We launched the Kurslog Telegram Mini App with rate alerts

We have launched the Kurslog Telegram Mini App. It is a full app for comparing exchange rates that opens right inside Telegram. Nothing to install, no sign-up either.

This is our seventh client after the website, the mobile app, the Chrome extension, the Raycast add-on, the MetaMask Snap and the MCP connector for Claude. But this one differs from the rest in a way none of them did. It can write to you on its own once a rate reaches the number you want.

Why Kurslog belongs in Telegram

People do not look up a rate while sitting at a laptop. They look it up on the move, in a queue, in the middle of a conversation, when somebody drops an offer in a chat and you need to tell fast whether it is fair. Open a browser, recall the address, wait for the page. Slow.

The Mini App removes every one of those steps. You are already in Telegram, one tap on the bot, the app is open. No install, no storage taken on your phone, no store updates. It runs the same way on iPhone, Android, desktop and Telegram Web.

We watched this format for a long time and did not rush. We wanted the real Kurslog people are used to, not a trimmed widget with three rates. So inside you get direction search, filters, cash with a country and city picker, exchanger cards, reviews and the blog feed.

The format helps most for people who exchange often and in small amounts. A freelancer got paid in USDT and wants hryvnia today. Someone saving in crypto is waiting for the rate to climb a couple of percent. Another person is heading abroad and checking where cash euros are cheaper. All three decisions take a minute, and that minute usually happens on a phone.

Rate alerts land in your chat

This is the main reason to try it. In the app you pick a direction, set the rate that works for you, and close Telegram. Nothing else is required from you.

When the market reaches your number, the bot sends you a plain message. Not a push that gets buried under twenty others. Not an email to an inbox you open once a week. A message in the same Telegram where you already spend your day, with a button that opens the right direction in one tap.

We check rates every two minutes. An alert fires only when the rate crosses your threshold, not on every pass while it stays above. After it fires, the same alert will not repeat for at least six hours. We will never send more than ten messages a day. And from 23:00 to 07:00 the bot stays quiet, in your own timezone rather than in Kyiv time.

Why so many limits? Because a service that wakes you at three in the morning with rate news gets deleted the next day. We would rather miss one trigger than become annoying.

What is inside

The home screen shows popular directions with live rates. From there the familiar flow takes over. Pick what you give and what you want to receive, type the amount, read the exchanger list sorted by the best deal.

Every row shows the rate, the reserve, the minimum and maximum amount and the exchanger trust score. If the reserve cannot cover your amount, the offer is hidden entirely. That is the same filter the website runs. We did not build a cut-down version for Telegram.

You also get exchanger cards with reviews, the option to leave your own review and reply to someone else, favourites and a blacklist. Currency search handles sloppy input, even text typed in the wrong keyboard layout. The go-to-site button opens the exchanger through our link as it does everywhere, and we count those clicks separately for Telegram so we can see how alive the format is.

Rate precision moved across unchanged too. The number of decimals for each currency is set in our admin panel, and the Mini App uses exactly that instead of rounding on its own. Two decimals for hryvnia, more for small cryptocurrencies. A tiny thing, but small things like this are how you tell the real service from a lookalike.

Cash by city

We did not simplify cash exchange. Pick the currency, then the country, then the city, and you see the offices in that exact place. If a new pair has no offers in your chosen city, the app clears the selection and suggests another city instead of showing an empty screen.

Say you need to swap USDT for cash hryvnia in Kyiv. Choose the pair, switch cash on, set the city, and you get a list of offices with rates. The same works for hundreds of cities and over a hundred countries. Rates there come from the same feed that powers the website, so the platforms never disagree.

One account with the site and the app

Sign-in happens by itself. Telegram hands the app signed data about you, we verify the signature on our server and issue a normal token. No password to invent, no email to confirm.

If you already have an account on kurslog.com, you can link it. Then favourites, the blacklist and reviews become shared. Add a direction in Telegram and it shows up on the website and in the mobile app right away.

We built a separate flow for people who sign in with Google, and that is most of you. Google deliberately blocks sign-in inside embedded browsers, so the usual button simply would not work in Telegram. We had to route around it. The app shows a one-time code, you open the linking page in a normal browser, sign in there as always and enter that code. A minute of work, done once.

Why it looks the same as our mobile app

We deliberately avoided inventing a new interface. Somebody who uses our phone app opens the Mini App and sees the same cards, the same colours, the same sorting logic and the same rate precision.

This is not laziness, it is habit. When one service has seven clients, the worst thing you can do is make people relearn it in each one. So the exchanger card, the swipe to remove from favourites, the rating stars and the trust badge look identical everywhere.

The only difference is that Telegram sets its own rules. The back button is a system one, the theme follows your Telegram settings, and the bottom bar respects the safe areas of the screen. We disabled the vertical swipe, otherwise dragging the rate list would close the app.

Language, data and limits

Language is picked automatically from your Telegram settings. Ukrainian and Russian are matched directly, anything else opens in English. You can change the choice by hand and it will be remembered.

We store very little. Your numeric Telegram ID, the name you already show publicly, and your avatar. We do not read your message history, and the Mini App has no access to it by the design of the platform itself. For the bot to send an alert it asks you for permission to write, and without your consent it never sends a single message.

How to open it

The quickest way is to go to t.me/kurslog_app_bot and press the launch button. The bot also takes commands. Type /app to open the app, /alerts to read about rate alerts, /help for a short guide.

Try starting with something familiar. Check what you can get if you swap USDT for hryvnia in Monobank, or see how much they give for Bitcoin to a Monobank card. Then set an alert on that direction and forget about it. The bot will remind you.

Frequently asked questions

What comes next

The nearest task is links that open a specific direction straight away. Right now any link lands on the home screen, and we want a link from a channel or a chat to drop you on the rate you need, say the Bitcoin page.

After that come alerts on a specific exchanger rather than only the best market rate, and a daily rate change shown right in the list. If you use it and find something missing or behaving oddly, write to support@kurslog.com. Feedback in the first weeks after launch is worth the most, because it shows exactly what we failed to notice.