Discord bot hosting: keeping your bot online 24/7
Hosting a Discord bot is a different job from running a game server. There is no world, no players and no map — there is a program that stays connected to Discord and reacts to events. That asks for very little, but it asks continuously.
Why your PC is not enough
While your bot runs on your own computer, it is offline the moment you shut down, restart, or your connection hiccups. For a test bot that is fine. As soon as other people rely on it, it becomes a problem — and that is exactly why people move to hosting.
What your bot needs
Surprisingly little. Most bots run comfortably on 256 to 512 MB of memory. Only when your bot streams music, processes images or maintains a large database does that climb. More important than RAM is that the process keeps running and restarts automatically after a crash.
Node.js or Python
Most bots run on discord.js (Node.js) or discord.py (Python). Both work on our plans; you upload your code, set the start command and the bot runs.
Mind your token
Your bot token is effectively your bot's password. Never put it in code you share or push to GitHub — use an environment variable or a separate config file. If your token leaks, someone else can take over your bot entirely.
Getting started
At MC-Node you can host Discord bots free to test, with paid plans once you need more memory or storage.