The Problem

Cloud storage is expensive. S3, GCS, Azure Blob — they all charge per GB stored and per request. For personal projects, side hustles, or small teams, these costs add up fast.

I wanted something that was:

• Free (actually free, not free-tier-that-expires)
• S3-compatible (works with aws-cli, rclone, any S3 SDK)
• Serverless (no servers to maintain)
• Unlimited storage

The Solution: TG-S3

I built TG-S3 — an S3-compatible storage gateway that uses Telegram as the storage backend and runs on Cloudflare Workers (free tier).

How It Works

TG-S3 uses a 3-tier storage hierarchy:

1. Cloudflare CDN — cached content for fast reads
2. Cloudflare R2 — persistent cache for files up to 20MB
3. Telegram API — unlimited file storage (up to 2GB per file with VPS proxy)

Metadata lives in Cloudflare D1 (SQLite), and the S3 API gateway runs serverlessly on Cloudflare Workers.

Features

• 21 S3 API operations including multipart uploads and presigned URLs
• Works with aws-cli, rclone, any S3 client
• Telegram Bot with file management commands
• Web Mini App built into Telegram (EN/CN/JP/FR)
• Share links with password protection, expiration, download limits
• Multi-credential auth with per-bucket permissions
• Optional media processing (image conversion, video transcoding)
• One-command deployment: ./deploy.sh

Cost

• Core functionality: $0 (Cloudflare free tier)
• Large file support (>20MB): ~$4/month VPS (optional)

Quick Start

git clone https://github.com/gps949/tg-s3.git
cd tg-s3
# Configure your Telegram bot token and chat ID
./deploy.sh

Then use it like any S3 bucket:

aws s3 ls s3://my-bucket --endpoint-url https://your-worker.workers.dev
aws s3 cp ./photo.jpg s3://my-bucket/photos/ --endpoint-url https://your-worker.workers.dev

Or with rclone:

[tg-s3]
type = s3
provider = Other
endpoint = https://your-worker.workers.dev
access_key_id = your-key
secret_access_key = your-secret

Architecture

The system is built with TypeScript, uses AWS SigV4 for authentication, and deploys via Wrangler v3. The Telegram Bot API handles file upload/download, while Cloudflare's edge network handles caching and CDN.

Cloudflare Tunnel integration is available for secure VPS connectivity when large file support is needed.

Why Telegram?

Telegram offers unlimited cloud storage for files up to 2GB, with a generous API. Files stored on Telegram are persistent, encrypted, and accessible globally. By using Telegram as a storage backend and wrapping it with an S3-compatible API, we get the best of both worlds.

Open Source

TG-S3 is fully open source. Check it out, star it, and let me know what you think!

Built with TypeScript, Cloudflare Workers, and the Telegram Bot API.