Almost every crypto project ends up with a Telegram channel. Signals, market analysis, project news, a community around a token or a trading tool — it all lives there. And sooner or later the same question comes up: "Okay, the channel is ready. How do we get real subscribers into it without burning the budget?"

Let me share how we do it today, and what it actually costs.

The short answer: around €1 per subscriber from Tier-1

Right now our average cost is around €1 per subscriber from Tier-1 countries. Not bots, not "subscriber packages" — people who saw an ad, got interested and joined the channel themselves.

That number matters because Tier-1 audiences (Western Europe, North America and similar markets) are usually the most expensive ones in crypto. Those are also the people with the highest deposits, the biggest trading volumes and the best LTV. Paying around a euro for that kind of subscriber is a very healthy starting point for most projects.

Where the subscribers come from

1. Ads inside Telegram itself

The most direct route is advertising inside Telegram: posts in thematic crypto and finance channels and Telegram's own ad formats. The audience is already in the app, so joining your channel is literally one tap away.

What works best here:

  • Choosing channels by audience, not by subscriber count. A smaller channel with a live, engaged audience beats a big "dead" one every time.
  • A native post, not a banner. The ad should read like useful content — a market insight, a short case, a teaser of what's inside your channel.
  • Testing several creatives at once and quickly cutting the ones that don't bring subscribers.

2. Pushing traffic from Facebook and TikTok into Telegram

This is the part many people don't expect. We regularly move traffic from Facebook and TikTok straight into a Telegram channel — and the cost per subscriber lands in roughly the same range, around €1.

Why it works:

  • Facebook and TikTok have huge reach and very precise targeting by country, age and interests.
  • Instead of sending people to a website where they read and leave, we send them into a channel, where you can keep talking to them every day.
  • A subscriber is an asset you own. Once someone is in the channel, every next post reaches them for free.

The key is the bridge between the ad and the channel. The creative and the first screen the user sees have to match: if the ad promises daily market breakdowns, the user should land exactly on that, with a clear "join" button. We've written about this approach in our case on moving crypto traffic into Telegram.

3. Video and YouTube as a warm-up

For some projects a video works as the first touch: people watch an explanation of the product or the strategy, then go to Telegram for more. We used a similar logic in our trading bot YouTube case in LATAM, where the video did the selling before the user even clicked.

What actually decides the price per subscriber

From our experience, the cost depends less on the ad source and more on four things:

  1. The channel itself. If the last posts are boring or it was quiet for a week, people tap "join" and leave. Before launching ads, make sure the channel looks alive.
  2. The promise in the ad. "Free signals" brings cheap but cold subscribers. A specific, honest promise — "daily BTC market breakdown in 2 minutes" — brings people who stay.
  3. GEO. Tier-1 is more expensive but brings the most valuable audience. Tier-2 and Tier-3 can be several times cheaper, and for some projects that's the right choice.
  4. Speed of optimization. The first days of a campaign are a test. Creatives and placements that don't bring subscribers should be cut fast, and the budget moved to what works.

Mistakes we see all the time

  • Buying "subscriber packages". Bots don't trade, don't deposit and kill the channel's reach.
  • Looking only at the price per subscriber. A cheap subscriber who leaves in a week costs more than an expensive one who stays for a year. Look at retention and what subscribers do after joining.
  • One creative for the whole budget. Always test several angles.
  • Ads without a plan for the content after. Getting people in is half the job. Keeping them is the other half.

A real example

One of our fintech clients wanted to grow a Telegram channel with an international audience. We ran the campaign on a foreign GEO, and the result was a CPL of $0.86 with a budget of $1,399 — around 1,627 new subscribers. The full breakdown is in our fintech channel case. In another project, ads in Telegram channels brought 500 new clients to an investment club.

The bottom line

Promoting a crypto channel today is not about luck and not about buying numbers. It's a normal performance funnel: the right sources (Telegram, Facebook, TikTok), a creative that matches the channel, and fast optimization. With that in place, around €1 per Tier-1 subscriber is a realistic target.

Want to grow your crypto channel? Get in touch — we'll look at your channel and tell you honestly what price per subscriber and what volumes to expect. More case studies — in the blog.