Telegram has no built-in way to filter bots in your member list. There's no "show inactive accounts" toggle, no filter by last seen, no bulk removal by account characteristics. You either do it manually — one by one — or you use a bot that has admin access to your member list and can do it for you.
What you're actually trying to remove
Three types of accounts end up in Telegram groups as "bots," and they require different removal approaches.
Bot farm accounts — automated accounts with no avatar and no real history. These get added in bulk through subscriber boosting services or deployed in raid attacks. TGuard logs these accounts in its database each time they appear across any protected channel, so by the time they show up in yours, they're probably already in there.
Ghost accounts — technically alive profiles that never engage. Often these are offer-based accounts from "real subscriber" services: actual people who got paid a tiny amount to join and never opened the app again. They look like normal members but contribute zero to your engagement rate.
Deleted accounts — profiles Telegram has marked as deleted. They show up as "Deleted Account" in the member list. Pure dead weight: they don't affect reach, but they drag down your audience quality score.
Manual cleanup — when it's realistic
In small groups under 300–500 members you can go into the member list and kick suspicious accounts by hand. Slow, but it works. For groups over a thousand members it stops being viable: after a raid of 5,000 accounts you'd spend hours on manual removal, and part of the farm would rejoin under new accounts before you finish.
Three TGuard tools for cleanup
TGuard has three separate cleanup tools. They solve different problems — mixing them up wastes time.
Blacklist cleanup removes all members that TGuard has already identified as bots — accounts from its attack database. Good for a surgical sweep after a raid, or a first-run cleanup when you connect a channel that's never had protection. It only removes accounts confirmed in the database; unknown accounts stay.
Deleted account cleanup is exactly what it sounds like — finds and removes profiles with a "Deleted Account" status. Fast, precise, and safe: it physically cannot touch active accounts.
Selective cleanup is the flexible option. You can remove the last N members who joined (useful right after a raid while the attack is fresh), everyone who joined in a specific date range, or a list of specific account IDs. Before confirming, TGuard shows you the account table so you can check who's actually getting removed.
Run the subscriber scan before cleanup — TGuard needs to have analyzed your members for the blacklist to be complete. The scan is a one-time step at setup.
Keeping bots out after cleanup
A one-time cleanup without protecting the entry point is temporary. The same bot farms can refill a group within hours. After cleaning, you need to close the door.
Antivirus checks every new member against the database the moment they join and kicks known bots automatically — no action needed on your end. This is the baseline for ongoing protection.
Rate limiting caps new members per hour at whatever your normal growth looks like, plus a buffer. If a bot farm tries to add 3,000 accounts overnight, the limit trips early and the excess gets auto-removed. One important caveat: raise the limit before an ad campaign or giveaway, or real people will get kicked too.
CAPTCHA is the hardest barrier — every new member solves a challenge before they're in. Near-100% effective against bots, but creates friction for real people. Worth enabling during an active attack or before high-stakes contests where fake entrants are a specific problem.
Frequently Asked Questions
The removal itself takes minutes. The initial scan at setup takes a few hours on large groups. Repeat cleanups are fast once the data is there.
With date-range selective cleanup, yes — if real people joined during the same period. TGuard shows the account list before confirming. Blacklist cleanup and deleted account removal are precise and safe.
With antivirus on, most bots get blocked at the door and don't need manual removal. Manual cleanup is only needed for attacks before TGuard was connected, or if a surge slipped through before rate limits kicked in.