ads?
Yes, and you can select Malaysia as a target market. Country-level targeting is a feature of the Euro account. The TON and Stars accounts offer less granularity.
Can I advertise casino or betting offers on Telegram?
No. Telegram’s published guidelines prohibit gambling outright, along with political, adult, weapons, drugs, alcohol, tobacco and uncertified medical advertising. There is no compliant route to running gambling ads on the official platform, direct or through a reseller.
Do I need an agency or reseller to buy Telegram ads?
Not for the TON account, which is self-serve. A reseller mainly helps if you need Euro account access without funding your own deposit, or if you want a Malaysian counterparty for tax simplicity. Do not buy a resold account to get around the minimums.
How many impressions does the minimum deposit buy?
At the published floor CPMs, the 20 TON minimum works out to roughly 200,000 impressions and the €500 Euro deposit to roughly 333,000. Both are ceilings rather than forecasts, because a floor CPM is the lowest you are allowed to bid rather than what the auction clears at. Expect materially fewer.
Why can I not link to my website from the cheap account?
Because the TON account only promotes destinations inside Telegram: channels, groups, bots and mini apps. That is a capability difference, not a spending tier, which is why the answer to "what is the minimum budget" depends entirely on what the ad is meant to do. The fork above is the whole decision.
Is the €500 a deposit or a fee?
It is a funding minimum rather than a charge, so it becomes ad spend rather than disappearing. The reason it still matters is cash flow: you commit the full amount before a single impression runs, which is a very different proposition from a platform you can test with RM200.
Sources
- Telegram Ad Platform and Telegram advertising guidelines, for the 160-character limit, link rules, revenue share and prohibited categories.
- Account structure and price floors corroborated across Magnetto, Trilokana and ADSLY. Not independently audited.
- LHDN, Withholding Tax, for the royalty treatment, remittance window and penalties.
- Taxation of electronic services in Malaysia, for the 8% rate and the RM500,000 registration threshold.
- Malaysian messaging market share data, for the WhatsApp and Telegram figures.
- Exchange rates from CoinGecko and the Exchange Rate API, captured 10 August 2026.
The fork diagram and the impressions arithmetic are ours; both rest on the published floors cited above, which we have not audited.
Two things we could not verify, flagged rather than guessed. Whether Telegram is a registered foreign service provider with Royal Malaysian Customs, and which treaty rate applies to its contracting entity. Both affect your invoice. Ask your tax agent.
If you would rather have this run than researched, we manage paid campaigns and build the Telegram assets worth advertising into. More questions are answered on our FAQ page, or get in touch.