Host a Discord bot for free on Oracle Cloud

Why Oracle Cloud Free Tier is the best free Discord bot host

• Always-on — no cold starts, no sleep, no ping-me-awake hacks.
• 2 ARM Ampere cores + 12 GB RAM — free forever. Room for dozens of bots.
• 200 GB storage — plenty for logs, SQLite, and cached assets.
• Full root access — install any runtime, any package, any version.
• Fixed public IP — useful if your bot exposes a webhook or dashboard.

Step 1 — Provision the ARM instance

Sign up for Oracle Cloud (signup guide) and launch an Ampere A1.Flex shape with 1–2 OCPUs and 6–12 GB RAM. Ubuntu 22.04 is the easiest image. Hitting "Out of host capacity"? Use our retry script — it usually gets an instance within a few hours.

Step 2 — Create a dedicated user and directory

sudo adduser --system --group --home /opt/bot bot
sudo mkdir -p /opt/bot/app && sudo chown -R bot:bot /opt/bot

Step 3a — Node.js (discord.js) setup

# Install Node 20 (ARM64)
curl -fsSL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_20.x | sudo -E bash -
sudo apt install -y nodejs

sudo -u bot bash -c 'cd /opt/bot/app && npm init -y && npm i discord.js dotenv'

Minimal /opt/bot/app/index.js:

import 'dotenv/config';
import { Client, GatewayIntentBits, Events } from 'discord.js';

const client = new Client({ intents: [GatewayIntentBits.Guilds, GatewayIntentBits.GuildMessages, GatewayIntentBits.MessageContent] });

client.once(Events.ClientReady, (c) => console.log(`Ready as ${c.user.tag}`));
client.on(Events.MessageCreate, (m) => {
  if (m.content === '!ping') m.reply('pong 🏓');
});

client.login(process.env.DISCORD_TOKEN);

Add "type": "module" to package.json, then drop your bot token in /opt/bot/app/.env as DISCORD_TOKEN=....

Step 3b — Python (discord.py) setup

sudo apt install -y python3-venv
sudo -u bot bash -c 'python3 -m venv /opt/bot/venv && /opt/bot/venv/bin/pip install -U discord.py python-dotenv'

Minimal /opt/bot/app/bot.py:

import os, discord
from dotenv import load_dotenv
load_dotenv('/opt/bot/app/.env')

intents = discord.Intents.default(); intents.message_content = True
client = discord.Client(intents=intents)

@client.event
async def on_ready():
    print(f'Ready as {client.user}')

@client.event
async def on_message(m):
    if m.author.bot: return
    if m.content == '!ping': await m.reply('pong 🏓')

client.run(os.environ['DISCORD_TOKEN'])

Step 4 — Run under systemd (auto-restart forever)

# /etc/systemd/system/discord-bot.service
[Unit]
Description=Discord Bot
After=network-online.target

[Service]
User=bot
WorkingDirectory=/opt/bot/app
# Node:
ExecStart=/usr/bin/node index.js
# Python (comment out Node line, uncomment this):
# ExecStart=/opt/bot/venv/bin/python bot.py
Restart=always
RestartSec=5

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable --now discord-bot
sudo journalctl -u discord-bot -f   # live logs

Step 5 — Keep the token safe

Lock down permissions so only the bot user can read the token:

sudo chmod 600 /opt/bot/app/.env
sudo chown bot:bot /opt/bot/app/.env

If you leak a token, rotate it immediately in the Discord Developer Portal.

Optional — Dockerized bot

If you'd rather ship a container, our free Dockerfile generator produces an ARM64-ready image for discord.js or discord.py in one click.

Prefer to skip the Linux chores?

Cheaploy automates Oracle provisioning + Docker + systemd — point it at a GitHub repo and your bot is live in under 10 minutes on your own free Oracle tenancy.