this post was submitted on 10 Feb 2026
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256
Discord Alternatives, Ranked (taggart-tech.com)
submitted 9 hours ago by Beep@lemmus.org to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] thesmokingman@programming.dev 2 points 10 minutes ago

It’s very important to call out this dude either doesn’t understand what a community is or comes from this new generation that thinks docs should be on Discord and not easily accessible.

Functionality: can it do everything required of a platform for building, organizing, and sustaining a community?

Somehow Discord gets a 4 there. A chat server is a community of a kind but it will never rise the level of a platform’s community because it is, by definition, somewhat ephemeral and just a bunch of chat logs. There’s a big difference for example between IRC and bash.org for things like AzureDiamond.

[–] WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works 12 points 3 hours ago

Matrix uses a similar end-to-end cryptography scheme to Signal. "Rooms" (chats, channels) are not encrypted by default, b

I don't think that's true anymore. it has been encrypted by default for quite a few years now

[–] douglasg14b@lemmy.world 10 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

Trash guide to be fair.

Discord has more functionality than all of these, that's why it's in the position it's in today, yet it gets ranked lower than... Rocket chat??

If we're objectively finding alternatives then we need to be objective, this guide seems sus AF.

[–] nil@piefed.ca 5 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 30 minutes ago)

It seems there's also Spacebar.

https://piefed.ca/post/515452

[–] ComradeRachel@lemmy.blahaj.zone 13 points 4 hours ago

Matrix is probably the most well funded and supported open source platform that might be able to compete with Discord but even then it’s not a fair fight.

Sadly most people won’t leave discord. People will forget about this next week.

[–] WraithGear@lemmy.world 8 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

i notice people not mentioning team speak 6. when our discord group were planning everything team speak 6 seemed to be the winner. it’s not free, but if i am hosting it with a license and have more control over the experience, then its not that big of a deal. from what i gather team speak 6 has better faster audio, and a better screen share for gaming. but we only just started poking around at options atm.

[–] Jakeroxs@sh.itjust.works 2 points 2 hours ago

My friend group also jumped to that first, unless it's federated though it's not going to be "like discord" enough in the long run.

Part of what makes discord so good to many is that it's one app where you can connect to various different friend groups/modding groups/artists/etc...

Matrix does allow that with its federation model, ts6 does not 🤷

[–] neblem@lemmy.world 32 points 7 hours ago (2 children)

Not reviewed in this eval:

  • DeltaChat (though would likely score similar to Signal with more points for decentralization)
  • IRC
  • XMPP
  • Lemmy/PieFed/Nodebb (if he's going to include Discourse..)
[–] QuadratureSurfer@piefed.social 6 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

Some other alternatives not reviewed:

  • Spacebar
  • TeamSpeak
  • Root
[–] joelfromaus@aussie.zone 3 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

Spacebar sounded really promising when I checked them out years ago.

The big Discord.com features currently left unimplemented or with partial implementations are: Voice/Video support (WebRTC protocol support implemented, but lacking UDP protocol implementation)

Unfortunately, seems like it’s still not at a point where it could cover basic Discord functionality.

Edit: I should be clear, I’m not trying to discourage it. I really hope it succeeds to the goal of parity with Discord! Love to hear from someone who has used it a bit.

[–] plz1@lemmy.world 3 points 4 hours ago

Yeah, it was immediately clear based on the scoring that he was super biased toward Discourse. It's not a Discord alternative, and had no place in that list at all.

[–] SnoringEarthworm@sh.itjust.works 73 points 8 hours ago (3 children)

Top three are:

  1. Discourse
  2. Rocket.chat
  3. Matrix
[–] iamthetot@piefed.ca 90 points 8 hours ago (14 children)

I don't really see how someone can position Discourse as the number one Discord alternative. Surely most people looking to ditch Discord want live chat, audio/video calls, and screen sharing... Or am I just in the minority here?

For the record, I think Discourse looks awesome and even thinking about how I might use it for a project, but I do not see it as a Discord alternative.

[–] markz@suppo.fi 36 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

Lots of communities use discord as a replacement for a forum despite it not being fit for it at all

[–] mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

Sure, but that’s not an argument for replacing Discord with forums. The two serve entirely different use cases, and should be treated like two entirely separate products.

