You searched for a free Telegram proxy, tapped the first link you found, and Telegram finally came back to life and stopped spinning on "Connecting…". Then a channel you never subscribed to suddenly showed up above your chats. Or the link went quiet by evening and you had to look for a new one, and the same search results were already offering a proxy "with no channels" that, for some reason, you have to download and run.
I'll be honest right away: we sell proxies ourselves, so I'm not a neutral party here. But our part comes at the end and it's short, and I'm not going to scare you away from free links, especially since Telegram itself describes almost every odd thing that happens with them in its own help pages.
When we looked at the search results for this kind of query, they all looked roughly alike. You get lists of "working proxies for today" with a date in the title, and ratings that score proxies to one decimal place, though the page never explains how the scores were calculated. By the way, the date in those lists is sometimes filled in automatically: for one page the search engine showed one date, and on the page itself, the same day, there was already a different one.
So who pays for the server
Anyone can set up a free proxy for Telegram. The code of MTProxy, Telegram's own proxy, is open, and anyone is free to run their own server (if you'd like to understand what a proxy is in the first place, there's a separate article about that). Telegram itself says that many owners publish their connection details openly, and people find them through search or in channels. And in the same breath it advises you to use proxies only from a source you trust, or to ask a friend to set one up.
But a server costs money, and the owner pays for it out of their own pocket. Telegram itself helps them cover it, and its help page says plainly that a proxy owner can show a promoted channel in the chat list of everyone who connects, and that this is meant to cover the server costs. To do that, the owner registers the proxy with Telegram's official bot and gets a tag, along with statistics. How much such a channel earns the owner, the proxy help page doesn't say.
I don't see anything evil in this setup. The person keeps the server running for free, so they don't owe anyone anything: if they want, they switch it off, and if they want, they change the link. And everyone who finds the link gets the same one. If you open one of those list pages and compare the links, you can see that all of the owner's servers share the same secret, so every visitor walks away with an identical link. My guess is that this is why free links die young, although we haven't measured how long they last: the server gets overloaded, the owner switches it off or changes the secret, or the address stops opening on your network.
Where that strange channel in your chats comes from
That unfamiliar channel above your chats is exactly how the server pays for itself. Telegram's help says so directly: after you connect to an MTProto proxy, an unfamiliar channel promoted by the proxy owner may appear in your chat list. And it's Telegram itself that shows it, based on the tag the owner received when registering the proxy.
The channel comes with a caption. In Telegram for Android it reads: "This channel is shown by your proxy server. To remove this channel from your chat list, disable the proxy in Telegram Settings > Data and Storage." On desktop the caption is similar, and the channel is also labelled "Proxy sponsor". Telegram Desktop also warns you separately that such a proxy may display a sponsored channel and that this doesn't reveal any of your Telegram traffic. You get rid of the channel exactly the way the caption says: you disable the proxy, and the channel leaves your list.
You can't tell from the link itself whether there will be a channel or not, so a promise of "no channels" can't be checked before you connect. The link only holds the connection details and says nothing about a channel.
Can the owner read your messages
In the search results for this query you'll find the scary claim that a free proxy "sees all your traffic", and most of all people are afraid the owner will read their messages. Here I can put your mind at rest, because they can't. Telegram encrypts cloud chats between the app and its own server, and the proxy only passes along data that is already encrypted. Telegram's proxy help page says it plainly: an MTProxy owner can't read your messages or identify your account, can't see your username or account ID, and can't see your chat list or what you do in Telegram (writing, reading, watching and so on).
But there are some things they can see, and Telegram is just as honest about that. A dishonest owner is able to log which IP you connect from, at what time, and the simple fact that you're trying to use Telegram. From an IP address you can often work out the network provider and the rough region. What a particular owner does with those logs, I don't know, and the link won't tell you.
When you're asked to download the proxy or send a code
In my view, the real catch doesn't start with the channel. In the same search results there's a post about a Telegram proxy "with no channels": it has a shortened link and says "download, run, connect", and among the features it lists "Kill Switch and split tunneling", which is the kind of thing a VPN has. What that program is, the post itself doesn't make clear.
You don't need to download a Telegram proxy at all. You tap the link, Telegram opens the proxy window with a connect button by itself, and there's nothing else to install. So a page where a Telegram proxy for some reason has to be installed as a separate program is offering you something else, and I wouldn't put that on my phone for the sake of a free proxy.
With the login code it's even simpler. Telegram sends it to the service chat named "Telegram", and Telegram's FAQ says directly that this code should never be shared with anyone, including other services and apps. So if a bot, a page or the "support team" of a free proxy asks you to send the code, don't give it to them, because a proxy doesn't need the code to connect or for anything else.
There's also the new WEB proxy in Telegram for desktop, which runs a web page from its provider in the background, and here Telegram itself warns you to use it only if you trust the provider. How that one turns out, I don't know yet.
So is a free one enough or not
If you only need Telegram every few days to check your messages, a free link will do just fine. You can put up with the channel above your chats, and the owner still won't read your messages. Telegram lets you add several proxies and turn on automatic switching to the next one if the current one drops, and that comes in handy with free links. Just keep in mind that if you have only one proxy in the list and it stops working, Telegram keeps trying to connect through it until you disable it, so it's better to remove a dead link right away.
It's a different story when you need Telegram working every day. Then a shared link that can be switched off or overloaded at any moment starts to get on your nerves, and a link of your own is more convenient.
And now, as promised, briefly about us. With FreeGate each device gets its own link, and if it leaks, you change it in your account with one tap, and the old one stops working at once. Only Telegram goes through the proxy, so your banking app and other apps open as usual. We can't see your messages: Telegram encrypts them itself, and the proxy only passes along encrypted data.
You can try it for free first: 1 day after you sign up with an email and confirm your address, with no payment, no phone number and no automatic charges. After that it's $1.00 for 30 days or $2.50 for 90 days, and that's the price per device, so if you need it on a phone and a computer, you choose 2 when buying. Plans are paid from your account balance, and for now the balance is topped up via support. If within that day you find that free links are enough for you, just don't buy anything, and nothing will be charged. It's all on freegate.app/world.