How to host a Telegram bot 24/7

Polling vs. webhooks — it changes what you need

Telegram bots talk to the API one of two ways, and it affects how you run them:

• Long polling. Your bot repeatedly asks Telegram for updates over an outbound connection. It receives no inbound web traffic, so you run a single always-on instance — one runner that never sleeps. The win is no server to babysit and paying only while it's up.
• Webhooks. You register a public HTTPS URL and Telegram POSTs updates to it. That needs a stable endpoint with a valid certificate — exactly what Sinkron gives you out of the box, load-balanced across several machines so the endpoint stays up even if one drops.

Host it in four steps

1. Put your bot in a container

Most bot libraries containerise in a few lines — a small Dockerfile that installs your dependencies and runs your start command (python bot.py, node index.js, and so on). Any library works — python-telegram-bot, aiogram, telegraf, whatever you built it with. Already have an image? Point Sinkron at it.

2. Add a little funding

Top up by card or USDC — no subscription, no minimum, and whatever you don't spend stays yours.

3. Deploy it

Point Sinkron at your image with a small CPU/RAM footprint. For a polling bot, run a single runner; for webhooks, you get the HTTPS URL to register with Telegram. It's up within seconds — no server, no reverse proxy, no certificate setup.

4. It stays up — you pay only while it runs

Sinkron keeps the bot running with health checks and automatic restarts. Billing is per second; we email you before the balance runs low, and the bot stops at zero so you're never billed past your deposit. Stop it yourself and the cost drops to zero.

Is it free? What it costs

Honest answer: not literally free — anything that runs 24/7 costs something to keep online, and "free bot hosting" usually sleeps your bot, throttles it, or quietly shuts down. But a bot's footprint is tiny, so on Sinkron it runs for pennies an hour, you only pay while it's running, and it's free to sign up. Paying for a small footprint by the second usually works out cheaper than a $5 VPS that bills around the clock. See Sinkron vs. a $5 VPS or how pricing works.

When a plain VPS is still the better call

We'd rather be honest than oversell. Reach for a VPS if your bot writes a lot to persistent local disk and you don't want an external database, needs full OS-level control, or you're running a large bot you manage as fixed infrastructure. Otherwise Sinkron is the cheaper, lower-effort choice. Hosting a Discord bot works the same way, and the small always-on app guide covers the general pattern.