The shape of a channel's subscriber growth: GET /insights/telegram/{username}/growth-quality

What this endpoint answers

Describes HOW a channel gained its subscribers over the window rather than how many: gross gains against gross losses, how many days moved up and how many down, the median day, and what share of all the growth arrived on the single biggest day. Bought subscribers arrive in one delivery and organic ones do not, and that difference is visible in the shape without anyone having to call it fraud.

This is a catalog read: it is served from the CRM Solid database in milliseconds, costs one budget unit, and reports how old the reading is in meta.cache_age_s. It needs the insights:read scope (Insights): Engagement rates, top posts, viral patterns, cohort benchmarks.

Good to know

No verdict, no score. Every field is a count or a sum over the observed days and the interpretation is the caller's. A high top_step_share_pct on a channel that was covered in the press is a news cycle, not a purchase.
measurable is false with reason insufficient_history when fewer than 7 days were observed in the window. That is most of the Telegram catalog: 67,244 of 3,062,001 channels had 30 or more observed days on 2026-08-30. It is not most of the channels anyone asks about: 4,271 of the top 5,000 by subscribers did.
Steps are between consecutive OBSERVED days, so up_steps + down_steps + flat_steps equals days_observed - 1 and never the number of calendar days. days_covered on each extreme says how much ground that step spanned.
Deltas are recomputed here rather than read from the rollup's daily_growth column, which lags the previous STORED day and so reports a whole crawl gap as one day's growth.
Available for Telegram and Bluesky only. GET /insights/activity/platforms says why YouTube and TikTok are refused.

Parameters

Every value the call accepts, with the example the spec ships so the request runs as written.

Name	In	Required	Example	What it does
`username`	path	required	`durov`	Public Telegram username, with or without the @. A t.me link is accepted.
`days`	query	optional	`30`	Calendar days of history to read back from today, 1 to 90. The rollup begins 2026-06-09, so no account can answer for more than that.

Call it

Authenticate with a bearer token or the x-api-key header. Keys are server-to-server credentials. Never embed one in front-end code - call the API from your own backend and forward the result.

curl

curl "https://crmsolid.com/data-api/v2/insights/telegram/durov/growth-quality" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer psk_live_..."

JavaScript

const res = await fetch("https://crmsolid.com/data-api/v2/insights/telegram/durov/growth-quality", {
  headers: {
    Authorization: `Bearer ${process.env.CRM_SOLID_DATA_API_KEY}`,
  },
});

if (!res.ok) {
  const { error } = await res.json();
  throw new Error(`${error.code}: ${error.message} (${error.request_id})`);
}

const { data, meta } = await res.json();

Python

import os

import requests

res = requests.get(
    "https://crmsolid.com/data-api/v2/insights/telegram/durov/growth-quality",
    headers={"Authorization": f"Bearer {os.environ['CRM_SOLID_DATA_API_KEY']}"},
    timeout=30,
)
res.raise_for_status()

payload = res.json()
data, meta = payload["data"], payload["meta"]

Keys look like psk_live_... for production keys, psk_test_... for test keys and are minted in the panel.

What comes back

Success is { data, meta }. Failure is { error: { code, message, request_id } }. The body below is the spec's own example: the values in it are illustrative readings, not live numbers.

Platform: telegram
Id: did:plc:eclio37ymobqex2ncko63h4r
Handle: nytimes.com
Name: The New York Times
Audience metric: followers
Audience latest: 1,344,054
Audience precision: exact
Audience precision note: Follower counts are exact. On the freshest day 89.9 percent of 36,975 values were not multiples of ten, which is what c…
Window requested days: 30
Window from: 2026-08-01
Window to: 2026-08-30
Window days observed: 30
Window days spanned: 30
Window coverage pct: 100
Window longest gap days: 0
Measurable: yes
Movement steps: 29
Movement net change: 5,112
Movement gross gains: 5,204
Movement gross losses: -92
Movement churn ratio: 0.018
Movement up steps: 27
Movement down steps: 1
Movement flat steps: 1
Movement median step change: 172
Movement largest gain day: 2026-08-27
Movement largest gain change: 493
Movement largest gain days covered: 1

