Discord Bot Hosting for FiveM: VPS, Cloud, and Self-Hosting Compared
The right host makes all the difference
Your Discord bot needs a reliable home. Downtime means missed refund requests, frustrated players, and staff confusion. This guide compares hosting options so you can choose the right infrastructure for your server's size and budget.
Option 1: Managed cloud hosting
Services like Railway, Render, or Fly.io handle deployment, scaling, and uptime automatically. You push code, they run it. Perfect for teams without DevOps experience.
- Pros: Zero server management, automatic scaling, built-in monitoring
- Cons: Higher cost at scale, less control, potential cold starts
- Cost: $5-25/month for small bots, scales with usage
- Best for: Small to medium servers, teams without technical ops staff
Option 2: Virtual Private Server (VPS)
Providers like Hetzner, OVH, or DigitalOcean give you a Linux server to configure yourself. More control, more responsibility. Great value for technical teams.
- Pros: Full control, predictable pricing, can host multiple services
- Cons: Requires Linux knowledge, manual updates and security
- Cost: $4-20/month for adequate specs (2GB RAM, 1 vCPU minimum)
- Best for: Medium to large servers, teams with technical capability
VPS Recommendation
For most FiveM Discord bots, a 2GB RAM / 2 vCPU VPS is plenty. Prioritize providers with good network connectivity to Discord's servers (EU or US depending on your player base).
Option 3: Self-hosting at home
Running the bot on your own hardware costs nothing monthly but introduces reliability risks. Power outages, ISP issues, and hardware failures directly impact your bot's uptime.
- Pros: No monthly cost, maximum control, educational
- Cons: Uptime depends on your home infrastructure, security exposure
- Cost: Electricity only (~$2-5/month for a Raspberry Pi)
- Best for: Development/testing, very small servers, learning purposes
Security considerations by hosting type
Each hosting option has different security implications. Cloud platforms handle OS updates automatically. VPS requires manual patching. Self-hosting exposes your home network.
- Cloud: Keep dependencies updated, use environment variables for secrets
- VPS: Enable automatic security updates, configure firewall, use SSH keys
- Self-host: Use a dedicated device, segment network, never expose directly to internet
LD Refund System hosting
LD Refund System runs its bot infrastructure on enterprise cloud hosting, so you don't need to host the core bot yourself. Your FiveM server connects to our hosted service, eliminating bot hosting concerns entirely.
“Switching from self-hosted to LD Refund System's managed bot eliminated our uptime issues completely. One less thing to maintain means more time for actually running the server.”
Choose hosting based on your technical skills, budget, and reliability requirements. For mission-critical bots, invest in redundancy regardless of which option you pick.
Need a smarter refund flow?
LD Refund System automates Discord approvals, in-game claims, and audit logging so your staff stay focused on players.