I built a simple Telegram bot that echoes messages back to users. I followed the official documentation to configure the webhook properly. However, I’m experiencing significant delays when receiving updates from Telegram’s servers. Some messages take forever to arrive, and occasionally certain messages never reach my webhook endpoint at all. Is this normal behavior for webhook-based bots, or could there be a configuration issue on my end? Has anyone else encountered similar latency problems with their Telegram bot webhooks?
Webhook delays usually come from network issues between Telegram’s servers and your endpoint. I’ve seen this happen with certain cloud providers that have crappy routing to Telegram’s data centers. Switching regions or providers fixed most of my timing problems. Also double-check your SSL setup - Telegram’s picky about HTTPS and will keep retrying failed requests, which looks like delays. DNS problems are another big one. Try Cloudflare to boost connectivity. Make sure your webhook URL works from different locations too, since Telegram hits it from servers all over the world.
Had this exact problem with Telegram webhooks two years ago. My server was either blocking duplicate updates or taking forever to process them. Telegram times out webhook responses after 60 seconds - if you don’t respond fast enough, they’ll retry the same update later. Creates fake delays and missing messages. Check your server logs to see if you’re getting the updates but not responding properly. Also double-check your webhook URL - typos or wrong ports make Telegram queue updates instead of sending them right away. I ran a basic HTTP endpoint test to figure out if the issue was on Telegram’s end or mine.
for sure! i had similar issues before. make sure your server is optimized, telegram really needs quick responses. like, dont let processing delay your status code, sending a 200 right away can help. good luck with it!