How much does a Discord bot cost in 2026? A custom one costs anywhere from a few dozen dollars to more than $12,000, and the price depends more on who builds it than on the bot itself. Of 121 paid Fiverr orders I sampled on top Discord bot gigs, 80% were $200 or less. Upwork's own hiring guide puts a simple command bot at $300 to $1,200, a moderation, onboarding or ticketing bot at $1,000 to $4,000, and a bot wired into your own systems at $3,500 to $12,000 or more.
Running a bot costs less than building one. Hosting a small bot costs $2 to $5 a month, and most published upkeep plans cost $50 to $500 a month. If you need tickets, levels or a bot with your own name and avatar, a ready-made bot such as Tickets or MEE6 at $3 to $12 a month is usually a better buy than a custom build.
I collected every number on this page on September 27, 2026, and the sources are listed at the bottom. I also sell custom bots, so my own prices get their own section near the end, where you can compare them with everything else.
Discord bot prices at a glance
| Who builds it | What it costs | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| A ready-made bot you host yourself (BuiltByBit) | About $5 to $50 once | Someone else's code, running on your hosting |
| SaaS and no-code bots | Free, or under $15 a month | Standard features on their code and servers |
| Fiverr freelancers | Median starting price $30; 80% of sampled orders $200 or less | Small, single-purpose bots |
| Upwork freelancers (Upwork's own ranges) | $300 to $12,000+ | From a few slash commands up to a bot tied to your CRM, database or store |
| Solo developers and small studios | $500 to $2,500+ | A scoped build with a spec, testing and handover |
| Game development studio (Arionis) | $4,000 to $90,000+ | From a basic server bot up to systems with admin panels, AI features and shops |
| Development subscription (DiscordGenius) | $999 a month | One request at a time, hosting included |
The rest of this page breaks each row down, then covers the monthly costs, what pushes a quote up, and three worked examples.
What people actually pay on Fiverr
Fiverr showed more than 1,400 gigs for "discord bot" on September 27, 2026. I sampled it three ways.
Starting prices. Among 59 bot-development gigs on the first two result pages and the top-rated sort (server setup and member-growth gigs removed), the median starting price was $30. The middle half started between $20 and $50, and 81% started at $50 or less.
Package prices. Across 26 top gigs with three packages, the median Basic package was $35, the median Standard $115 and the median Premium $192.50. Basic packages ran from $10 to $150 and Premium from $40 to $800. Most top sellers ask you to message them before ordering, so the real price is usually a custom offer.
What buyers paid. Fiverr attaches an order-value range to each review. Across 121 reviews on 27 top Discord bot gigs:
| Order value | Orders | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Up to $50 | 50 | 41% |
| $50 to $100 | 25 | 21% |
| $100 to $200 | 22 | 18% |
| $200 to $400 | 16 | 13% |
| $400 to $600 | 2 | 2% |
| $600 to $800 | 1 | 1% |
| $1,000 to $1,500 | 2 | 2% |
| $2,000 to $3,000 | 2 | 2% |
| $3,000 to $4,000 | 1 | 1% |
Shares are rounded. 62 of the 121 reviews (51%) came from repeat buyers.
The eight orders of $400 or more tell you what a bigger budget buys on Fiverr. The largest were a bot with a web dashboard, a chat minigame that also ran on Twitch with its own web server and database, an AI system, a Telegram store, and a three-month project. The other 113 orders were all under $400.
Fiverr adds a service fee at checkout: 5.5% of the order, plus $3.50 on orders under $200. With the fee, a $35 Basic package comes to about $40.43 and a $192.50 Premium to about $206.59.
Fiverr also publishes its own cost guide, dated August 3, 2026. It puts projects at "$70 to $380", basic moderation bots at $70 to $150, intermediate bots at $150 to $300 and advanced bots at $300 to $600 or more. That is Fiverr's own guide rather than order data, but it points the same way as the sample: most Fiverr bot work costs a few hundred dollars or less.
What Upwork, Freelancer.com and Reddit show
Upwork
Upwork's hire page for Discord bot developers publishes this table as an estimate of typical scope:
| Project type (Upwork's wording) | Price per project | Level |
|---|---|---|
| Simple command or utility bot (3 to 5 slash commands) | $300 to $1,200 | Entry to mid |
| Moderation, onboarding, or ticketing bot | $1,000 to $4,000 | Mid |
| Custom integrated bot (CRM, database, game server or storefront API, admin dashboard, monitoring) | $3,500 to $12,000+ | Senior |
| Ongoing maintenance and feature iteration | $500 to $2,500 | Mid to senior |
The same page listed freelancer profiles at $5, $10, $40 and $45 an hour, so Upwork's ranges are a guide to scope, not a quote from any one freelancer.
