Fragment API: Stars, Premium, GRAM & Steam 1:1

The night before a Steam sale is the worst possible moment to discover your supplier fills orders by hand and "will get back to you in the morning". The autumn Steam sale runs 1–8 October 2026, the winter one from 17 December to 4 January, and on those days a shop without auto-delivery doesn't lose a few percent — it loses whole customers.

The KRAB.GG Fragment API is a partner interface that lets your bot, website or CRM deliver Telegram Stars, Premium and GRAM to an account by @username and top up a Steam balance by login, with a single HTTP request. You collect payments on your side and set your own markup. The fee on Fragment products is 1%; Steam top-ups run 1:1 — send $10, get $10. Documentation lives on the developers page, and the integration bot is @apistarsbot.

The partner API in brief

• Catalogue — Telegram Stars, Telegram Premium for 3/6/12 months, GRAM and Steam top-ups. One key, one balance.
• Delivery of Telegram products — to an account by @username. No wallet, no seed phrase, no buyer's account password.
• Economics — 1% on Fragment products, 0% on Steam. The Steam amount is set in dollars: from $0.5 to $1000, and exactly that lands on the balance.
• Reliability stack — idempotency by your own order ID, recipient check before payment, price request before purchase, status webhooks, test mode.
• Who it's for — Telegram bot owners, marketplace sellers, donation services, agencies running Telegram Ads, SaaS platforms and anyone tired of filling orders by hand.

What the Fragment API is and why a shop needs one

The Fragment API is a programmatic way to buy a Telegram digital product without touching an interface: you send a request with the product, quantity and the recipient's @username, the system performs delivery and returns the order status. In practice it replaces the person who sits up at night typing usernames into a form.

The difference shows up in funnel numbers. Manual delivery means minutes of waiting, dead hours overnight, typos in usernames and refunds. Auto-delivery means seconds, around the clock, with no operator involved.

The key point: you keep doing the selling. Your bot, your storefront, your prices, your customers, your payment methods. The API is only responsible for the product physically landing on the client's account.

That's why "partner" isn't a marketing word here. We don't take your audience and we never show them our price — the end user only ever sees your shop.

The catalogue: Stars, Premium, GRAM and Steam

Telegram Stars — by @username, from 50 to 1,000,000 per order

Stars are Telegram's internal currency, used to pay for bot access, gifts, reactions and subscriptions. Demand is consistently high: the query "buy telegram stars" pulls over 26 thousand searches a month, and that's before long tails like "cheap", "fast" and regional variants.

Through the API you specify the recipient's username and the number of stars. The per-order range is 50 to 1,000,000 stars — enough for a retail donation and for stocking up against an ad budget.

The Stars rate floats with the currency market, and that has to be built into your markup. Retail benchmarks and the current value are always visible on the page where you can buy Telegram Stars; as an API partner, you request the price with a separate method before creating an order.

Useful context: buying through Apple and Google costs more because of app store fees — according to a review of Stars purchase methods on vc.ru, the stores take roughly 30%. That gap is where your retail margin comes from: the sourcing channel is cheaper than the store, and the buyer finds it easier to pay in rubles.

Telegram Premium — 3, 6 and 12 months only

Premium works the same way: recipient's username plus a term. Subscriptions are available for 3, 6 and 12 months — there is no one-month plan on our side, and it's better not to draw one in your storefront unless you enjoy refunds.

Demand here is even heavier than for Stars: "buy telegram premium" runs at nearly 14 thousand searches a month, and the shorthand spellings add up to hundreds of thousands. Meanwhile, one 2026 publication suggests that paying for Premium through methods familiar in Russia is gradually being displaced by Telegram's own internal tools — there's no official confirmation from Telegram with a specific date, so handle that carefully. The demand for intermediaries, though, is obvious.

Retail benchmarks per term are on the Telegram Premium page — the price floats, so hardcoding an exact figure in an article is pointless. If you sell Premium as a gift, our walkthrough on how to gift Telegram Premium to a friend is handy: your buyers' in-bot scenarios are identical.

GRAM — to the account balance, no wallet involved

GRAM through our API is credited to a Telegram account balance by @username, not to a crypto wallet. That's the fundamental difference from typical Fragment integrations, where the partner is asked to connect a TON wallet and the end client to hand over an address.

Why it matters right now: on 15 June 2026 The Open Network's native token was officially renamed — Toncoin became Gram, with 81.2% of participants voting in favour, and holders needed no token swap or migration. Searches for "buy gram" grew roughly sevenfold in two months after the rebrand — from three hundred to almost two thousand.

