Cloud hosting. But paid cloud hosting (AWS, DigitalOcean, Hetzner) costs $5–$15 per month. For a hobbyist bot in 100 servers, that is expensive.
Lavalink requires 24/7 uptime, low latency, and a static IP or stable URL. If your connection stutters, the music skips. If your computer goes to sleep, the bot dies.
If you run a Discord music bot, you have likely encountered the name Lavalink . As the gold standard for sending audio data to Discord without consuming your bot’s core resources, Lavalink is a must-have. However, hosting a Lavalink node yourself can be a nightmare of VPS configurations, Java updates, and security patches.
server: # REST server configuration port: 2333 address: 0.0.0.0 lavalink: server: password: "youshallnotpass" sources: youtube: true bandcamp: true soundcloud: false # Turn this OFF to save RAM twitch: false vimeo: false mixer: false http: true local: false bufferDurationMs: 400 # Higher buffer = more RAM. Keep at 400. frameBufferDurationMs: 5000 youtubePlaylistLoadLimit: 25 # Limit playlists to 25 songs By disabling SoundCloud and lowering playlist limits, you reduce heap memory usage by 40%, allowing a "free" 512MB server to behave like a 1GB server. The Verdict: Which is Actually the "Best"? Let’s cut the noise. Ranking the best free Lavalink hosting based on 2024 performance: