Prizebot: fair Telegram giveaways

You ran a contest in your channel, picked a winner, and the comments instantly say: it was rigged! Sound familiar? Prizebot exists to end such arguments. It is an open source prize giveaway bot that picks the winner with a random number service. 🎁

Below: how it works, who it helps and what an organizer should keep in mind.

How Prizebot differs from picking by eye

When an organizer names a winner or rolls a die off camera, participants have no way to check fairness. Prizebot handles it differently: choosing the random number is handed to an external service, so the bot itself cannot tweak the result.

The bot code is publicly available. Anyone who knows programming can study how it is built. It is written in Kotlin and licensed under MIT, which means it is free to use. ✅

What an organizer should know

• Language. The interface comes in Russian and English.
• News. The project posts updates in its own channel, linked in the bot profile.
• Development. The project has a roadmap toward handling truly big giveaways. Some tasks, such as conditions for participants, are still planned.

So for first runs, take small contests and see how the bot behaves in your own community.

Running your first giveaway

1. Open the bot and press Start.
2. Create a giveaway: set the prize description and conditions.
3. Publish the giveaway message in a channel or chat.
4. Wait for the deadline and start the winner draw.
5. Contact the winner and hand over the prize.

See the exact buttons and steps in the bot itself: the interface guides the order.

Making a giveaway truly fair

The tool covers the technical part, but trust is built from small things.

• Write the rules in advance. Who can enter, until when, how many prizes.
• Do not change terms midway. It is the top source of complaints.
• Show the result publicly. A screenshot and a link to the result message answer most questions.
• Send the prize fast. A delay looks worse than any mistake.

Legal and platform rules

Giveaways with cash prizes or paid entry count as lotteries in some countries and are regulated separately. If the prize is valuable, check local rules. ⚖️

A free contest for subscribing to a channel is usually simpler, but platforms such as Telegram dislike artificial inflation. Do not force people to follow ten channels just to enter.

Who it suits

Prizebot helps channel and chat admins, bloggers, small shops and course authors. They need a simple way to pick a winner and show the choice was random. 🎲

If you need a contest with complex conditions, point scoring or strong protection against fake entries, test the bot first on a trial giveaway. It is better to find limits before the whole audience is watching.