Python Discord bot has slow response time on first command execution

I’m working with a Discord bot written in Python and I’m experiencing some weird timing issues. The bot has two basic commands and both work fine, but there’s this annoying delay problem.

Whenever I use a command for the first time, it takes around 30 seconds before the bot actually responds in the chat. But if I use the same command again right after, it responds super fast (under 1 second). The weird part is that if I wait about 30 seconds without using any commands, the bot goes back to being slow again on the next command.

I’ve checked a few things but can’t figure out what’s wrong. The logs don’t show any errors or gateway issues. I even removed the bot from the server and added it back, but the same thing happens. Other bots in our server work perfectly fine. When I check the latency with my ping command, it always shows around 0.1 seconds.

Has anyone experienced this kind of behavior before? Is this something related to how Discord’s API works?

import discord
from discord.ext import commands
import datetime

permissions = discord.Intents.default()
permissions.members = True

api_token = my_secret_token

class ChatBot(commands.Bot):
    async def on_ready(self):
        print('Bot is online!')
        print('Name: {0.name}\nUser ID: {0.id}'.format(self.user))

client = ChatBot(command_prefix='!', intents=permissions)

@client.command()
async def latency(ctx):
    await ctx.send('Response time: {} ms'.format(round(client.latency * 1000, 1)))

@client.command()
async def countdown(ctx):
    target_date = datetime.datetime(2021, 5, 15)
    current_time = datetime.datetime.now()
    time_diff = target_date - current_time
    remaining_days = time_diff.days
    remaining_seconds = time_diff.seconds % 60
    remaining_minutes = (time_diff.seconds // 60) % 60
    remaining_hours = (time_diff.seconds // 3600)
    response = 'Days left until the big event: {} days, {} hours, {} minutes, {} seconds'.format(
        remaining_days, remaining_hours, remaining_minutes, remaining_seconds)
    await ctx.send(response)

client.run(api_token)

This is definitely your hosting environment, not Discord’s API. That 30-second delay screams serverless or container systems that scale down to zero when idle. Your bot’s getting suspended after sitting inactive, then has to cold start on the next request. Even if you’re not using serverless explicitly, most cloud providers pull this idle management stuff. Check your host’s docs for idle timeouts or monitor your bot’s uptime to confirm. Fix it by upgrading to an always-on plan or adding a keep-alive ping every 20 minutes to stop the suspension.

sounds like your hosting might be putting the bot to sleep when idle. many free hosts do this to save resources. so when you use the first command, it’s waking back up and takes time, but after that it’s quick. are you on heroku or similar?

Your code looks fine - this isn’t a Discord API or bot issue. That 30-second delay followed by fast responses is classic hosting hibernation. I’ve seen this exact pattern on Railway, Render’s free tier, and similar platforms. Your bot gets paused when idle, then takes forever to wake up on the first command. The 0.1ms latency once it’s running proves Discord isn’t the problem. You need either paid always-on hosting or a background task that pings your bot every few minutes to keep it awake.