# Telegram Mini Apps alternative: Cherry mini apps

> Where to ship a crypto mini app: Telegram Mini Apps vs Cherry on wallet handoff, chains and signing, discovery, publishing, and re-engagement.


A builder shopping for a Telegram Mini Apps alternative is really picking three things: which wallet the host hands the app, which chain a transaction can sign on, and where the users come from once the launch tweet is cold. Telegram Mini Apps are web apps launched from a bot inside Telegram and identified by a Telegram account, with no wallet in the runtime. Cherry (cherry.fun) is a wallet-to-wallet messenger and community app for crypto: you sign in with a wallet, DM any wallet address, and join or create token-gated, NFT-gated and paid group chats, with no phone number, email or KYC. A Cherry mini app opens inside a chat room with that wallet already attached. The short verdict: Telegram wins on raw reach and suits a game or a TON app that brings its own wallet connection; Cherry suits a Solana app that wants a signature without a second connect step and a room where its users keep talking afterwards.

## What Telegram Mini Apps are

Telegram Mini Apps are web pages that Telegram opens in an in-app browser and wires to a bot. As of September 2026, its Mini Apps documentation lists seven ways to launch one: a main Mini App from a profile button, a keyboard button, an inline button, the bot menu button, inline mode, a direct link, and the attachment menu. Every one of them runs through a bot you created first.

The identity the app receives is a Telegram account. The documentation's init data carries a user object with an id, name, username and language code, a timestamp, and a hash the app checks with HMAC-SHA256 (or an Ed25519 signature for third-party validation). Nothing in that payload is a wallet address. To touch a chain, a Telegram mini app integrates TON Connect, which the TON documentation calls "the standard wallet connection protocol for the TON blockchain", shipped as separate SDKs with its own registry of wallets. That is a second connection flow on top of the launch.

Money inside the app runs on Telegram's own rails: invoices through external providers, and Telegram Stars, which the documentation describes as powering paid subscriptions. Re-engagement is a strength. Mini apps can deliver "tailored push notifications to users", the bot can message the user directly, and the docs note that mini apps "can now be accessed via direct shortcuts added to the home screen of mobile devices".

Discovery is a mix of organic and editorial. Telegram says bots that enabled a main mini app "will be displayed in the Apps tab of the search for users who have launched them", and that "successful bots which enable a main Mini App and accept payments in Telegram Stars may be featured in the Telegram Mini App Store". The documentation sets out design guidelines (mobile-first, responsive, animations "ideally 60fps") but describes no approval queue before publishing: wire the web app to the bot and it is live.

## Cherry as a Telegram Mini Apps alternative

Cherry is a wallet-to-wallet messenger built by Cherry Technologies, S.A., with a web app at chat.cherry.fun, iOS and Android apps, and a listing on the Solana dApp Store for the Solana Seeker phone. Your wallet is the account: sign-in is a signed message, nothing goes on-chain, no gas.

Mini apps run inside Cherry chats on iOS, Android, web and Solana Seeker with the wallet and room context the user already has. Cherry mini apps are paired with a public room that carries its own handle, so the app and the conversation about it sit one tap apart. On mobile the app loads in a WebView, on web in an iframe, and the same build serves both.

The library is `@cherrydotfun/miniapp-sdk`. It ships React hooks for the user, room and wallet, a wallet adapter that drops into the `@solana/web3.js` wallet-adapter stack, and a transaction signer for `@solana/kit`. Environment detection tells your code whether it is running inside Cherry or standalone, so one deployment can keep its own wallet-connect button on the open web and hide it inside Cherry. For teams with an existing dApp, Cherry publishes an AI coding skill, `cherry-miniapp-integration`, that applies the integration to a codebase from one prompt: install, wallet bridge, environment detection, and the conditional UI.

The room sizes give the honest scale in September 2026: SOL Miner 4,012 members, SOL Reclaim 3,343, BananaZone 1,990, Jupiter Swap 936, and the Polymarket prediction markets app 733. Cherry-run apps cover the money side, including the Trading Terminal mini app for spot swaps, perps and tokenized stocks. As of September 2026 the Mini App SDK is also live inside Solflare, Mattle.fun, SeekerGram and Seeker Legends, so one integration reaches users who never open Cherry itself.

