Discord Bot Hosting Guide — Keep Your Bot Online 24/7 (2025)

One of the most common questions from Discord bot developers is: "How do I keep my Discord bot online 24/7?" Running your bot locally on your computer means it goes offline whenever you close your laptop. For a bot to be useful, it needs to run continuously on a server.

Why You Need Proper Hosting

If you list your Discord bot on dlist.space, our review team checks that your bot is online and responsive. Server owners who add your bot to their server expect it to be available at all times. Downtime leads to negative reviews and bot removals, which hurts your ranking and growth.

Free Hosting Options

1. Railway (Recommended for Beginners)

Railway.app is one of the best free hosting platforms for Discord bots. It supports Node.js, Python, and most other languages. Free tier gives you 500 hours per month, which is enough for a small bot.

To deploy on Railway:

Sign up at railway.app
Connect your GitHub repository
Railway auto-detects your language and builds your bot
Add your environment variables (TOKEN, etc.) in the Variables tab
Deploy — your bot will run immediately

2. Render

Render.com offers a free tier for web services and background workers. For Discord bots, use the Background Worker service type. The free tier spins down after inactivity, so it's best for bots with constant traffic to stay awake.

3. Replit

Replit.com allows you to run code in the browser and keep it running. Free plans have limitations, but it's great for learning and small bots. Combine with UptimeRobot to keep your bot awake by pinging your repl's web server.

4. Oracle Cloud Free Tier (Best Free VPS)

Oracle Cloud's Always Free tier gives you 2 AMD VMs with 1GB RAM — forever free. This is the best free option for serious bot developers as it gives you full control, 24/7 uptime, and no resource limits compared to PaaS solutions.

Paid Hosting Options

5. DigitalOcean Droplets ($4-6/month)

DigitalOcean offers VPS (Droplets) starting at $4/month with 512MB RAM and 1 vCPU. This is enough to run most Discord bots. You get full control over the server, and can run multiple bots on one droplet.

# Deploy your discord.js bot on Ubuntu VPS:
sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y
sudo apt install nodejs npm -y
git clone your-repo-url
cd your-bot
npm install
# Install PM2 to keep bot running
npm install -g pm2
pm2 start index.js --name "mybot"
pm2 save
pm2 startup

6. Linode / Akamai Cloud ($5/month)

Linode (now Akamai Cloud Computing) offers Nanode plans at $5/month with 1GB RAM. Excellent performance, great documentation, and reliable uptime. Similar setup process to DigitalOcean.

7. Hetzner Cloud (€3.79/month)

Hetzner offers the best price-to-performance ratio in the VPS market. Their CX11 plan (€3.79/month) gives you 2 vCPUs, 2GB RAM, and 20GB SSD — more than enough for most Discord bots.

Using PM2 for Process Management

PM2 is a process manager for Node.js that keeps your bot running and automatically restarts it if it crashes:

npm install -g pm2

# Start your bot
pm2 start index.js --name "discord-bot"

# Make PM2 start on server reboot
pm2 startup
pm2 save

# View logs
pm2 logs discord-bot

# Restart the bot
pm2 restart discord-bot

# View all running processes
pm2 list

Using systemd for Python bots

On Linux servers, create a systemd service to run your discord.py bot:

# Create service file
sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/discordbot.service

[Unit]
Description=Discord Bot
After=network.target

[Service]
Type=simple
User=ubuntu
WorkingDirectory=/home/ubuntu/my-bot
ExecStart=/usr/bin/python3 bot.py
Restart=always
RestartSec=10

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

# Enable and start
sudo systemctl enable discordbot
sudo systemctl start discordbot
sudo systemctl status discordbot

Monitoring Your Bot's Uptime

Use UptimeRobot (free) to monitor your bot's web endpoint and receive alerts if it goes down. Set up HTTP monitoring on your bot's health endpoint. For bots without a web server, use external status pages or Discord webhooks to monitor bot heartbeat.

Choosing the Right Hosting

Just starting out → Railway free tier or Replit
Small bot, low budget → Oracle Cloud Always Free or Railway hobby plan
Growing bot → DigitalOcean $6/month Droplet with PM2
Large bot, many servers → Hetzner Cloud with sharding support

Conclusion

Reliable hosting is essential for any Discord bot that you want to grow. Start with a free tier, and upgrade as your bot grows. Once your bot is stable and running 24/7, list it on dlist.space to start getting new users!