On top of the freelancer's price, Upwork charges clients on its free Basic plan a marketplace fee of up to 7.99% (3% for eligible US clients paying by bank account), plus a one-time contract initiation fee of $0.99 to $14.99. A $1,000 project costs up to $1,079.90 plus that initiation fee.
Freelancer.com
Freelancer.com's public API lists posted projects with their budgets. I pulled the 54 fixed-price projects with "Discord" in the title posted between March 2 and September 18, 2026. The median budget midpoint was about $133, the median average bid about $113, and the median project drew about 45 bids. The standout bot build, one with web automation and order monitoring, drew 149 bids averaging about $4,515.
Reddit and hourly platforms
The 25 newest r/forhire posts matching "discord bot" (August 31 to September 26, 2026) were all [For Hire] posts from people offering work, not buyers. The hourly rates they quoted ran from about $15 to $35, for example "$18/hour" from a TypeScript bot developer.
Vetted-talent platforms sit higher. Arc says the Discord bot developers it places "typically charge between $60-100+/hour". Toptal does not publish rates for Discord bot developers.
What studios and agencies charge
These are published prices from sellers that build Discord bots as a business rather than as single gigs.
| Seller | Published price | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Modern Grind Technology (US) | $500 to $999 on its Discord page; $500 to $2,500+ in its April 2026 cost article | The article's tiers: Utility $500 to $700 (3 to 8 slash commands, 2 to 5 days), Application $500 to $1,200 (database, 10 to 20 commands, 1 to 3 weeks), Platform $1,200 to $2,500+ (payments, web dashboard, 3 to 6 weeks) |
| Excalibur Interactive (US) | $250+ for Discord bots | Also states "Minimum new-build engagement: $1,000"; technical audit $600; care plans from $250 a month |
| Arionis Games | $4,000 to $90,000+ | MVP bot $4,000 to $8,000 (3 to 6 weeks); tournament bot $16,000 to $28,000 (2 to 4 months); "ecosystem" bot $45,000 to $90,000+. Marked "for reference only" |
| DiscordGenius | $999 a month or $299 a week | One active request at a time, "average 96-hour delivery", hosting and maintenance included, 75% refund if canceled in the first week |
At the other end, a few sellers productize small bots. Aviantly sells three tiers priced between $20 and $100 (its page shows two slightly different sets of prices), with source code as a $10 to $35 add-on and hosting not included. Custom Bots charges $9.99 to $19.99 per module, with optional hosting at $4.99 a month.
Arionis is the high anchor, not the norm. Most custom bots for a single community do not need what a $16,000 tournament system includes.
What the no-code and SaaS bots cost
These are the prices a custom quote has to beat. If your need fits one of them, buy it.
| Product | Free plan | Paid price (September 2026) |
|---|---|---|
| BotGhost (build your own bot, no code) | 8 custom slash commands, 3 custom events, hosting | $5 a month billed annually ($60 a year) for one bot; $10 a month billed annually for unlimited bots |
| MEE6 | Yes | $11.99 a month, $49.99 a year or $89.99 lifetime (list prices; first-period discounts were running when I checked); yearly and lifetime include the Bot Personalizer for your own name and avatar |
| Ticket Tool | Yes | Premium $7.99 a month (ticket automation, claiming, DMs, full customization) |
| Tickets | Yes | Premium $2.99 per server a month; white-label $6.99 a month with your own name, avatar and status |
| Appy (applications and forms) | 2 forms | £4.99 a month for one server; Custom Bot £9.99 a month |
| LaunchPass (paid roles) | No | $29 a month plus 3.5% per transaction, plus Stripe's fees |
A year of Ticket Tool Premium costs $95.88, hosting and updates included. For a standard ticket setup a custom build rarely beats that, and I tell people so.
Custom work starts to pay when the bot has to touch your own systems or data (your database, your Stripe account, your league's sheet, your game's API), when one bot would replace three or four subscriptions, or when you need to own the code and the bot account outright. For a company's own server, the Discord bots for business page shows what that looks like: roles by customer plan, tickets with account details and bug reports filed into your tracker.
How much does a Discord bot cost per month?
Two things cost money every month: somewhere for the bot to run, and someone to keep it running.
