"How much for a Discord bot" is one of the most common questions customers bring to ClaudeWork, and the honest answer is that a bot is a category, not a product. This guide breaks the category into tiers with realistic 2026 bounties, so you can budget before you post.
Tier 1: single-purpose bots ($50 to $150)
A handful of slash commands with no database. Examples: a welcome message with rules, a reaction-role picker, a command that posts your stream schedule, a dice roller for a tabletop server. A Conductor working with Claude builds these in a day. Hosting is your responsibility unless you ask for it (see below).
Tier 2: community utility bots ($150 to $500)
Anything that needs to remember things: points and levels, giveaways with entries and winners, event RSVPs, ticket systems with private threads, moderation logs. These need a database and error handling, and they need to survive restarts. Most streamer and gaming communities land here.
Tier 3: integrated bots ($400 to $1,000)
Bots that talk to other services: sync Discord roles from Twitch, Kick, YouTube, or Patreon subscriptions; post new videos and go-live alerts; pull stats from a game API; run a shop with Stripe. Each integration adds scope and testing time. See the creator tooling guide for how these fit a streaming setup.
Tier 4: Claude-powered bots ($500 to $1,500)
Bots where Claude does work inside the server: an assistant that answers questions from your docs or FAQ, a moderation triage that reads reports and drafts decisions for a human, a summarizer that posts a digest of a busy channel, a support bot for a product community. These require prompt design, guardrails, and a budget for API usage. They are also the ones communities rave about.
What drives the price up
- A web dashboard. A settings page for admins adds $150 to $400.
- Multiple servers. A bot built for one server is simpler than a public bot with per-server configuration.
- Hosting and uptime. Ask for deployment on a small VPS or a hosting service, with restart on crash and logging, and budget $50 to $150 for it.
- Music and voice. Voice features are fiddly and platform rules change; expect a premium.
- Ongoing changes. Discord updates its API. A small follow-up bounty every few months keeps a bot healthy.
How to brief a bot
- Name every command and what it does, one line each.
- Say what needs to be remembered (points, entries, tickets) and for how long.
- List the outside services it must connect to and confirm you can provide API access to them.
- Say where it should run and who will maintain it.
- Paste any rules or FAQ text a Claude-powered bot should know.
Post it with a bounty in the tier range and tick IP transfer if you want the source code. Funds are held in Payment Protection until you approve the working bot in your own server.
Frequently asked questions
Can I get it cheaper than $50?
A single command with no state sometimes clears at $30. Below that, it is not worth a Conductor's setup time.
Why not use a free bot like MEE6 or Dyno?
Use them if they do what you need. Custom bots exist for the features they do not have, for communities that want their own personality, and for creators who want one bot across Discord, Twitch, and Kick.
How long does it take?
Tier 1 in a day or two, Tier 2 in about a week, Tiers 3 and 4 in one to three weeks depending on integrations.
Ready to price yours? Post the brief and Conductors who build bots will pick it up.