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Just fyi, here are some other alternatives (note that I haven't tried any of them, not even matrix, but I've heard of these as open alternatives to Discord):
this post was submitted on 13 Feb 2026
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fluxer sounds too good to be true.
Voice, video, screen-sharing, looks and functions just like discord, open source. What's the catch?
Yeah, I wonder that too, especially because I had never heard of it until a couple days ago.
Stoat seems great but they require google play store to even run.
I also tried over the course of three days to make a stoat account and couldn't get the verification email to go through.
It's also centralized with no plans to include federation, so we'd be running from a burning ship to a smoking one
I also had issues while making an account there.
I think federation is actually undesirable in this case. Most Discord communities are very particular, and I'd be making one just for my friends and me, no need to complicate things by introducing federation.
I feel like communities being particular is exactly why it should be federated. You can have your account on your instance with you and your friends, but connect to another instance dedicated to a community of hardcore pen enthusiasts with the same account, and no one has to worry about getting money somehow to support hosting all these communities in a single place :)
Same, didn't work. Likely due to large amounts of users trying I'd guess
I didn't know that, thanks.
Matrix has the same issue as Mastodon did with Twitter/X. People do not want to think about servers, can they talk to their friends, who's running this one, is their data safe (keep in mind that's why they'd be leaving in this case), will it last more than a week, does it have the same features, does it even have content, etc. They just want an alternative that does the exact same things as well without the thing that caused them to leave.
Bluesky worked out, and even then most people are on X still, because even though it's technically something that can federate, it's just something you sign up for normally and use. Plus it had enough of an algorithm that people just have content when they open the app.
Lemmy worked out (less successfully in terms of numbers) because reddit actively spat in your face and said fuck you, you don't get to use this the way you always have, and then strong armed all the communities to keep them from "protesting" anymore. So people who cared enough left, and the community that came up to host enough instances and deal with all the growing pains (RIP lemm.ee) made for a very usable replacement for reddit.
I believe stoat (revolt previously) is an application that's just a clone of discord from a different company, so if my bets were anywhere, it'd be that they take off. For matrix to take off, I would think you need a specific server pushing themselves as the discord replacement, like bluesky basically did and then you'd need a single do everything client that people can use. At least then you'd have the ability to use another server or host your own and still chat with your friends who don't care about all that. Thing is, other than matrix.org i don't know if that exists, and I'm pretty sure a client like that doesn't exist (though I'm not that experienced with it). I have element, element x, and fluffychat on my phone all with different experiences, and it's sort of the same on my desktop.
Reading matrix's blog posts they seem keenly aware of the issues surrounding it being a discord replacement and the complications with self hosting. It seems they are responding to the community but are also pretty stretched thin for having the money to develop it quicker and turn things more polished and user friendly. I'm hoping the influx of new users will also result in an influx of donors and some rapid progress.
That being said, if not matrix, I expect someone will take up the mantle and in the not too distant future there will be fairly literal drop in replacements that are oss.
So if what you said is true, then it's going to be really hard for federated social media to get mass adoption.
if stoat can get their ducks in order and eventually add selfhosted federated servers to the service it will be a very comparable experience. big easy to use platform for most people and technical depth for those that want it.
a girl can dream I suppose, I'll be supporting stoat for now
Given the average user experience Matrix offers, they'll be back on Discord within the same day.
Matrix is just not anywhere near ready for what most Discord communities want out of a platform.
Won’t happen.
Honestly, Discord does a lot of different things, and replacing all of them with one easy package will be next to impossible. IIRC Discord was never even profitable, so it was impossible even for them.
Too many people have grown so massively comfortable with discord that entire communities of people just relying on each other for social contact leave their voice chat or cameras running 24/7 so they can be around each other in some capacity.
They would break down having to change platforms, and there are LOT of younger people in this demographic.
Personally I think it's a deeply sad way to live and socialize, and they would probably largely be healthier if the whole thing shut down, but I recognize how lonely and depressing the world is and how everyone wants to find comfort with others.
They will immediately move back to discord.
Honestly. Discord ain't going nowhere.
Sure a few FOSS projects might re-locate, and I hope they do... but we've seen time and again that large user bases are happy to suffer any abuse their corporate overlords want to throw at them.
IRC, Ventrillo, and Teamspeak weren't going anywhere either but then...
Not saying heading back to discord isn't possible, just lets not dismiss possibilities outright.
... but then they were superseded when a better alternative emerged.
That's not analogous to discord's predicament.
But also they had close competition, and when discord first came around it was only marginally better than them.
This isn't even a close run race, Discord is the hare and the rest are tortoises
big fan of matrix here, im not sure itll last but id be happy if it did. it might be a bit overwhelming for the matrix.org instance though. hopefully more servers will be popping up and people can move to them
btw my favourite client, Commet, does have GIF search built-in
edit to add, you do need to enable it in the "General" settings
Oh awesome thanks for sharing!
big fan of matrix here, im not sure itll last but id be happy if it did. it might be a bit overwhelming for the matrix.org instance though. hopefully more servers will be popping up and people can move to them
They move to m.org, then they find their feet with matrix, then they move to a better instance.
On a side note, I hope and recommend they move to Stoat instead.
>wants to be discord clone
>more than half of the discord features are not implemented yet
hell, matrix is more feature-complete than stoat
You make a good point but it's FOSS. Probably some guy is thanklessly spending his free time working on it for virtually no money while still working a full-time for-profit job or something.