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How to Build a Polymarket Telegram Bot

Create a Telegram bot that monitors Polymarket, sends real-time alerts, and lets you execute trades from your phone.

Why Telegram for Polymarket Trading?

Telegram is the natural home for crypto trading bots. It's fast, supports rich message formatting, has a powerful Bot API, and most prediction market traders already use it daily. A Polymarket Telegram bot gives you:

Architecture Overview

Your Telegram bot sits between two APIs: the Telegram Bot API (for messaging) and the Polymarket CLOB API (for trading). The architecture has three layers:

System Components

  • Telegram Bot Process — Listens for incoming messages and commands from your Telegram chat. Parses user intent and routes to the appropriate handler.
  • Market Monitor — Maintains a WebSocket connection to Polymarket for real-time data. Evaluates alert conditions and triggers notifications when thresholds are crossed.
  • Trade Executor — Receives trade commands from the Telegram handler, validates parameters, constructs and signs orders, and submits them to the CLOB API.

Step 1: Create Your Telegram Bot

Every Telegram bot starts with BotFather, Telegram's built-in bot management tool:

1

Register with BotFather

Open Telegram, search for @BotFather, and send /newbot. Choose a name (e.g., "My Polymarket Bot") and a username (e.g., my_polymarket_bot). BotFather returns a bot token — this is your API key for the Telegram Bot API.

2

Configure Bot Settings

Use BotFather commands to set a description, profile picture, and command list. Define commands like /price, /buy, /sell, /portfolio, and /alerts so users see them in the command menu.

3

Secure Access

Restrict your bot to only respond to your Telegram user ID. This prevents unauthorized users from executing trades if they discover your bot's username. Store your user ID in an environment variable and check it on every incoming message.

Step 2: Set Up the Project

Initialize a Python project with the required dependencies:

Required Libraries

  • python-telegram-bot — Async Telegram Bot API wrapper with conversation handlers, command routing, and inline keyboards
  • py-clob-client — Polymarket CLOB API client for market data and order execution
  • websockets — WebSocket client for real-time Polymarket data streaming
  • python-dotenv — Load environment variables from a .env file for local development
  • aiohttp — Async HTTP client for non-blocking API requests

Step 3: Implement Command Handlers

Each Telegram command maps to a bot function. Here are the essential commands your bot should support:

/price [market]

Fetches the current price for a market. The bot queries the CLOB API for the order book, extracts the mid-market price, and formats a response showing the YES and NO prices, 24-hour change, and volume.

/buy [market] [amount]

Places a buy order. The bot should confirm the trade details before executing — send a message like "Buy $50 of YES on 'Will X happen?' at $0.62? Reply YES to confirm." This prevents accidental trades from typos.

/sell [market] [amount]

Places a sell order with the same confirmation flow. Shows the current bid price and estimated proceeds before execution.

/portfolio

Displays all open positions with current market value, unrealized P&L, and entry prices. Format as a clean table or list for easy reading on mobile.

/alerts

Manage price alerts. Sub-commands include /alerts add [market] [price], /alerts list, and /alerts remove [id]. Store alerts in a local database (SQLite works well for single-user bots).

Step 4: Build the Market Monitor

The market monitor runs as a background task alongside the Telegram bot. It maintains a WebSocket connection to Polymarket and evaluates alert conditions continuously:

When an alert condition triggers, the monitor sends a formatted Telegram message with the relevant details and optional action buttons (e.g., "Buy Now" inline keyboard button).

Step 5: Trade Execution Engine

The trade execution layer handles the critical path from user command to filled order. It must be robust because errors here cost real money:

Execution Safeguards

  • Confirmation prompts — Always require explicit confirmation before executing trades
  • Slippage protection — Check that the current price hasn't moved more than a configurable threshold since the user requested the trade
  • Position size limits — Enforce maximum trade sizes to prevent fat-finger errors
  • Duplicate detection — Track recent orders and reject duplicates within a time window
  • Balance checks — Verify sufficient USDC balance before attempting order placement

Step 6: Message Formatting

Good formatting makes your bot a pleasure to use. Telegram supports HTML and Markdown in messages. Use these formatting patterns:

Step 7: Deployment

Deploy your bot to a cloud server for 24/7 uptime. The bot needs to run continuously to receive Telegram messages and maintain WebSocket connections:

Set up health monitoring — if the bot stops responding to a /ping command, an external service should alert you and optionally restart the process.

Advanced Features

Once your basic bot is working, consider adding these enhancements:

For a ready-made Telegram trading experience without building from scratch, check out our guide to the best Polymarket bots — some offer Telegram integration out of the box.

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