Your bot works locally, it answers commands, everything's fine. Then you close your laptop, and it disappears. Here are the four ways to keep it online, with their real limits.
Option 1 — Your own computer
Free, and that's the only advantage.
Your bot drops on every reboot, every Windows update, every connection hiccup. Your personal IP address is exposed, and your machine burns electricity continuously for a process that fits in a few dozen megabytes.
Fine for development. Untenable as soon as someone else relies on the bot.
Option 2 — Free hosting
Attractive on paper, disappointing in practice. The mechanism is almost always the same: the process is put to sleep after a few idle minutes, and your bot goes offline.
The workarounds — pinging yourself every five minutes — generally violate the terms of service and end in suspension. Add very limited resources and storage wiped on every redeploy.
Option 3 — A regular VPS
You rent a machine and administer everything. It's powerful and flexible: several bots, a database, a website, whatever you like.
In exchange, you install Node.js or Python, configure a process manager like systemd or PM2, secure SSH and handle system updates. For a single bot, that's a lot of administration for little benefit.
Option 4 — A bot-specific plan
This is the middle ground: a ready runtime, a panel to start, stop, read logs and upload code — with no machine to administer.
The process runs continuously, restarts automatically if it crashes, and you never need to know what a systemd unit is.
| Own PC | Free | VPS | Bot plan | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Continuously online | No | Rarely | Yes | Yes |
| Administration | Low | None | High | Low |
| Monthly cost | Electricity | €0 | From €5 | From €1.99 |
Sizing your bot properly
A Discord bot consumes little, as long as it isn't doing heavy processing:
- Fewer than 20 servers, simple commands — 1 to 2 GB is ample.
- Up to 100 servers, with a database — 2 to 4 GB.
- Music, image processing, AI — 4 GB and up, with the CPU becoming the real constraint.
The member cache is the biggest memory item. If you don't need the full member list, disable the corresponding intent: consumption drops sharply.
Three expensive mistakes
The token in the code. It ends up on GitHub, it's detected within minutes, and your bot is hijacked. Use an environment variable, always.
No error handling. An uncaught exception kills the process. Without automatic restart, the bot stays offline until someone notices.
Ignoring rate limits. Discord caps calls to its API. A bot that pushes too hard gets temporarily blocked, sometimes lastingly.
Our approach
Our Discord bot plans start at €1.99 a month: Node.js, Python or Java runtime, Pterodactyl panel, automatic restart, environment variables for the token, and real-time logs. All hosted in France.