Most Discord bots connect to Discord through the Gateway, which the official documentation describes as a persistent WebSocket connection. The bot has to send a heartbeat at a fixed interval, and if it stops, Discord closes the connection. A bot therefore needs a process that runs without interruption, and that requirement is where most free hosting plans fail: they are designed for websites and stop a service when it receives no visits.
This article reviews the free options people use in 2026. Every figure comes from the provider's own pricing page or documentation, checked on 22 October 2026, and the sources are listed at the end.
What a Discord bot needs from a host
- A process that never sleeps. A service that stops after some minutes without web traffic disconnects the bot, because the Gateway connection is outbound and does not count as a visit.
- Enough memory for the library and its cache. A small bot fits in a few hundred megabytes; the RAM sizing guide covers the details.
- Automatic restart. When the process crashes, something has to start it again.
Free options compared
| Option | What is free | Keeps a Gateway bot online 24/7 | Main limit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Oracle Cloud Always Free | Arm compute equivalent to 2 OCPUs and 12 GB of memory, or two AMD micro instances with 1 GB | Yes | Idle instances can be reclaimed |
| Google Cloud free tier | One e2-micro instance with 1 GB of memory in three US regions | Yes | The external IPv4 address is billed |
| AWS Free plan | $100 in credits, plus up to $100 more for completing activities | Yes, while the plan lasts | Ends after 6 months or when the credits run out |
| Render | Web service with 0.1 CPU and 512 MB | No | Stops after 15 minutes without inbound traffic; workers are paid |
| Railway | $5 trial for 30 days, then $1 of credit per month | Yes, while credit lasts | $1 covers about 100 MB of memory for a month |
| Fly.io | No free tier for new organisations; a 7-day trial | No | Trial machines stop after 5 minutes |
| Replit | One published app on the Starter plan | No | The app goes down after 30 days; always-on deployments are paid |
| Koyeb | One web service with 512 MB and 0.1 vCPU | No | Scales to zero after 1 hour without traffic |
| Raspberry Pi or home PC | No hosting fee | Yes, while power and internet hold | Maintenance, outages and electricity are yours |
| Cloudflare Workers | 100,000 requests per day | Only for bots without a Gateway connection | No message events or voice |
Options that can keep a bot online
Oracle Cloud Always Free is the most generous offer: Arm compute equivalent to 2 OCPUs and 12 GB of memory, or two AMD micro instances with 1 GB each, with no end date. Two conditions matter for a bot. Oracle can reclaim an Always Free instance that looks idle, defined as CPU, network and, on Arm instances, memory usage all below 20% at the 95th percentile over seven days, and a quiet bot can meet that definition. Sign-up also requires a payment card for identity verification, and creating an Arm instance can fail with "out of host capacity" errors.
Google Cloud includes one e2-micro instance per month, with two shared vCPUs and 1 GB of memory, in the us-west1, us-central1 and us-east1 regions, with no end date. The instance needs internet access to reach Discord, and Google's network pricing lists an external IPv4 address at $0.005 per hour, which is about $3.60 for a 30-day month. A billing account is required.
AWS replaced its 12-month free tier for accounts created from 15 July 2025 with a Free plan: $100 in credits, plus up to $100 more. The plan lasts six months or until the credits are spent, so it is a trial rather than permanent free hosting.
Options that put the bot to sleep
Render offers free web services with 0.1 CPU and 512 MB, but a free service spins down after 15 minutes without inbound traffic and takes about a minute to start again. Background workers, the service type meant for bots, start at $7 per month.
Koyeb offers one free web service with 512 MB and 0.1 vCPU in Frankfurt or Washington, D.C. It scales to zero after one hour without traffic, which cannot be disabled on the free instance, and sign-up places a $29 pre-authorisation on a card.
Replit allows one published app on its free Starter plan, which goes down after 30 days. Autoscale deployments idle after 15 minutes, and Reserved VM deployments, the type meant for bots, start at $15 per month.
Fly.io no longer has a free tier for new organisations. Its trial lasts seven days or two machine-hours, and trial machines stop after five minutes. The smallest always-on machine with 256 MB costs $2.19 per 30 days.
Two services that were popular for bots are no longer free: Glitch ended project hosting on 8 July 2025, and Heroku's cheapest plan, Eco, costs $5 per month and sleeps after 30 minutes of inactivity.
Railway
Railway gives new accounts a 30-day trial with $5 of credit and then $1 of credit per month. Memory is billed at $10 per GB per month, so $1 covers about 100 MB running for a whole month before CPU usage is counted. A bot that stays within the credit runs for free; one that needs more pays the difference.
Hosting the bot at home
A Raspberry Pi or an old computer runs a bot with no hosting fee. The Raspberry Pi 5 starts at $45, and its product brief gives a typical current of 800 mA at 5 V, about 4 W. The bot stays online only while the house has power and internet, and updates, backups and recovery after a power cut are the owner's responsibility.
Bots that only use slash commands
A bot that only answers slash commands, buttons and other interactions can receive them over HTTP instead of the Gateway. Discord's documentation notes that this method does not require a connected client, but the bot must answer each interaction within three seconds. Cloudflare Workers fits this model: its free plan allows 100,000 requests per day with 10 ms of CPU time per invocation, and Discord publishes an official tutorial for it. A bot built this way cannot read messages as they arrive or join voice channels.
When a paid plan costs less
For a bot that uses the Gateway, the free options either stop the process, expire or carry a cost that is easy to overlook, such as Google Cloud's IPv4 address at about $3.60 a month. A small paid plan removes those conditions. At Astrol Nodes the smallest plan, Bronze Bot, costs €0.50 a month for 256 MB of memory, runs 24/7 and restarts the bot automatically if the process stops.
| Plan | RAM | CPU | Storage | Databases | Backups | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bronze Bot | 256 MB | 50% | Unlimited NVMe | 1 | - | €0.50/month |
| Silver Bot | 512 MB | 100% | Unlimited NVMe | 1 | 1 | €0.99/month |
| Gold Bot | 1 GB | 200% | Unlimited NVMe | 2 | 2 | €1.49/month |
| Diamond Bot | 4 GB | 300% | Unlimited NVMe | 3 | 5 | €4.99/month |
Bots written in Node.js, Python or Java are supported, the server is ready less than a minute after payment and it can be hosted in Frankfurt (Germany) or Miami (USA). See the Discord bot hosting plans.
Sources
Checked on 22 October 2026.
- Discord: Gateway and Receiving and responding to interactions; Hosting on Cloudflare Workers.
- Oracle: Always Free resources and Free Tier FAQ.
- Google Cloud: Free features and network pricing.
- AWS: Free Tier and Free Tier FAQ.
- Render: Free instances and pricing.
- Railway: pricing and free trial.
- Fly.io: pricing and free trial.
- Replit: Starter plan and deployment pricing.
- Koyeb: instances and scale to zero.
- Raspberry Pi: Raspberry Pi 5 product brief.
- Cloudflare: Workers pricing.
- Glitch: Changes are coming to Glitch; Heroku: pricing.