If you landed here because your fresh Telegram account got banned right after the first outreach, welcome to the club. I had about ten of those before I figured out that warmup is not «save some messages to favorites and wait three days». It is about a usage pattern that looks like a real person and does not telegraph your intent.
What warmup actually is
Telegram does not publish its risk-scoring model, but behavior in production shows a few things. A fresh account gets a reduced outgoing-message limit to strangers, falls under stricter anti-spam filters, and any activity outside the usual user pattern (mass-joining channels, spamming stickers in other people's chats) raises the chance of a restriction or ban.
Warmup is not magic. It is just a way to spend 7-14 days showing the platform a normal-user pattern, so you can then move into your target activity without a flag in the risk system.
First-week checklist
What I do on every new account. Not a generic internet collection, my actual playbook.
Day 1-2
- Register on a mobile device (or emulator), not directly through Telegram Desktop.
- Plug in a mobile proxy immediately. Not datacenter, not residential, mobile specifically. See the proxy article.
- Fill the profile to completion. First name, last name, photo, bio. Photo with a face, not a landscape and not the letter M.
- Add a couple of contacts from your existing accounts. One or two, not twenty.
- Subscribe to 3-5 public channels matching the account's implied interests.
- Put a reaction or two under random posts. Reactions, not comments yet.
Day 3-5
- Open Telegram 2-3 times a day, 10-15 minutes each. No longer.
- React to posts, read news, sometimes click links.
- Write one short comment under a public channel post. Something alive, not «cool» and not a single emoji.
- One or two personal DMs with contacts. Anything counts.
Day 6-14
- Gradually grow session length to 20-30 minutes a couple times per day.
- Comment more. One comment per day in week one, 2-3 per day in week two.
- Subscribe to 10-15 more channels organically (through links, not from a list).
- Around day 10-12 you can carefully start test outgoing DMs. One per day, very carefully.
What NOT to do
Shorter and more important than the previous section. Remember and do not do these, even if some chat tells you it is fine.
- Do not send messages right after registration. Not even one. Fresh account + first outgoing DM = almost guaranteed 24-48h restriction.
- Do not use SOCKS5 datacenter proxies. Telegram sees the provider ASN, and DigitalOcean / Hetzner / OVH immediately fall under suspicion. Mobile proxies look like a real mobile carrier.
- Do not log in from five devices at once. One account = one session for the first two days. After that you can carefully add a second.
- Do not mass-subscribe to channels via a list. Bulk API subscriptions are the first pattern bot-hunters look for. Subscribe through the GUI, one at a time, with pauses.
- Do not try to comment on channels with heavy admin moderation. Many large channels auto-report fresh accounts for any comment.
Automating warmup. Is it possible
Yes, and that is what Sndwich does. Idea is simple. The algorithm picks a random set of actions every day (react, open a channel, read a post, leave a comment, reply to an incoming DM if there is one) and performs them at random moments inside a 9:00-23:00 window in the account's timezone.
Key differences from manual warmup:
- Every action through a randomized 30-second to 8-minute delay window.
- Number of actions per day grows linearly: day 0 = 1 action, day 14 = 10 actions, then warm.
- An account session is not on 24/7. It opens for 15-40 minutes, does what it should, closes.
- If Telegram returns FloodWait, the account pauses until it clears, no retries.
I average 95-97% account survival across a 14-day warmup. Manual warmup gave me 85-90% but at much higher time cost. Mostly because you forget to log in.
How long to wait before using the account
Minimum 7 days. Better 14. If you plan cold DM outreach (see the separate guide), 14 is the floor. After 14 days of warm-mode you can start with 5-10 DMs per day and gradually grow to 25-30, no higher.
If you only plan to monitor channels, parse audiences, or run engagement boosts, 7 days is enough. These tasks do not trigger anti-spam as aggressively as outgoing DMs.
Bottom line
Warmup is not a secret. It is just the routine most people either skip or rush through in one day «load contacts and start blasting». The 5% who do it right get accounts that last over a year, generate replies, and convert. The rest buy fresh batches from anyaccs every month.
If you want to automate the process, give Sndwich a try. 14 days free, warmup runs on your accounts through your proxies, not ours.