Why not every photo can be sent?? using send_photo #2488

Hi. Do you get any specific error message? If yes, please show the traceback.
In general, Telegram is sometimes a bit picky about URLs. In my experience links ending on a file ending work more reliable than links that don't.

Hey,
Did you manage to fix your problem?
I’m facing the same issue when trying to send a photo via Telegram bot. It gives me this error:

BadRequest: Wrong type of the web page content

I’m using an image URL. Strangely, when I switch the image from JPG to PNG format, it works perfectly.
I’d really appreciate it if you could share how you solved this or any tips you have.

Thanks in advance!

Hi! Yes, there are a few restrictions when sending photos by URL using send_photo.

Telegram's Bot API fetches the image from the URL, so some links may fail even if they open in your browser. Common reasons include:

• The image host blocks requests from Telegram's servers or requires cookies.
• The URL redirects or returns an HTML page instead of the actual image.
• The image format or file size isn't supported.
• Some URLs point to GIFs, which are better sent using send_animation() if you want to preserve the animation.

I'd recommend adding error handling to identify which URLs fail:

import logging
from telegram.error import TelegramError

logger = logging.getLogger(__name__)

for url in urls:
    try:
        context.bot.send_photo(
            chat_id=update.effective_chat.id,
            photo=url
        )
    except TelegramError as e:
        logger.warning("Failed to send %s: %s", url, e)

Check the error message for each failed URL. You can also download the image yourself and pass the file to send_photo() instead of relying on Telegram to fetch it.

For GIF URLs, use send_animation() rather than send_photo().

The key is to inspect the actual Telegram API error for each failed link; that will tell you whether it's a URL, format, or file-size issue.

Official reference: https://core.telegram.org/bots/api#sendphoto