200 GET /insights/telegram/{username}/growth-quality

{
  "data": {
    "platform": "telegram",
    "id": "did:plc:eclio37ymobqex2ncko63h4r",
    "handle": "nytimes.com",
    "name": "The New York Times",
    "audience": {
      "metric": "followers",
      "latest": 1344054,
      "precision": "exact",
      "precision_note": "Follower counts are exact. On the freshest day 89.9 percent of 36,975 values were not multiples of ten, which is what chance gives for unrounded integers."
    },
    "window": {
      "requested_days": 30,
      "from": "2026-08-01",
      "to": "2026-08-30",
      "days_observed": 30,
      "days_spanned": 30,
      "coverage_pct": 100,
      "longest_gap_days": 0
    },
    "measurable": true,
    "reason": null,
    "movement": {
      "steps": 29,
      "net_change": 5112,
      "gross_gains": 5204,
      "gross_losses": -92,
      "churn_ratio": 0.018,
      "up_steps": 27,
      "down_steps": 1,
      "flat_steps": 1,
      "median_step_change": 172,
      "largest_gain": {
        "day": "2026-08-27",
        "change": 493,
        "days_covered": 1
      },
      "largest_loss": {
        "day": "2026-08-12",
        "change": -92,
        "days_covered": 1
      },
      "top_step_share_pct": 9.5
    }
  },
  "meta": {
    "request_id": "req_9f2c41a8b3d5",
    "generated_at": "2026-08-23T09:14:02.317Z",
    "took_ms": 42
  }
}

The meta block

request_idstringrequired
Unique id for this request. Quote it in a support ticket.
generated_atstringrequired
Server time the response was produced.
took_msintegerrequired
Milliseconds spent server-side.
pagePageoptional
sourcestringoptional
Which backend served the payload, for endpoints with more than one.
cache_age_sintegeroptional
Age of the underlying data in seconds. 0 for live reads.

When it fails

GET /insights/telegram/{username}/growth-quality documents 8 failure statuses. Branch on error.code, which is stable and enumerated; message is prose and may change.

401Unauthorizedunauthorized | invalid_key
No key was presented, or the key is unknown, revoked or expired.
402PaymentRequiredpayment_required | subscription_inactive
The key is valid but the plan behind it cannot serve the call: the included requests are spent and overage is switched off, capped or unfunded (payment_required), or the billing period lapsed and was not renewed (subscription_inactive). Retrying does not help; paying does. The X-Plan-* headers on this response say how far past the line you are.
Carries X-Plan, X-Plan-Limit, X-Plan-Overage, X-Plan-Period-End, X-Plan-Remaining.
403Forbiddenforbidden_scope | forbidden_ip
The key is valid but not allowed to make this call: it lacks the scope, or the request came from an address outside the key's allowlist.
404NotFoundnot_found
The addressed resource does not exist.
422InvalidRequestinvalid_request
A parameter is malformed, out of range or mutually exclusive with another. `details` names the offending fields.
429RateLimitedrate_limited | quota_exceeded
Either the burst ceiling for the current minute or the daily quota is spent. Distinguish with the code: rate_limited clears within the minute, quota_exceeded does not clear until 00:00 UTC.
Carries Retry-After, X-Quota-Limit, X-Quota-Remaining, X-RateLimit-Limit, X-RateLimit-Remaining, X-RateLimit-Reset, X-Request-Id.
500InternalErrorinternal_error
Something failed on our side. Internals are never leaked; quote the request id.
503Unavailableupstream_timeout | upstream_error | not_configured
The request could not be served right now. BRANCH ON error.code, not on the status: 'upstream_timeout' means a source was too slow (this is what a catalog query hitting its 15-second statement timeout returns, so it is reachable from any endpoint that reads the corpus, not only the live-scrape ones) and the same call is worth retrying with backoff - narrowing it with a smaller limit, a filtered scope or a less popular account makes it far less likely; 'upstream_error' means a source was unreachable, so back off further; 'not_configured' means the capability has no backing service in this deployment, and retrying will never help.

Every response carries X-Request-Id and meta.request_id. Quote it in support requests.

Coverage and limits

This endpoint covers Telegram. Rate limits come from the tier on your key.

Tier	Requests a minute	Requests a day	Live reads a minute
free	30	1,000	5
standard	120	25,000	20
pro	600	250,000	60
unlimited	6,000	10,000,000	600

This call only draws on the ordinary per-minute and per-day columns. Every response reports where you stand in X-RateLimit-Limit, X-RateLimit-Remaining, X-RateLimit-Reset and the X-Plan headers.

The rest of the Insights group

Derived engagement intelligence: engagement rates, top and viral posts, posting patterns and cohort benchmarks computed over the post layer.

Other groups

Accounts Directory X People Live scrape Trends Identity Graph Watch Research Tools Leads

Start calling it

A key takes a minute to mint in the panel, no card. The reference covers authentication, the envelope, scopes, rate limits and every error code in one page.

Get a key All 127 endpoints Full reference What the Data API is

Reference path: /data-api/reference/insights-telegram-growth-quality