The practical niche is Telegram Ads: ad accounts are funded in GRAM, while a business wants rubles going in and a balance coming out, with no exchanges and no "send us your wallet address". The retail scenario is covered in our piece on how to buy GRAM with rubles; through the API you do the same thing automatically, under your own brand.

Steam top-ups — 1:1, by login, no password

The order amount is set in dollars: from $0.5 to $1000, and exactly that amount lands on the Steam balance. There is no service fee through the partner API — send $10, get $10.

Funds are credited by Steam account login. The password isn't needed and shouldn't be requested, by you or by us. This isn't a gift card or a code — money goes straight to the Steam wallet.

There's a nuance worth saying out loud about "no fee" offers: in retail, "0%" often means the markup is baked into an internal exchange rate. A review of Steam top-up services on vc.ru breaks that mechanic down directly and cites market fees in the low single-digit percent range. Our "1:1" refers to the amount on the balance: a dollar in the order equals a dollar in Steam, and your retail markup is yours to set — and to see in full.

Economics: 1% on Fragment, 0% on Steam

Let's count in plain numbers, because a reseller cares about money at the end of the month, not percentages in a vacuum.

• Telegram Stars, Premium, GRAM — the partner API fee is 1% of the order amount; whatever you add on top in your storefront stays with you.
• Steam — 0%: a $10 order costs you exactly $10 at the order's rate, and the buyer gets $10 on the balance.
• Your margin — the difference between the retail price in your bot and the API order cost, minus your payment provider's fee.
• Stars example — on a 10,000 ₽ order the API fee comes to 100 ₽; if your retail sits 12–15% above cost, the unit stays profitable even after acquiring.
• Steam example — across 1,000 orders of $10, you hand the intermediary nothing beyond the top-up amount, and the entire retail markup is yours.

Compare that with the typical picture among intermediaries: according to market reviews, Steam top-up services add a few percent on top, and "zero-fee" gateways hide the difference in the rate. At a few hundred orders, that's exactly the sum that makes shops switch suppliers.

There's a separate revenue line too — if you bring in other sellers rather than only selling yourself, the affiliate program pays up to 30% of every order, for life.

Connecting the API in one evening, step by step

1. Open the integration bot — @apistarsbot. It's your partner dashboard: keys, balance, order history, statuses.
2. Get your access key. Keep it on the server, in environment variables. A key sitting in your bot's client code or in a repo is a direct route to other people's orders on your dime.
3. Run a test scenario. Price request first, then the recipient check, then a minimum-amount order — that way you catch format errors before live traffic does.
4. Top up your partner balance. Orders are charged against it, so keep a buffer for peak days — during a sale the balance drains faster than usual.
5. Place your first live order on yourself. 50 stars to your own @username is the cheapest way to test the whole chain, from the button in the bot to the notification.
6. Hook up webhooks. Let a status change update your database and message the client on its own — no polling every five seconds.
7. Switch on sales in the storefront. Start with one category, collect your first hundred orders, then add the rest.

Full request schemas, fields and response codes are in the API documentation. In production the call order is almost always the same: price → recipient check → create order → status.

```
POST /api/v1/orders
{
"product": "stars",
"username": "durov",
"quantity": 100,
"external_id": "shop-order-10245"
}
```

The field with your own order ID isn't a formality — it's insurance. Here's why.

Technical guarantees developers check before integrating

A developer connecting a supplier doesn't look at the landing page. They look at four things: what happens when the network drops, how to read status, whether they can debug for free, and what happens when the data is wrong.

• Idempotency by your external_id — a repeat request with the same ID doesn't create a second order. Retrying after a timeout is safe; no double charge.
• Recipient check before payment — the API tells you whether the @username exists and can receive delivery. Money doesn't fly off to a username that isn't there.
• Price request before the order — you lock in cost and calculate margin before showing the client a number. With a floating rate, that's what saves you from selling at a loss.
• Statuses and webhooks — poll an order by ID or get a push when its state changes. Always verify the signature on incoming webhooks, otherwise anyone can "confirm" someone else's order to you.
• Test mode — debug scenarios without real charges, so you don't pay for every typo in your JSON.
• Refund on failed delivery — if an order isn't fulfilled, the funds return to your partner balance.

A practical note from support: the most common integration mistake isn't a timeout or a signature — it's trusting user input. People send usernames with spaces, with emoji, with a t.me/ link, with and without the @, or they copy the display name instead of the @username. Normalise the string and call the recipient check; that removes most refunds.

