The API itself costs nothing
Telegram publishes the Bot API for anyone to use and does not bill for it. You create a bot, you get a token, and you can send and receive messages without paying Telegram anything. There is no per-message price and no subscription on Telegram's side.
Telegram does apply rate limits, which is a different thing from a price. A bot that sends faster than allowed gets slowed down or temporarily refused, not invoiced. For an ordinary shop or community bot those limits are far away.
Where the money actually goes
A bot is a program, and a program has to run somewhere. That is the first real cost: a server that stays online, or a hosted platform that keeps the bot running for you. If the machine sleeps, the bot stops answering, and buyers notice within minutes.
The second cost is the building. Writing a bot yourself is free in money and expensive in hours. Using a no-code platform moves that cost into a monthly fee and gives you back the time.
The third is anything you add: a database for products and orders, images, analytics, and payment processing fees if you charge cards.
What a free bot can and cannot do
A free bot can greet people, answer questions, run moderation, and post to a channel. That covers a lot of community work and it can run for a long time at no cost.
What a free setup struggles with is state: remembering a cart, keeping an order history, holding product photos, and showing a catalogue that looks like a shop rather than a list of messages. Those need storage and an interface, and that is where a platform starts to pay for itself.
What BotLaunch costs on top
BotLaunch has a free plan with no limit on members or messages, so a community bot can sit at $0 indefinitely. Paid plans start at $15 a month for channel management and $19 a month for a shop that takes card payments inside Telegram. The full table is on the Pricing page.
The thing to compare is not our price against Telegram's. Telegram's is zero and always will be. Compare it against the hours of building and the server you would otherwise run yourself.
How to keep it at zero while you test
Start on the free plan and prove the idea before you spend anything. Put up a handful of real products, send the link to ten people who might actually buy, and watch what they ask. If nobody orders, no subscription would have fixed that. If orders come in, the plan that removes the limit you just hit is an easy decision.