[SOL Miner on Cherry](https://chat.cherry.fun/@solminer)

## Telegram Mini Apps vs Cherry at a glance

| | Telegram Mini Apps | Cherry mini apps |
|---|---|---|
| Launch surface | seven, all via a bot: profile button, keyboard button, inline button, menu button, inline mode, direct link, attachment menu | a chat room, or a card inside a message |
| Wallet model | none in the runtime; TON Connect is a separate protocol and SDK the app integrates | the Solana wallet the user signed in to Cherry with, handed to the app at launch |
| Chains | chain-agnostic runtime; TON in practice, through TON Connect | Solana for signing inside a mini app, as of September 2026 |
| Auth handed to the app | Telegram account data (id, name, username, language) with a hash to validate | wallet address, display name, avatar and room, in a token signed by Cherry |
| Payments | invoices through external providers, and Telegram Stars | the user's own wallet signs; Cherry never custodies funds |
| Discovery | Apps tab in search for users who launched the app, Mini App Store featuring, direct links, bots, attachment menu | a public room with a handle and an indexable storefront page under its own handle, plus in-app search |
| Notifications | push notifications from the mini app, messages from the bot, home screen shortcuts | Cherry push notifications and the app's own room |
| Publishing | no approval queue described in the docs; featuring in the Mini App Store needs a main Mini App and Telegram Stars payments | listing is not self-serve as of September 2026; bots, API keys and chat embeds are self-serve in Cherry Portal |
| Device coverage | iOS, Android, desktop, web | iOS, Android, web, Solana Seeker |
| Cost to build on | Free | Free |

## The wallet the SDK hands you

This is the axis that decides most integrations. On Telegram the host vouches for a person; on Cherry the host vouches for a wallet.

A Telegram mini app receives an account and has to turn it into an address by asking again: the user taps your connect button, picks a TON wallet, and approves a session before the app can request a transaction. Two identity systems then coexist in your code, the Telegram id the bot knows and the address that signs.

On Cherry the launch itself carries the address. Before the app renders, Cherry hands it a signed launch token with the wallet address and the room the app was opened from, plus display name and avatar on a fullscreen launch. Your backend verifies that token against Cherry's published keys, so the address is trustworthy server-side. When the app needs a signature, the request goes to the wallet the user signed in to Cherry with, and the user approves it there. Cherry holds no keys and takes no custody.

Each mini app is registered with the requests it may make: reading the public address, asking for a signature, sending a transaction, opening a profile or a room, and rendering as a card inside a message.

## Chains and signing

Telegram's runtime is chain-agnostic, which reads as freedom and behaves as homework. TON is the path of least resistance because TON Connect exists and Telegram's wallet population is TON-shaped; any other chain means shipping a wallet connection that works inside an in-app browser on both iOS and Android.

Cherry is narrower and deeper. Signing inside a mini app is Solana-only as of September 2026, by one of two paths: the adapter for `@solana/web3.js` projects, or the signer for `@solana/kit` projects. Cherry supports Base, Ethereum, BNB Smart Chain and Robinhood Chain for token-gated chats and wallet DMs; that support does not extend to signing inside a mini app. If your app is an EVM app, this is the row that sends you elsewhere.

## Discovery and publishing

Telegram's discovery is account-shaped: the Apps tab surfaces apps to users who already launched them, the Mini App Store is editorial with stated criteria, and everything else is a link you distribute through the bot and the channels you already run. Publishing has no gate, so the bar to appear is low and the bar to be found is high.

Cherry's discovery is room-shaped and public on the open web. Cherry mini apps get a room with a handle, and every public room has a storefront page under that handle with the description, member count, gating rules and reviews, which search engines can index. That page is a real landing page for the app, not an interstitial. Inside Cherry, rooms are searchable, and a member who shares a result card pulls their contacts straight into the app.

Bots, API keys and chat embeds are self-serve in [Cherry Portal](https://portal.cherry.fun); mini app listing is not self-serve as of September 2026.

[SOL Reclaim on Cherry](https://chat.cherry.fun/@solreclaim)

## Re-engagement after launch

Telegram's re-engagement is the bot. It can message a user who has interacted with it, push a notification, and pin a shortcut on the home screen, and those messages land in the same inbox as the user's friends.

Cherry's is the room. Members who joined to play stay joined, so an update posted there reaches them where the app already lives, and Cherry push notifications carry it to the phone. The people complaining about a bug sit in the same chat as the fix. SOL Reclaim, a Cherry-run utility that closes empty token accounts and returns the rent, had 3,343 members in September 2026.

