Questions, answered.

Yes — genuinely free, not a trial, no card required. Free is core protection from day one: join defenses, content filters, fake-admin and profile checks, federations and the dashboard. From Starter, Targa's comprehensive review also catches new and disguised scams, not only known patterns, and Targa reads what is in the pictures. Free has no monthly message limit; higher plans add channels and seats.

Core protection checks every message on every plan, with no monthly limit. A paid plan's monthly number is how many messages get advanced detection, and you'll know long before you reach it: admins get a heads-up at 80% and repeated reminders from 95%. You can set a monthly ceiling: when you pass your monthly limit, extra messages are added automatically, 50k messages for $15 at a time, up to that ceiling, and you're alerted each time. Without a ceiling, Targa's advanced detection pauses at the limit and core protection, what Free runs, keeps running until you add extra messages, upgrade or the month resets. You can also add extra messages by hand; they last until the month resets.

Request access at app.targa.dev/register (private beta), then add @HeyTargaBot to your group as an admin and connect the channel from your dashboard.

Two: Delete Messages and Ban Users — that's what removing spam and restricting spammers require. Everything else can stay off: Change Group Info, Invite Users via Link, Pin Messages, Manage Topics, Manage Video Chats. Leave Add New Admins and Remain Anonymous off — @HeyTargaBot never needs to escalate its own rights, and a security bot should be visible. Set its member tag to “bot”: promoting any bot flips Telegram’s corner label from “bot” to “admin”, and a security bot shouldn’t wear the label impersonators imitate. You can also add it with no admin rights at all: it stays a passive observer and still computes your Targa Score at member depth.

Each audience gets its own command menu: members see only what they can use — /report to summon admins discreetly (the report is hidden from other participants, so no one sees who reported), /rules, and /why to read the reason behind any moderation action. Admins get the full menu, led by /score. No member ever sees moderation commands they can't run.

Every action carries a structured reason. Send /why with the verdict id and you get the verdict, the score, and the exact signals that fired — for example avatar_pHash_matches_admin · join_age<10m · first_message_link.

Tap Wrong call? on the Targa notice — a 👎 reaction on it does the same — or forward the spam to @HeyTargaBot in a DM. From the dashboard it is one click on any page, and members can raise it with /report. The report arrives with Targa's own verdict attached — the score, the signals that fired and what it did — so you never have to explain what happened. The issue appears in your dashboard, and you can follow it there and in the bot's private chat. Nothing is posted in your group. Every plan, Free included.

Yes. Every issue is a private thread: nothing is posted in your group, and screenshots are re-encoded and deleted when the issue closes. Every report shapes the detector.

Fake admins, lookalike characters, messages edited into spam, link and crypto giveaway spam, floods and raids, on every plan. From Starter, Targa's comprehensive review also catches new and disguised scams, not only known patterns: scams hidden in images and QR codes, and the attacks no rule describes: conversational scams that turn at message five, phishing written for your group, coordinated rings. In any language.

No. Targa focuses on screening messages and members; rule-based moderation bots can run alongside it.

No — closed source, and hosted by us. You don't run infrastructure, and detection internals stay ahead of adversaries.

Messages in groups it protects, as any admin bot does. Verdicts and signals are retained so /why works; see the dashboard's privacy page for specifics.

Yes. Guardian bots are a Telegram feature, not something we invented: Telegram introduced them in June 2026, and its Guard Mode lets a group hand its join requests to one bot. Targa supports it: turn on Approve new members for your group and give Targa the Process Join Requests admin right, and it screens every join request before the account gets in. Accounts on ban lists, admin impersonators and raid waves are declined at the door, everyone else is approved in seconds, and every decline is logged with a reason. In watch-only mode Targa only logs what it would decline and leaves each request to you. It's included on every plan, Free included.