How to delete, block or stop a Telegram bot

Getting rid of a Telegram bot means different things depending on who you are: as a user, you can block or delete the chat with a bot in seconds; as a group or channel admin, you can strip a bot of its admin rights or remove it entirely; and if you created the bot yourself, @BotFather can delete it permanently. This guide covers all four situations, in the order most people run into them.

Block or delete a bot chat

If a bot in your own chat list is spamming you, no longer useful, or you just want it gone, you don't need its cooperation — blocking and deleting are entirely under your control.

1. Open the chat with the bot.
2. Tap the bot's name at the top to open its profile.
3. Choose Block to stop it from messaging you, or Delete Chat (on some versions of Telegram this also offers a combined "Block and Delete" option) to remove the conversation from your chat list.
4. If you blocked the bot and change your mind later, you can unblock it from the same profile screen and send /start again to reactivate it.

Blocking stops the bot from sending you messages; deleting the chat just clears it from your list. Neither action deletes the bot itself or affects other users who talk to it — that only happens if the bot's creator deletes it, which is covered in the last section below.

Remove a bot's admin rights in a group

A bot added as a group admin — for moderation, welcome messages, or scheduling posts, for example — keeps its permissions until an existing admin changes them. To scale back or remove those rights:

1. Open the group and tap its name to open Group info.
2. Open Administrators — this list is usually reached from the group info screen, though the exact menu wording can vary between iOS, Android and Desktop.
3. Tap the bot's name in the admin list.
4. Turn off the specific permissions you no longer want it to have, or use the option to dismiss it as admin entirely, which drops it back to a regular member.
5. If you don't want the bot in the group at all anymore, remove it as described in the next section.

Only an existing admin with the right to add new admins can change another admin's permissions, so if you can't reach this menu, ask whoever owns the group.

Remove a bot from a channel or group entirely

Removing a bot is different from just revoking its admin rights — it takes the bot out of the chat completely, and it stops receiving any messages or events from it.

1. Open the channel or group and tap its name to open the info screen.
2. Open the members (or subscribers) list.
3. Tap the bot's name, then choose the option to remove it from the chat.
4. Confirm the removal. The bot's own past messages typically remain visible in the chat history unless you delete them separately.

If the bot was doing something useful — like moderation or scheduled posts — that functionality stops the moment it's removed, so it's worth lining up a replacement from the relevant category before you remove the old one, if you still need that feature.

Delete your own bot with @BotFather

Everything above removes a bot from your side of a conversation, group or channel. If you created the bot yourself and want it gone entirely — for everyone, everywhere — that's done through @BotFather, not through the bot's own chat.

1. Open a chat with @BotFather and send /mybots.
2. Select the bot you want to delete from the list.
3. Open its settings and choose the delete option, then send /deletebot when @BotFather asks you to confirm by typing it.
4. Confirm again if prompted. Once confirmed, the bot's username is freed for anyone to register, and the bot stops working for every user who was talking to it.

This step is permanent — unlike blocking a bot or removing it from your own chats, deleting it through @BotFather can't be undone, and every user of that bot loses access at once. If you're only unsure whether you still need the bot, it's safer to leave it registered but stop running the code behind it than to delete it outright, since the username can't be recovered afterward.