I created a Discord bot using Python and I want it to stay active all the time without going offline. My server members need the bot to be available 24/7 but I’m looking for solutions that won’t cost me money.
Right now my bot goes offline whenever I turn off my computer or when my internet connection drops. I tried running it from my laptop but that’s not practical since I can’t keep it on all day.
What are some reliable methods to host a Python Discord bot so it stays running continuously? I’ve heard about cloud hosting but I’m not sure which services offer free tiers that would work for this purpose. Are there any limitations I should know about when using free hosting solutions?
Any suggestions for keeping my bot operational around the clock would be really helpful.
I’ve run my Discord bot on render.com for 8 months - it’s solid. Free tier gives 750 hours monthly, covers most usage. Bot sleeps after 15 minutes idle, but you can fix this with a ping service or uptimerobot. Main issue: free dynos spin down, so expect a few seconds delay when someone hits your bot after it’s been sleeping. Not a big deal for small servers. Deploy’s easy - connect your GitHub repo and it auto-deploys on pushes.
replit was great for this but now they’ve cut their free tier. railway gives you $5/month credit, which should be enough for a basic bot. avoid heroku, they dropped free hosting last year. just keep in mind that free services can go down, so uptime ain’t guaranteed.
Oracle Cloud’s always-free tier is perfect for Discord bots - no sleep limitations like other platforms. I’ve run my bot on their ARM micro instances for 6 months straight without any forced downtime. Setup’s trickier than Render or Railway since you’re managing actual VMs, but once it’s running, it stays up 24/7. You get 4 ARM cores and 24GB RAM, which is way more than most Discord bots need. The tradeoff? You handle server maintenance - updates, security patches, all that stuff. If you’re cool with basic Linux admin work, it’s legit free hosting that won’t kill your bot.