How to Forward Android SMS to Telegram Automatically

1. Cloud SMS forwarder

A cloud SMS forwarder pairs your Android phone with a web dashboard. Incoming SMS are sent securely to the service, matched against routing rules, then delivered to Telegram, Email, Slack, Discord, X2Chat or a webhook.

Pros: quick QR pairing, multi-device management, routing by sender or keyword, delivery history, team access, webhooks and less manual Telegram bot configuration.

Cons: SMS passes through a cloud service. If your use case requires zero third-party processing, a self-hosted or open-source option is a better fit.

SMS Sender 24 is in this category. It works well when one team needs to share OTP codes, server alerts or business SMS from several Android phones without maintaining Android automation on every device.

2. Open-source Android apps

Projects such as Spirit532 SMS Forwarder and similar APKs can read SMS locally and send them directly to Telegram Bot API or a webhook. This is the cleanest option if you want to inspect the code and avoid a cloud account.

Pros: free, auditable, no SaaS dependency, good for one phone and one or two destinations.

Cons: you maintain every phone manually. Rules, bot tokens, chat IDs and battery settings are configured per device. Some projects go years without updates, which matters on newer Android versions.

POST https://api.telegram.org/bot<TOKEN>/sendMessage
Content-Type: application/json

{
  "chat_id": "-1001234567890",
  "text": "SMS from +15551234567: Your verification code is 482913"
}

3. Tasker or MacroDroid

Tasker and MacroDroid can listen for SMS events and call Telegram Bot API through an HTTP action. This is powerful if you already understand Android automation.

Pros: very flexible, cheap, local-first, can combine SMS with other Android triggers.

Cons: hard to support as a team workflow. A missed battery permission, Android update or broken profile can silently stop forwarding. Debugging is usually on the person holding the phone.

4. n8n webhook workflow

If your team already runs n8n, Make or another automation platform, the Android app can send SMS to a webhook. The workflow can then filter messages and forward them to Telegram.

curl -X POST https://n8n.example.com/webhook/sms \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "sender": "AWS",
    "body": "Your alarm is in ALARM state",
    "sim": "work",
    "received_at": "2026-05-23T09:15:00Z"
  }'

Pros: great for teams that already automate alerts and business workflows. You can branch to Telegram, Slack, email or CRM.

Cons: you still need a reliable Android collector app, a public HTTPS endpoint, secrets management, monitoring and retries.

5. Custom Android app

Building your own Android app is reasonable for regulated environments, internal device fleets or very specific routing requirements. It gives you full control over data handling and backend architecture.

Pros: maximum control, private backend, custom security model.

Cons: Android SMS permissions, background execution, foreground services, device reboot handling and battery optimization are easy to underestimate. The first version is the simple part; keeping it reliable is the real work.