Webhooks vs Polling

Two ways to receive events:

Polling:

Pros:

• Simple. No public IP needed.
• Works behind NAT.
• Good for development.

Cons:

• Latency: 1+ seconds.
• Wasteful: many empty polls.
• Rate limit on polls themselves.

Long polling (Telegram default):

Server holds connection up to 30s, returns when updates exist or timeout. Lower latency, fewer requests.

Webhooks:

Pros:

• Instant: server pushes immediately.
• Efficient: no polling.
• Scales to thousands of bots without polling each.

Cons:

• Need public HTTPS endpoint.
• Need TLS cert.
• Failure handling: returning 500 = redelivery (or loss, depending).

Setup:

Telegram POSTs updates. Bot processes + returns 200.

Verification:

• secret_token in headers.
• IP whitelist (Telegram has known IPs).
• Verify signature where supported.

WebSocket:

• Discord uses WebSocket.
• Persistent connection.
• Heartbeat to keep alive.
• Reconnect on disconnect.
• Auto-handled by SDKs.

Hybrid: receive via webhook, send via REST API.

Local development:

• Webhook needs public URL. Use ngrok / cloudflared tunnel.
• Or use polling locally + webhook in production.

Modern bot frameworks abstract this. Same code works for both.