[–] gloktawasright@lemmy.world 9 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

Isn’t it though? A forum wouldn’t do all the things discord does, but the argument is that trying to use discord for a forum was a mistake in the first place. So replacing discord with a forum and then a dedicated chatting app makes sense, no?

[–] mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

I think we’re essentially saying the same thing in different ways. Yes, I 100% agree that forums should be separate from whatever the new Discord replacement ends up being.

I was more arguing that we can’t only use forums to replace Discord, because the realtime communication aspect would be a different use case. I’ve seen lots of “lol just use forums” types of posts, which completely ignore the realtime side of things. There would still need to be some service to replace the realtime aspects that Discord does serve.

[–] gloktawasright@lemmy.world 3 points 2 hours ago

Agreed. I think the fact that discord kind of does all the things is what made it attractive. But it’s not GOOD at the forum aspect, and it has its flaws for the other use cases as well.

[–] karashta@piefed.social 25 points 8 hours ago

I also want this suite of things. I stream movies to friends, share games I'm playing...

These are core features to me now in a robust chat client

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[–] Nioxic@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

Discourse isnt free

And its been described as more of a forum than a chat service

[–] douglasg14b@lemmy.world 5 points 3 hours ago

This is misinformation.

You can self host it, for free.

[–] Ulrich@feddit.org 7 points 7 hours ago (2 children)

I love that Discourse is open. I hate that it's just horrendous from a usability perspective. Flarum is much better than that, in my opinion, while being way more flexible. Examples:

https://discuss.grapheneos.org/

https://orionfeedback.org/

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[–] weedee@sh.itjust.works 6 points 5 hours ago

https://s3nd.chat/

Made by the same team that did s3nd.pics (the imgur alternative. Under heavy Dev at the moment but has promise.

[–] Strider@lemmy.world 36 points 8 hours ago (4 children)

No, he hasn't been running a discord server. It's a channel. Discord is running the servers.

[–] jcorvera@quokk.au 6 points 4 hours ago

The older terminology, which is still used in the API, was a lot better.

It was Guild. It was a Discord Guild. Probably because Stanislav was working on it after he abandoned Guildwork.

[–] exist@sopuli.xyz 6 points 5 hours ago

Users (and I think Discord too) call the communities servers, and channels are the individual topics/threads in a community. It might not make sense from a hosting perspective but people do call it that

[–] bleistift2@sopuli.xyz 45 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

God, I hated that terminology when I needed to talk with people about discord.

[–] Strider@lemmy.world 18 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

I can only assume it's on purpose so average users really understand it wrong to avoid the associated negative view. Clever, really. But absolutely evil.

[–] izax@pawb.social 13 points 6 hours ago (2 children)

This wasn't intended to be misleading. The term "Server" as in a Discord Server is because, be fore Discord were the days of Ventrilo and TeamSpeak. For many of us gamers used to have to run or pay for their own actual server to have that kind of functionality. Then we'd combine direct calling with Skype for small groups and video. The term made sense at the time, but hasn't held up to the test of time. Basically Discord solved a problems of having to pay for those servers, and having to use two separate programs.

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[–] hperrin@lemmy.ca 10 points 7 hours ago

I highly doubt that when you start a “Discord server”, there’s any new machinery spun up. There is a near 100% chance it’s just an entry in a database. Nobody’s running a server just for him. So I don’t think there’s even reason to be charitable.

[–] wesker@lemmy.sdf.org 31 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago) (1 children)

If Stoat (formerly Revolt) can integrate screen sharing capabilities soon enough, they will be the closest, user-friendly experience to Discord. Even the UI is familiar, if you come from Discord.

[–] neshura@bookwyr.me 4 points 3 hours ago

Apparently that's already in the backend since december, they're just getting their infrastructure up to snuff before they enable it

[–] MiahNelah@lemmy.world 10 points 7 hours ago (13 children)

Switching to a self-hosted good old Teamspeak 6. Their screen sharing is very good, and audio quality is far above Discord. Overall it’s still need some polish but is okay.

[–] joelfromaus@aussie.zone 1 points 2 hours ago

Is screen sharing available for self hosting? Last I checked (6 months ago) the TS server version wasn’t publicly available yet.

If it is I’ll give it another go!

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