I built a simple Telegram bot that uses webhooks to receive messages. The bot is supposed to echo back whatever message you send to it. I followed the official documentation when setting up the webhook configuration.
The problem I’m facing is that the bot responses are extremely delayed. Sometimes it takes several minutes for the bot to reply, and occasionally some messages don’t seem to get processed at all. The echo functionality works fine when it does respond, but the timing is terrible.
Is this normal behavior for webhook-based bots, or am I doing something wrong in my setup? I expected near-instant responses but that’s definitely not what I’m getting.
Sounds like a server issue, not normal webhook behavior. I had the same delays when I first deployed my bot - turns out my hosting service was putting the app to sleep after 30 minutes of inactivity. Heroku and other free platforms do this all the time, causing cold starts when Telegram tries to deliver webhooks. Check if your server’s actually running when delays happen. Add basic logging to see when webhook requests arrive vs when your code processes them. Also make sure your webhook endpoint returns HTTP 200 status codes fast - Telegram retries failed deliveries and creates a backlog. Your webhook URL needs to be accessible and respond within a few seconds max.
yeah, i had similar issues! just like you said, telegram needs a fast response. try to handle db calls async so it doesn’t hold up the webhook. if it takes longer than 5 secs, telegram might think it’s failed. good luck!
Check your webhook URL first - I wasted days debugging similar delays because I had the wrong endpoint. Run getWebhookInfo to see if Telegram can reach your server and check for stuck updates in the queue. Network latency matters way more than you’d think. I moved my bot from a cheap Eastern Europe VPS to AWS us-east and saw huge improvements. Also make sure you’re not blocking the webhook with external API calls or database ops. Acknowledge Telegram immediately, then handle the heavy processing async.
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