Hosting
| Host | Plan | Price per month |
|---|---|---|
| Cybrancee | 512 MB / 1 GB / 2 GB RAM | $1.99 / $2.99 / $4.99 |
| PebbleHost | 1 GB RAM | $3.00 |
| Railway | Free plan with $1 of usage credit; Hobby with $5 of usage included | $0 / $5 |
A single-server bot without heavy data fits in the smallest of these. A database or a web dashboard adds to it: Modern Grind Technology's cost article puts hosting at $10 to $15 a month for bots with PostgreSQL and $15 to $25 for platform bots. How to host a Discord bot 24/7 compares the free and paid options.
Discord itself charges nothing. Creating an application is free, neither the Developer Terms nor the Developer Policy list a fee for normal use, and the policy mentions possible charges only for apps that ask to go beyond Discord's standard API limits. Verification, which a bot needs to grow past 100 servers, has no listed fee either; the main requirement is that the owner of the app's team verifies their identity through Stripe. A bot for your own server never gets near that line.
Upkeep
Discord changes its API, libraries release breaking versions, and hosts change their plans. Somebody has to notice and fix things, and this is what that costs:
| Who | Price | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| Fiverr's cost guide | $50 to $150 a month basic; $200 to $500+ comprehensive | Basic: bug fixes, API updates, 48 to 72 hour responses |
| Modern Grind Technology | $199 (Essentials) or $499 (Partner) a month | Partner adds feature work and 24-hour responses |
| Excalibur Interactive | From $250 a month | Care plans |
| Upwork's table | $500 to $2,500 | Listed per project: monthly fixes, library updates, new commands |
| DiscordGenius | $999 a month | Unlimited requests one at a time, hosting included |
| My Care plans | $49 or $149 a month | Details under hosting and Care plans |
If you or someone on your team can read the code, you can skip paid upkeep and pay only for hosting. Budget for a few hours of fixes a year in that case.
What pushes the price up
Two bots with the same number of commands can be priced very differently. These are the things that move a quote, with the add-on prices Fiverr's cost guide gives as a reference point.
- The number of workflows. "Open a ticket, route it, close it, save a transcript" is one workflow however many commands it uses. Each separate system (tickets, onboarding, levels, alerts) is its own design, build and test.
- Integrations. Fiverr's guide adds $50 to $100 for a simple alert integration such as Twitch or YouTube, $150 to $300 for a payment processor or CRM, and $400 to $800 or more for several connected services. Upwork's $3,500+ band is mostly this kind of work.
- Stored data. A small SQLite database adds $75 to $150 in Fiverr's guide, and a PostgreSQL or MongoDB design for large communities $200 to $400 or more.
- A web dashboard. $150 to $250 for a basic one and $300 to $600 for an advanced one, per Fiverr's guide. Upwork and Modern Grind Technology both put dashboards in their top tier.
- Payments. Taking money means webhooks, failed payments, refunds and disputes, and it comes with policy rules: in regions where Discord's Premium Apps are available, an app that sells paid features of a kind Premium Apps supports must also sell them through Discord, at a price no higher than elsewhere. Selling Discord roles with Stripe walks through the fees and the options.
- Reliability and scale. Monitoring, error alerts, backups, multi-server setups and bots that have to survive restarts without losing state. Upwork lists "production deployment with monitoring" in its senior tier.
- Ownership and handover. Source code, setup docs and a bot that runs on your own Discord application take time to produce. Some sellers charge extra for code (Aviantly's add-on is $10 to $35), and on Fiverr you get the rights to the work that is delivered unless the gig says otherwise, so code that never gets delivered is code you don't have.
A clear written spec is the cheapest way to get an accurate quote. How to write a Discord bot spec has a template.
Three worked examples
A ticket system for one server
- SaaS: Ticket Tool's free plan, or Premium at $7.99 a month ($95.88 a year). Tickets white-label at $6.99 a month if you want your own bot name.
- Fiverr: the median Basic and Standard packages in my sample were $35 and $115, plus the service fee.
- Upwork's range: $1,000 to $4,000 for a "moderation, onboarding, or ticketing bot".
- With me: a Starter bot, from $590. That buys one system with up to about five slash commands on your own application, plus the code. It is worth it only if tickets have to follow rules no SaaS supports or land in your own database; otherwise use Ticket Tool or Tickets. The ticket bot page goes through that choice.
Paid roles synced with Stripe
- SaaS: LaunchPass at $29 a month plus 3.5% per transaction, on top of Stripe's fees, which LaunchPass puts at 2.9% + 30¢ for a typical card payment.
- Fiverr's guide: $150 to $300 extra for a payment integration on top of a base bot.
- Studio: Modern Grind Technology puts payment integration in its $1,200 to $2,500+ Platform tier.
