How to run a fair Telegram giveaway with a draw anyone can check

Most giveaway complaints are not about the prize. They are about trust: “Was the winner picked at random, or was it a friend of the admin?” A fair giveaway answers that question before anyone asks it, with a draw that people can check for themselves.

This guide explains how a checkable draw works, how to run one with Giveaway Draw, and how your members can verify the result. Giveaway Draw and Subgate are made by the same maker who runs this site.

What makes a giveaway draw fair?

A Telegram giveaway draw is fair when people can check it. The organiser publishes a sha256 hash of a secret seed before anyone joins, then reveals the seed after the draw. If the seed hashes to the same value, it did not change. A random draw is only half of fairness; this proof is the other half.

The proof shows that nobody changed the randomness after they saw who entered. The usual method is called commit-reveal:

1. Commit. Before anyone joins, the organiser picks a secret random value, the seed. They publish only a hash of it, here sha256. A hash is a fingerprint: it is easy to compute from the seed, but you cannot work back from the hash to the seed.
2. Collect entries. People join. Nobody, including the organiser’s friends, knows the seed, so nobody can predict the winner.
3. Reveal. At the deadline, the seed is used to draw the winners and then published. Anyone can hash the seed and compare it with the hash from the start.

If the two hashes match, the seed did not change during the giveaway. If someone had swapped in a different seed to get a different winner, the hash would not match.

How Giveaway Draw runs it

Giveaway Draw runs a checkable giveaway in 7 steps. You send /new in a private chat with the bot and answer four questions: prize, winners, deadline and chat. The bot posts the giveaway with a Join button and the seed hash. At the deadline it draws the winners, posts the seed and writes to each winner.

1. Make the bot an admin of your chat. The giveaway is posted in a channel or group. The bot must be an admin there, and so must you. The wizard checks both before it posts. See how to give a bot admin rights.
2. Open a private chat with the bot and send /new. The wizard asks four questions: the prize, the number of winners, the deadline and the chat where the giveaway is posted.
3. Set a clear prize and deadline. The prize line can be up to 200 characters. The deadline can be from 1 hour to 30 days away.
4. Choose whether to use bonus tickets. With bonus tickets on, each participant gets a personal invite link. Each new member who joins through it gives the inviter 1 extra ticket, up to 5 extra.
5. Let the bot post the giveaway. The post has a Join button and shows the sha256 hash of the seed.
6. Watch entries come in. People tap Join and press Start in the bot. The bot checks that each person is a member of the chat. Send /mine to see your giveaways and their status.
7. Wait for the deadline. The bot draws the winners, posts the result with the seed it used, and writes to each winner.

Note: Telegram does not let a bot start a conversation with someone. That is why people press Start in the bot when they join: it lets the bot message them if they win.

To stop the wizard halfway, send /cancel.

How to check that a giveaway draw was fair

Anyone can verify a Giveaway Draw result with one Terminal command on macOS or Linux. Hash the seed from the result post with sha256 and compare the output with the hash in the original giveaway post. If they are identical, the seed was fixed before people joined. You do not need to trust the organiser or the bot.

Open Terminal and run:

echo -n "SEED" | shasum -a 256

Replace SEED with the seed from the result post. Compare the long string in the output with the hash in the original giveaway post. They must be identical.

Match the exact seed text. Copy it with no extra spaces, line breaks or quote marks. The -n matters too: without it, echo adds a newline and you get a completely different hash. For example, the seed k7Qp2xVd9LmA gives 5758717d... with -n, and fafabda1... without it.

Tip: Screenshot or save the giveaway post when it goes up. Then you can show that the hash was there from the start, even if someone later questions it.

The hash check proves the seed was fixed before people joined. The winners are then a fixed result of that seed and the list of participants in join order.

Free vs Pro

Giveaway Draw’s free plan covers 1 winner, up to 500 participants and one required chat. That required chat is the one where the giveaway is posted. Bonus tickets are free. The bot adds a short line under the giveaway post.

Pro is 150 Stars (about $3), paid once, per chat. It raises the limits to up to 10 winners and 100,000 participants. With /require you can add more chats that people must be members of, up to 5 in total. Pro also gives you one re-draw, for example if a winner never answers, and a CSV export of the giveaway. The line from the bot under the post goes away. You find the Pro button, the re-draw and the CSV export in /mine.

To see what Pro adds in each of the other bots, compare them on the Pro page.

Telegram’s built-in giveaways

Telegram has its own giveaway feature for some prizes. According to the Telegram blog, channel owners can give away Telegram Premium subscriptions that they pay for in advance. Telegram picks the winners at random under the organiser’s rules. Those rules can limit entry to new subscribers, to some countries, or to people who also join other channels.

Organisers can add other prizes on top. A later update added Stars giveaways. Channel and group owners can start them from the chat’s statistics, in the Boosts section. Menu names and paths differ between Telegram apps and versions.

Use the built-in feature if your prize is Premium or Stars. Use a bot like Giveaway Draw when the prize is something else, such as a product, a voucher or a ticket, and you want a public seed and hash that members can check.

Rules tips for a giveaway nobody argues about

A giveaway nobody argues about has its rules in the post from the start. Name the prize, the number of winners, the deadline, who can enter and how you contact winners. Do not change the deadline after people join. With Giveaway Draw, the seed hash in the post adds proof that the draw itself was fixed in advance.

• Write the rules in the post. State the prize, the number of winners, the deadline, who can enter, and how you will contact winners.
• Do not change the deadline. Moving it after people join looks like you are waiting for a friend to enter. Pick a realistic deadline at the start.
• Explain bonus tickets. If they are on, say so: each new member through a personal link gives 1 extra ticket, up to 5.
• Say how long winners have to answer. For example 48 hours. With Pro you have one re-draw if a winner does not reply.
• Post the result where you posted the giveaway. Point people to the seed and the hash so they can check.
• Deliver the prize yourself, and say when. The bot only tells winners that you will be in touch.

If you also want group members to join your channel before they can write, Subgate checks that when a member writes in the group. It is separate from the giveaway. Read how to make members join your channel.

Common problems

When Giveaway Draw will not post a giveaway, check admin rights first. Both the bot and you must be admins of the target channel or group. Fix the rights and run /new again. The list below covers the other problems: missing entries, hashes that do not match, more winners and winners who do not reply.

• The wizard will not post. The bot or you are not an admin of the target chat. Fix the admin rights and run /new again.
• Someone tapped Join but is not entered. They must press Start in the bot and be a member of the chat. Ask them to join the chat, then tap Join again.
• The hashes do not match. Check that you used -n and copied the seed exactly, with no space at the end.
• You need more than one winner. The free plan draws 1 winner. Buy Pro for the chat with /pro.
• A winner does not reply. On Pro, use the one re-draw from /mine. On the free plan, state your rules for this case in the post before you start.

For other event tools, see the best Telegram bots for group chats.