Telegram bots: polling or webhook?

A Telegram bot receives updates in one of two ways. Both work on FadeHost; which one to pick depends on whether the bot is also a web app.

Polling

The bot asks Telegram for new updates in a loop (getUpdates). Every library does it with one call: dp.start_polling(bot) in aiogram, app.run_polling() in python-telegram-bot, bot.start() in grammY, bot.launch() in Telegraf.

• Needs nothing: no port, no address, no certificate.
• Works on the free tier and on any paid tier.
• Handles a restart cleanly: Telegram keeps updates for 24 hours and hands them over when the bot comes back.

For a bot that is only a bot, this is the answer.

Webhook

Telegram calls your bot at an https URL for every update. The bot is then a web server listening on 0.0.0.0 and the PORT the panel sets, and it needs a public https address.

• Hosted apps can have one: https://name.fadehost.app from the app’s page.
• On the free tier that address sleeps when idle and wakes on the next request, so the first update after a quiet period is slower and Telegram may retry it. A paid app’s address stays up.
• Set it once after deploy: curl "https://api.telegram.org/bot<TOKEN>/setWebhook?url=https://name.fadehost.app/webhook", or with your library’s helper.

Use a webhook when the bot is part of a larger web app anyway, or when you need Telegram to reach a route that also serves a site.

Switching

Telegram allows one mode at a time. Before polling again, delete the webhook (deleteWebhook), or polling answers Conflict: can't use getUpdates method while webhook is active. The same conflict appears when two copies of the bot poll at once, for example a copy still running on your machine while the hosted one starts.

Which one, in short