- With me: a Starter bot from $590 for a single Stripe product and role, or a Community bot from $1,490 when several products, a database and an admin log are involved. See paid membership bots for how the build works.
A league operations bot
Registration, team roles and channels, a sync with the sheet the admins already use, and a reset between seasons.
- Off the shelf: tournament and queue bots exist, but syncing your own roster and sheet is custom work.
- Upwork's range: $3,500 to $12,000+ once it connects to outside data and needs an admin layer.
- Studios: Arionis lists tournament bots at $16,000 to $28,000.
- With me: a Community bot from $1,490 without a dashboard, or a Platform bot from $3,500 with one. For scale: a registration bot I co-built for a Swedish online esports league created 138 channels and 123 roles for 131 teams and 793 players in under half an hour, and synced with the league's Google Sheet in both directions. The case study is on the work page.
Where my prices sit, and why
I'm Adam Peleback. I've built Discord bots since 2019 and worked as a tournament admin at G-Loot from 2017. These are my prices in USD, excluding VAT where it applies:
| My offer | Price | Nearest market reference |
|---|---|---|
| Bot Rescue (fix one broken bot; no fix, no fee) | $149 | Fiverr's guide: bug fixes average about $72 |
| Bot Blueprint (call, written spec, fixed quote) | $249, credited to the build within 30 days | Fiverr's guide: consultation about $117; Excalibur's technical audit $600 |
| Starter bot (one system) | from $590 | Upwork simple bot $300 to $1,200; Modern Grind Utility $500 to $700 |
| Community bot (up to 3 systems, database, one integration) | from $1,490 | Upwork moderation or ticketing bot $1,000 to $4,000 |
| Platform bot (dashboard, payments, several APIs) | from $3,500 | Upwork custom integrated bot $3,500 to $12,000+; Arionis from $4,000 |
| Care / Care Plus | $49 / $149 a month | Fiverr's guide $50 to $500+ a month; Modern Grind from $199 |
| Changes outside a package | $90 an hour, in prepaid 5-hour blocks | Arc $60 to $100+ an hour |
That puts me well above the Fiverr median and inside the Upwork and studio ranges for the same scope, toward the lower end of Upwork's. The difference from a $35 gig is what every build includes:
- The bot runs on your own Discord application, so you hold the token.
- Full source code in a repository you own, with setup docs another developer could follow.
- A private test server during the build, and 30 days of bug fixes after launch.
- The first month of Care, then you choose whether to keep it.
- A fixed price and an agreed acceptance checklist. You pay 50% to book the slot and the rest when the delivery passes that checklist (Platform builds are billed per milestone instead).
The difference from a studio is that I'm one developer, so there is no sales or project-management layer in the price. I also take on a limited number of builds each month.
A year of the cheapest route with me looks like this: a Starter bot at $590 plus 11 months of Care at $49 ($539) is $1,129. Without Care, it is $590 plus your own hosting at $2 to $5 a month.
How I collected these numbers
Everything was gathered on September 27, 2026.
- Fiverr: starting prices from 59 Discord bot development gigs on the first two pages of the "discord bot" search plus the top-rated sort, with server-setup and member-growth gigs removed. Package prices from 26 top gigs with three packages. Order values from 121 reviews across 27 top gigs, using the order-value range Fiverr shows with each review. The reviews came in Fiverr's default order, about five per gig, so they are a sample of top sellers rather than a random draw. Fiverr showed prices in Swedish kronor to my connection; the USD figures come from the dollar amounts in Fiverr's own page data.
- Upwork: the hire page's cost table, the client fee help article and the client pricing page, read in a browser. Upwork's table is its own estimate, not transaction data.
- Freelancer.com: the public projects API, fixed-price projects with "Discord" in the title posted March 2 to September 18, 2026, with budgets converted to USD at Freelancer's own rates.
- Reddit: the 25 newest r/forhire posts matching "discord bot".
- Studios, SaaS bots and hosts: each pricing page listed under Sources, opened on the same day. Where a seller makes claims about its clients, I left them out because I couldn't check them.
What's missing: budgets on closed Upwork jobs aren't visible once a job closes, and I couldn't confirm current prices for Carl-bot from its own pages, and Bot Designer for Discord shows premium prices only inside its app, so they aren't in the tables. Prices change; check the source before you rely on a single figure.
Get a number for your own bot
The bot cost estimator turns the drivers above into a price range and a timeline for the features you tick. My full offer ladder, payment terms and what I won't build are on the pricing page. If you'd like a fixed price, send a short description of what the bot should do through the quote form and I'll reply with next steps.