Connect Substack with Telegram

Connect Substack with Telegram

Substack charges your readers through a Stripe account in your name. Metricgram connects to that Stripe account, invites your paid subscribers to your Telegram group and removes them when their subscription ends. Readers keep paying on Substack, and Metricgram doesn't create charges, change prices or cancel subscriptions.

What you need first

• A Metricgram plan with Stripe Connect (every paid plan, or the 14-day trial).
• Your Telegram group connected to Metricgram, with the bot as an administrator.
• Access to the Stripe account your Substack uses. In Substack, you can find it under Settings > Payments.

1. Connect the Stripe account behind your Substack

1. Select your group in Metricgram and open Monetization > Stripe Connect.
2. Click Connect with Stripe and sign in to the Stripe account your Substack uses.
3. Approve the connection and return to Metricgram.

2. Choose the products that include the group

Substack usually creates a Stripe product for each price, named after the price, such as $19.99 a month or $199 a year. When you raise your price, readers who subscribed earlier keep their old price, so you will often see several products.

Select every product whose subscribers should be in the group: monthly, annual, founding member and older prices. Products that look alike are separate products, so select each one you want to include. Subscribers on products you don't select are not managed.

3. Check your subscribers

After you save, your Substack subscribers appear in the subscribers table on the Stripe Connect page, with their email, plan and status. Active and trialing subscriptions count as active.

4. Invite your current subscribers

When you're ready to open the group, click Send invitation on the Stripe Connect page. Every active subscriber who hasn't linked Telegram yet receives an email with the message you wrote in subscriber settings and a personal button. The reader clicks the button, taps Start in our bot if Telegram asks, and receives the link to your group.

You can also share the bot link from the same page. Readers open the bot, tap Get link and enter the email address they use on Substack. The bot checks their subscription and sends the group link.

5. New subscribers

With automatic email invitations turned on in subscriber settings, every new paid subscriber receives the invitation email as soon as their subscription is active. You don't need to do anything else.

When a subscription ends

If removal on expiration is turned on, Metricgram removes the reader from the group after the grace period you choose, unless they still have another active subscription for the group. You can also send Telegram reminders 7, 3 or 1 days before access ends. Readers who subscribe again can link again and rejoin.

Whitelist: guests and readers without their own Stripe subscription

The Whitelist is a list of members allowed to stay in the selected Telegram group without a covering Stripe subscription. Use it for readers granted free access, gift recipients, people whose subscription is paid for by someone else, App Store subscribers, team members or guests whose access is not represented by a subscription synced from Stripe. Substack does not automatically sync these exceptions to the whitelist.

For someone already known to the group, open Members, use their actions menu and choose Add to whitelist. Choose a reason and optionally add a note and an end date. The Whitelist button and filter in Members help you review entries.

For someone who has not joined, open Growth > Invitations > Email invitations, enter their email and tick Add these people to the whitelist. You can set Allow access until to give everyone in that batch the same calendar end date, or leave it empty for no end date. The date includes that whole day in your time zone; an invitation cannot be accepted after it. They are added when they accept with their Telegram account. Sending a regular or trackable invitation does not add someone to the whitelist.

With no end date, protection lasts until you remove the entry. With a date, it includes that whole day in your time zone. After it expires, Metricgram removes the member on the next automatic check if removal on expiration is enabled and no subscription or subscription grace period covers access, even if they never had a Stripe subscription. If removal is disabled or a subscription still covers access, they stay. Group owners and administrators stay protected. Removing an entry does not immediately expel the member; it restores the usual subscription access rules. Reprocessing an already accepted invitation does not restore a removed or expired entry.

Telegram Stars

Telegram asks that payments for digital goods and services sold inside Telegram, for example through bots or mini apps, use Telegram Stars. With this setup, readers pay on Substack, outside Telegram, and the bot only checks who should have access. Telegram hasn't published a specific position on this setup, so we can't guarantee how Telegram will treat it.

Troubleshooting

• I don't see my Substack products: check that you connected the same Stripe account your Substack uses, shown under Settings > Payments in Substack.
• A reader says the bot doesn't recognize them: ask them for the email they use on Substack and search for it in the subscribers table. If they subscribed on a product you didn't select, add that product.
• A complimentary reader didn't get an invitation: their access may not be represented in Stripe. Send an email invitation with Add these people to the whitelist ticked, or add their existing Telegram membership to the Whitelist.