Every December, someone volunteers to run Secret Santa and it becomes a spreadsheet: collecting names in DMs, shuffling papers in a hat, texting each person their match — and accidentally spoiling half of them.
In a Telegram group, the whole draw is one command:
/santa 25 EUR 2026-12-20
That starts the exchange with the budget, currency, and exchange date, and posts a Join button. Everyone taps it. When the list is in, the organizer runs /draw — the bot closes joining and DMs every participant their match privately. Nobody in the group sees who has who, and there's no hat, spreadsheet, or screenshot to leak.
Participants can DM the bot their wishlist — /wish socks, a good book, coffee — and it's forwarded only to whoever drew them. That single feature is why people stop guessing and start giving things the recipient actually wants.
Organizer-only extras (Pro, per group): /exclude @alice @bob keeps two people — say, a couple — from being matched together, and /redraw redoes a draw if a match needs to be undone. Free tier covers up to 10 participants with one draw per exchange, which fits most friend groups and teams.
Privacy is handled for you: participants, matches, and wishlists are stored per exchange and deleted automatically 30 days after the exchange date. The organizer can run /santa end to wipe everything sooner.
The failure mode of paper-hat Secret Santa is that the organizer becomes a single point of failure — one person collects, draws, and notifies everyone. Here the bot does the shuffling and the DMs; the organizer only runs two commands.
Related: habit tracking that survives week three and timezones in group chats.
Deeper guides: the Secret Santa bot for Telegram and how to organize Secret Santa in a group.
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