Build a Telegram bot that downloads YouTube videos

This guide builds a working Telegram bot that turns any YouTube link into a video or MP3 — using one API call instead of a self-hosted yt-dlp stack.

What you will build

A bot where a user sends a YouTube link and gets the video back. No yt-dlp to maintain, no proxies, and no self-hosted Bot API server — Tunelio returns a direct URL and Telegram fetches it from there.

Prerequisites

• A Telegram bot token from @BotFather.
• A Tunelio API key (register with Telegram or email — 100 free credits, no card).
• Python 3.10+ with python-telegram-bot and requests installed.

The bot

Set BOT_TOKEN and TUNELIO_KEY as environment variables, then run this. Every text message is treated as a URL, sent to GET /create, and the returned link is handed straight to Telegram:

import os, requests
from telegram import Update
from telegram.ext import ApplicationBuilder, MessageHandler, filters, ContextTypes

TUNELIO = {"Authorization": f"Bearer {os.environ['TUNELIO_KEY']}"}

async def handle(update: Update, ctx: ContextTypes.DEFAULT_TYPE):
    url = update.message.text.strip()
    r = requests.get(
        "https://tunelio.dev/create",
        params={"url": url, "quality": "720p"},
        headers=TUNELIO,
    ).json()
    if r.get("status") != "ok":
        await update.message.reply_text("Could not download that link.")
        return
    await update.message.reply_video(r["url"], caption=r["filename"])

app = ApplicationBuilder().token(os.environ["BOT_TOKEN"]).build()
app.add_handler(MessageHandler(filters.TEXT & ~filters.COMMAND, handle))
app.run_polling()

Send audio (MP3) instead

Want an MP3 bot? Ask for quality=mp3 and reply with audio — the rest is identical:

r = requests.get(
    "https://tunelio.dev/create",
    params={"url": url, "quality": "mp3"},
    headers=TUNELIO,
).json()
await update.message.reply_audio(r["url"], title=r["filename"])

Why this beats a yt-dlp bot

• No 50 MB wall: you send a URL, so you skip the self-hosted Bot API server most yt-dlp bots need for large files.
• No maintenance: proxies, PO tokens, and updates are handled server-side.
• It stays working: no nightly yt-dlp break to wake up to.

Next steps

That is a complete bot. Read the API reference for /info (sizes and formats up front) and error handling, then grab your free credits and ship it.