Auto-delivery on marketplaces and in your own bot

The marketplace seller's scenario looks like this: the buyer pays for a listing, the bot asks for their @username, sends the order to the API and confirms delivery in chat. The whole thing takes seconds and works overnight.

Search backs up the demand for this combo: long-tail queries pairing Stars with marketplace names pull a few hundred searches a month — people are deliberately looking for Stars sellers on those platforms. Ready-made marketplace extensions advertise exactly this mechanic: take the order, ask for the username, deliver automatically, auto-refund on error.

What to keep in mind when working on marketplaces:

• Public marketplace APIs are often incomplete and undocumented — the seller community complains about this regularly. Budget time for wrappers and retries on the platform side, though not on the delivery side.
• Chat response time is part of your reputation. Auto-delivery improves response time better than any "online 24/7" line in your profile.
• Refunds are solved by the recipient check. A wrong username is the most common cause of a dispute; catch it before the charge.

For your own bot the setup is simpler still: aiogram or telegraf on your side, a payment provider at the entrance, our request at the exit. A separate web storefront or a site plugin follows the same logic — the API doesn't care where the order came from.

If you're still assembling your catalogue, look at what end users actually buy: our breakdown of what Telegram Stars are for in 2026 shows which items deserve the front row of your storefront.

Who benefits most, and when to connect

Segments where the API pays for itself fastest:

• Telegram digital goods shops — Stars and Premium as the core catalogue, Steam as the upsell.
• Marketplace sellers — the win comes from delivery speed and no dead hours overnight.
• Donation services and communities — Stars for gifts, reactions and in-bot purchases.
• Agencies and media buyers — GRAM to the account for funding Telegram Ads cabinets without touching exchanges.
• Gaming shops and SaaS — Steam top-ups by login as a standalone product with clear 1:1 mechanics.

On timing, it makes sense to plan the integration ahead of seasonal peaks. The nearest one is the PvE survival and crafting festival that started on 31 August 2026; after that comes the autumn sale on 1–8 October and the winter sale from 17 December 2026 to 4 January 2027. The full schedule is in our Steam sales calendar for 2026.

Steam demand grows outside the peaks too: over a year, searches for "top up Steam without a fee" roughly doubled — from seven thousand to over fifteen thousand. The reason is durable: direct Steam payments with Russian cards have been unavailable since 2022, and international payment systems don't process those transactions. The intermediary niche isn't going anywhere; the only question is who delivers faster.

The legal and practical side: reselling with a markup is ordinary retail, but play by the platforms' rules. Don't ask a client for their Steam password, don't collect seed phrases, don't promise what Telegram doesn't offer. Rates and prices float, and the final amount is always fixed at the moment of the order. None of this is financial advice — assess unit economics for your own market yourself.

Common mistakes when launching a shop on the API

Here's what support hears most often — it should save you the first week.

1. Selling at yesterday's price. Stars and GRAM rates float; if your storefront doesn't refresh the price, you're trading at a loss by day two. Request the price before checkout.
2. A one-month Premium plan in the storefront. Only 3, 6 and 12 months exist. An extra card equals a dispute and a refund.
3. No idempotency. The network blinks, the bot resends without external_id — two orders, one client.
4. Unverified usernames. A hidden or non-existent @username is caught with one call before the charge.
5. An empty partner balance at peak. During a sale, orders come in waves; topping up the balance at three in the morning isn't how you want to spend the night.
6. Webhooks without signature verification. Accepting "confirmations" from anyone is a bad idea, however convenient it looks from the outside.
7. The key in client code. The key lives on the server. Only.

One more thing about talking to buyers: people get nervous when the money is gone and no notification has arrived. Send a message right after the order is created and a second one after delivery is confirmed. Chat questions drop noticeably.

Is it worth moving your shop to our API

If your delivery is still manual, or your supplier answers "in an hour", the move pays for itself during the first sale: orders go out in minutes and overnight, the fee on Fragment products is 1%, and Steam runs 1:1 with nothing added on top of the top-up amount. KRAB.GG has been running since 2024, holds a 5/5 rating, 99.98% uptime, and support replies in about 1–3 minutes on average — that shows up in both money and nerves.

A sensible plan: today, the key and a test order; tomorrow, one category in the storefront; by 1 October, the full catalogue and webhooks. Start with the partner API documentation and connect your key in @apistarsbot; the rest of the answers about orders and payment are collected in the FAQ.