Free Discord bot hosting that actually runs 24/7 (2026)

You asked ChatGPT or Claude to help you build a Discord bot. It works on your laptop. Then you close the laptop — and the bot goes offline. So you search "free discord bot hosting 24/7" and land in a swamp of outdated lists recommending free tiers that no longer exist.

Here is the honest 2026 picture.

The short answer: truly free hosting that keeps a bot alive around the clock is rare. Railway and Heroku killed their free tiers. Render and Replit still have them, but they put your app to sleep after minutes of inactivity — which, for a bot, means offline. The options that actually work in 2026: livemy.app (free tier runs continuously, no sleep), Oracle Cloud Always Free (real free VMs if you survive the signup and manage Linux yourself), and a handful of bot-specific free hosts (workable, but usually gated by credits, queues, or resource caps).

Why most "free" bot hosting dies

A website and a bot have opposite needs. A website can afford to nap: when a visitor shows up, the platform wakes it, the visitor waits a few seconds, done. A Discord bot can't. It holds a continuous connection to Discord's servers, listening for commands. The moment the process stops, your bot shows offline and every command fails silently.

That is exactly what free tiers are designed to prevent you from getting:

• Render spins down free web services after 15 minutes of no inbound traffic. A Discord bot generates no inbound traffic — it talks outward. So it spins down and stays down. On top of that, Render's background workers (the natural fit for a bot) aren't part of the free tier at all — people resort to fake web servers and self-ping hacks to keep bots alive.

• Replit puts free apps to sleep within minutes of closing the tab. Keeping something running continuously requires a paid deployment.

• Heroku removed its free tier back in 2022. The cheapest $5 Eco plan sleeps after 30 minutes of inactivity — you're paying for hosting that still naps.

• Railway no longer has a free tier — new accounts get a small one-time trial credit, then it's $5/month minimum. Fine product, not free.

If a "free bot hosting" list recommends any of these without the caveats, it was written before the free-tier purge of 2022–2025 — or by someone who never left a bot running for a week. We mapped the same collapse for regular apps in free hosting that doesn't sleep — for bots the sleep problem is strictly worse, because a bot is never "woken up by a visitor". It just stays dead.

Free bot hosting compared (2026)

• livemy.app — free forever, does not sleep, no credit card. Limits: 1 project, 5 deploys/month, livemy.site subdomain only (a bot doesn't need a domain anyway).

• Oracle Cloud Always Free — genuinely free VMs that run 24/7. The catch: a notorious signup process, capacity shortages in popular regions, idle instances can be reclaimed — and you administer the Linux server yourself.

• Bot-specific hosts (bot-hosting.net and similar) — free and mostly 24/7, but built on credit/coin systems, resource caps and queues. Fine for a hobby bot, fragile for anything you care about.

• Render — free tier sleeps after 15 minutes; workers aren't free. Not suitable for bots without hacks that break.

• Replit — free apps sleep in minutes; always-on requires a paid deployment.

• Fly.io — no free tier for new users; a short trial, then pay as you go from roughly $5/month. Cheap, not free.

• Railway — one-time trial credit, then from $5/month. Runs bots well if you're paying.

• Heroku — $5 Eco sleeps after 30 minutes; always-on starts at $7/month.

The honest read: if you want free and zero server administration, the field is basically livemy.app and the niche bot hosts. If you're comfortable running your own Linux box and can get through Oracle's signup, Always Free is the most generous raw compute you'll get for $0. Full disclosure before the next section: I run livemy.app, so weigh accordingly.

Hosting your Discord bot on livemy.app

A Discord bot is one of the simplest things to host, because it needs almost nothing: no domain, no open port, no incoming traffic. It connects outward to Discord. All it needs is a process that never stops and a safe place for its token.

Here is the whole flow:

• 1. Get your code ready. Node.js or Python, doesn't matter — if it runs on your laptop, it can run here. If an AI tool built the bot for you, you already have the folder.

• 2. Upload it. Connect a public GitHub repo — or, if you'd rather keep your code out of GitHub entirely, just upload a .zip of the project folder. Your code never leaves your hands.

• 3. Add your bot token as an environment variable. Never paste the token into your code. In the project settings, add DISCORD_TOKEN as an environment variable and read it from there. Environment variables are available on every plan, including Free.

• 4. Deploy. About two minutes later your bot process is live and connected. Close your laptop. It stays online.

• 5. Ship updates. Whenever you change the code, redeploy in one click from the dashboard — or, if you built the bot with Claude Code or Cursor, trigger the redeploy straight from your AI tool over MCP without leaving the editor.

That's it. No Dockerfile required, no keep-alive ping hacks, no cron jobs poking a fake web server every 10 minutes.

Telegram bots: what's different

Almost nothing. Telegram bots run in one of two modes:

• Polling — your bot repeatedly asks Telegram "anything new?". Works exactly like a Discord bot: outbound connection only, no domain needed. This is what most tutorial bots use, and it hosts identically to the flow above.

• Webhook — Telegram pushes updates to your bot at an HTTPS URL. This needs a public address with SSL. On livemy.app your project gets a free yourapp.livemy.site subdomain with SSL included, which is all a webhook needs — no custom domain, no certificate setup.

Same story for the token: store TELEGRAM_TOKEN as an environment variable, never in code.

When free isn't enough

The Free plan is built for exactly this: one bot, running continuously, at zero cost. For a hobby Discord bot, that's the whole story — you may never need anything else.

You'll outgrow it when the project stops being an experiment: you want several bots or apps running side by side, more than 5 deploys a month because you're iterating fast, a custom domain for the web dashboard you added, or an uptime commitment because other people now depend on the bot. That's the Maker plan — $10/month for 5 projects, 50 deploys, 10 GB of storage, your own domain, and a 99.5% uptime SLA.

But start on Free. It doesn't sleep, and it doesn't expire.

→ Start free on livemy.app · No credit card · Free tier forever, and it does not sleep.

FAQ

Can I really host a Discord bot for free 24/7 in 2026?

Yes, but the list is short. livemy.app's free tier runs continuously with no sleep. Oracle Cloud Always Free works if you manage the server yourself. Bot-specific free hosts work with limits. Render, Replit and Heroku's cheap tiers all sleep — which for a bot means offline.

Why does my bot keep going offline on Render?

Render's free web services spin down after 15 minutes without inbound traffic, and a Discord bot produces none — it only talks outward. The common workaround (a fake web server plus an external ping service) is fragile and against the spirit of the free tier. The real fix is hosting that doesn't sleep.

Is Oracle Cloud's free tier a good option for bots?

It's genuinely free and genuinely capable. The trade-offs: a signup process that rejects many cards, capacity shortages in popular regions, idle instances that can be reclaimed, and the fact that you're now a Linux server administrator. If that sentence excites you, go for it. If not, use a platform that handles the server for you.

Where do I put my bot token?

In an environment variable — never in your code, and never in a public GitHub repo. On livemy.app, add it in your project's settings as DISCORD_TOKEN (or TELEGRAM_TOKEN) and read it from your code. If your token ever leaks, regenerate it in the Discord Developer Portal immediately.

Does livemy.app support Python bots, or only JavaScript?

Both, plus anything else that runs as a normal process. If the bot runs on your laptop with python bot.py or node index.js, it runs here. Upload the folder as a .zip or connect a public repo, add your token as an environment variable, deploy.