I’m trying to help a friend set up a Discord bot for her creative writing community, but I’m struggling to find a way to keep it online around the clock without paying for hosting.
I’ve spent the last several days testing different platforms and following various online guides, but every solution I try has the same problem - the bot goes offline after about an hour of inactivity. I attempted using Replit initially, but it seems like the free tier workarounds that used to exist have been fixed by the platform.
I also looked into other services like Render and Cyclic, but I’m having trouble understanding how to properly configure them for continuous operation. Before I invest more time learning these platforms, I wanted to check if anyone has recent experience with free hosting options that actually work.
Does anyone know of reliable free services that can keep a Discord bot running continuously? Or should I just accept that free 24/7 hosting isn’t realistic anymore?
yeah, it’s super tough to find free solutions now. railway and fly.io have limits too. if possible, maybe share costs with pals, or just go for a low-cost host, it’s worth it for stability!
Had this exact problem last year with my guild’s bot. Most free platforms dropped true 24/7 hosting because people abused it. Oracle Cloud’s always-free tier worked for me - you get a VM that runs continuously if you configure it right. Way more technical than drag-and-drop, but their free tier handles basic Discord bots fine. GitHub Codespaces is another option, just watch the monthly hour limits. Honestly? After months of fighting free solutions, I just paid $5/month for a DigitalOcean VPS. Worth every penny - no more troubleshooting random outages.
Been running community bots for three years - the free hosting scene is basically dead now. Heroku axed their free tier, Replit patched the workarounds, and newer platforms like Render have sleep timers that kill 24/7 bots unless you pay. Railway’s free tier? Hit the monthly limits in two weeks. Google Cloud’s free credits work if you know what you’re doing, but they don’t last forever. Most of us just bite the bullet and pay for hosting now. A $3-4 VPS from Vultr or Linode beats constantly fixing broken free solutions every few months.