The third path is user-authored. A mini app can hand Cherry a read-only snapshot of a result, with a caption and a route; the user picks a DM or group, and the card goes out from the user's own wallet, not from a bot. The recipient taps it and opens the same app on that snapshot.

[BananaZone on Cherry](https://chat.cherry.fun/@bananazone)

## The audience gap, in numbers

An honest comparison has to say the obvious part. Telegram announced it had passed a billion monthly active users in March 2025. Cherry hosted 200+ communities and 1M+ messages in September 2026, its largest mini app room had 4,012 members, and BananaZone, a third-party tap-trading game, had 1,990. Those are the numbers your launch is working with.

What the smaller set buys is composition. Every Cherry session already holds an address your app can read, because signing in with a wallet is how you get in. Cherry was #1 on the Seeker dApp Store with 4.8 stars from 4,000+ reviews and about 3K daily active users as of September 2026, and 10K+ Seeker owners were on Cherry that month, so a Solana app reaches them without an Android build or a store submission.

## Choose Telegram if, choose Cherry if

Choose Telegram Mini Apps if your app is on TON, if it does not need a chain at all (a quiz, a shop, a tool), if your growth plan is a bot and channels you already own, or if you need desktop coverage. The reach is orders of magnitude larger, and Telegram Stars is a real payment rail.

Choose Cherry if your app is Solana-native and you want the address at launch, if you want Seeker plus iOS and Android without a native build, if a public room and an indexable page should be the app's home, or if your users already treat a wallet as their login. Many teams do both: the same web app, one build, two hosts.

If you are weighing a third option, [Cherry versus Farcaster](https://cherry.fun/learn/compare/cherry-vs-farcaster/) covers the feed-first model, and [mini apps in chat](https://cherry.fun/learn/features/mini-apps/) lists every app live on Cherry with its room.

Start with the [guide to building a Solana mini app](https://cherry.fun/learn/guides/build-a-solana-mini-app/), or read what a [crypto mini app](https://cherry.fun/learn/glossary/crypto-mini-app/) is before you pick a host.

## FAQ

### Do Telegram Mini Apps come with a wallet?
No. Telegram's Mini Apps documentation describes the data a mini app receives as Telegram account data: an id, a name, a username, a language code, validated by a hash. To reach a wallet, the app integrates TON Connect, which the TON documentation calls the standard wallet connection protocol for the TON blockchain, with its own SDKs and its own connect step.

### Can a mini app sign a Solana transaction inside Telegram?
Not through the Telegram runtime itself, which carries no wallet. You would add a Solana wallet connection of your own inside the mini app. On Cherry the wallet the user signed in with is handed to the app at launch, and signing requests go to that wallet.

### Where can I publish a crypto mini app besides Telegram?
Cherry runs mini apps inside chat rooms on iOS, Android, web and the Solana Seeker phone, with the user's Solana wallet attached. Farcaster runs them from its feed with an Ethereum and Solana wallet in its SDK. Base App runs them inside Coinbase's app on Base.

### How do users find a mini app on Cherry?
Cherry mini apps are paired with a public room that has its own handle and a storefront page on chat.cherry.fun that search engines can index. Users also find rooms through in-app search, and from cards other members share into chats.

### What does it cost to publish a mini app on Cherry?
Free. The Mini App SDK, the Chat Embed SDK, the Cherry API, bots and Cherry Portal are free to use.

### How big is Cherry's audience compared with Telegram's?
Far smaller. Telegram announced it had passed a billion monthly active users in March 2025. Cherry hosted 200+ communities and 1M+ messages in September 2026, and its largest mini app room, SOL Miner, had 4,012 members.

Related: [token-gated chat](https://cherry.fun/learn/features/token-gated-chat/) for gating the room your app lives in, [embeddable chat](https://cherry.fun/learn/features/embeddable-chat/) for putting a Cherry room inside your own product, and [about Cherry](https://cherry.fun/learn/about/).

## Sources

- [Telegram Mini Apps documentation](https://core.telegram.org/bots/webapps)
- [TON Connect overview](https://docs.ton.org/applications/ton-connect/overview)
- [Cherry Mini App SDK on GitHub](https://github.com/cherrydotfun/miniapp-sdk)
- [Cherry developer docs](https://portal.cherry.fun/docs)
- Mini app rooms on Cherry: [SOL Miner](https://chat.cherry.fun/@solminer), [SOL Reclaim](https://chat.cherry.fun/@solreclaim), [BananaZone](https://chat.cherry.fun/@bananazone)
- [Cherry home page](https://cherry.fun)