Discord Alternatives, Ranked

21 minute read Published: 2025-11-05

I've been running a Discord server for about four and a half years now. When I started streaming during the pando, I had no idea that I would end up building a community. Hell, I'd never even used Discord before. I only knew what it was because I had to stop my students from using it.

Don't like reading? Click here for the final scores.

But folks kept asking for one. My viewers expected a community hub in which people who found their way to my Twitch streams could find each other, even when I was not live. As the whole streaming thing was itself an experiment in remote learning for me, this seemed a natural extension. So now, I have some mileage on me as a community moderator. I'm intimately familiar with the features Discord offers, and all the arguments against using it. I'm sensitive to them, FOSS dork that I am. I'm also keenly sensitive to the arguments about data loss inside of a forever-chat. In fact, I'm so sensitive to it that I even tried to address the problem in some small way.

But Discord, like all freemium services, is a risk. At any moment their advertising model could become intolerable, or their policy about using my data to train AI could change, or their pricing could get out of control, or some other rent-seeking nonsense common to internet services trying to stretch their profit margin.

I need an exit strategy. Anyone using Discord needs an exit strategy. The trick is to find a landing spot that users will tolerate, and that allows the community to continue in some fashion. Change is loss, and that is excruciatingly true for community platforms. Any switch comes with an attrition rate, meaning the destination better be worth the cost in headcount.

For this reason, and for another project, I've been deeply researching Discord alternatives for the better part of a year. Some of my colleagues may think me a bit obsessed about the importance of a "chat app," but I'm convinced that the communication mechanism for online communities is critical to their success. Choosing a new one could be the a matter of life and death for the community. This is a decision we have to get right the first time.

So here, humbly submitted, are my rankings of many of the Discord-like alternatives for maintaining online communities.

Evaluation Criteria

I've arrived at five broad categories in which an online community platform needs to perform.

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

Openness: what access is there to all the tool's features and code without payment?

Security: how secure are the server and user data against common threats?

Safety: what features are available to moderate the community and protect it from malicious or unwanted behavior?

Decentralization: how reliant is the service on single points of failure?

These will be evaluated on a scale from 1-5, with 5 being the "best" for each criterion.

I've done my best to consider multiple use cases and threat models in these scores. I am, however, a flawed, biased meatsack with limited visibility. I may not have predicted your needs precisely. I may have omitted your favorite option. If so, I hope you'll afford me some grace. I did the best I could.

Oh, and I'm not touching Slack or Teams. Reasons should be obvious.

We'll start with Discord as a baseline.

Discord

As a product, Discord is very, very good. It serves its purpose with an absolutely minimum of friction—both from a user and administrator perspective. Even without paying, the features out of the box are well-considered and helpfully implemented. What is the product, anyway? Sometimes it seems like Discord themselves don't really know. While they bristle at being called a "Slack clone," there's a reason many companies (especially tech startups) choose Discord as both their internal team communication tool, as well as their customer engagement tool. Some truly benighted groups even choose to document their product with it.

Whatever Discord thinks it is, the purpose of a system is what it does, and Discord builds online communities. Say what you want about the company, the closed nature, the increasingly-icky ad model, the core of Discord continues to work well for bringing people together in quasi-public online spaces. The medium of real-time text, aka instant messaging, aka IRC-again-but-not-IRC, has become a default, but one not without limitations. For example, what does this do to your heart rate:

Several people are typing...

Right?! We've embraced immediacy at the expense of depth. Also, in Discord's case, accessibility. Searching Discord is a proper disaster. While messages are more or less permanent, it is by no means easy to find them again, weeks/months/years later.

But let's get into the criteria before this becomes a treatise on the nature of the modern web.

As mentioned, Discord is highly functional—for what it does. But its limitations do start to grate as time goes on. Online communities have a predictable lifecycle, in which the excitement of the early days is well-served by real-time chat. The memes are flying; people are excited to meet each other; the future holds boundless possibilities. The space will categorize and fragment, trying to organize the chaos. Over time, most of the messages come from a core group of contributors, with more occasional arrivals and questions from newcomers. This is as it should be. But what happens to the history of that community as it heads up the scroll? How does the past usefully inform the future?

Discord has made some affordances for this with "Forum" type channels. Even so, the past is hard to explore.

Discord is not open, so not much to say on that front.

Discord messages are not end-to-end encrypted. Pretty famously, Discord will give up your data for law enforcement. Although they've recently added end-to-end encryption for video and audio, the implementation is clunky. And of course, all the text data in a Discord server is unencrypted. But hey, at least they support MFA?

Safety, in the sense of "Trust and Safety," may be Discord's greatest strength. I have greatly appreciated all the moderation tools at my disposal. Even a modestly sized server like mine (~3000 users) would be impossible to manage without automatic word catching, granular permissions on channels and roles, and multiple response options including timeouts, kicks, and bans. Discord also has a very involved onboarding flow that makes certain there is an agreement to community rules before users can participate.

And need we even mention decentralization here? If Discord fails, your community goes dark.

Signal

https://signal.org

Best for: communities who value secrecy above all.

I love Signal. Like, a lot. I'm a daily user and a donor. I've even convinced most of my friends and family to use it as our primary mode of text communication. And yes, I've organized a community with it—one for which privacy was (at the time) of paramount importance. I am deeply familiar with all advantages and drawbacks of Signal.

As a secure chat, Signal does just fine. Well, better than fine from a cryptography perspective. It is the gold standard in end-to-end encrypted communications for good reason. But the strongest cryptography in the world is meaningless for a community of the platform is unusable. Fortunately, that's not the case for Signal. Emoji reactions, stickers, (some) formatted text, and even voice/video calls make it an indispensable tool for secure communications that feel familiar and feature-filled enough for normies. Nobody will be totally lost moving from another chat app to Signal.

If you're looking for nothing but chat, Signal is fantastic. But many aspects of community-building online are simply unavailable here. To start, there are only group chats. There is no conversation threading or channels to keep conversations organized. You can have multiple chats, but that gets messy quickly.

I can't even pin posts. In fact, post searchability is a limited feature by design. Most group chats enable disappearing messages. That's great to prevent incriminating evidence from piling up; it's terrible for reviewing what a community discussed previously.

Also absent: granular roles in each chat, or anything resembling moderation tools. As an admin, I can only ban users for unwanted behavior. I can neither automatically prevent harassment nor provide a more measured response than the banhammer.

I should mention that almost all these tradeoffs are accepted limitations in service of Signal's primary objectives.

On the point of decentralization, Signal has none. As Meredith Whitaker recently wrote, all Signal app traffic flows through the same cloud infrastructure, much of which depends on AWS.

If your community's threat model is such that eliminating all possible points of evidence collection against you matters above all else, Signal is the clear winner. Maintaining that level of operational security naturally comes at the cost of some other creature comforts a community could come to covet.

I didn't set out to alliterate the hell out of that sentence, but I didn't stop it either.

Matrix

https://matrix.org

Best for: communities who value independence over all, with security/privacy a runner-up.

Oh, Matrix. You are the football that I, in my zigzag-stripe shirt, keep trying to kick. In theory, the Matrix protocol and Element, its flagship client, should be the ideal for decentralized, encrypted communications. Using Element feels a whole lot like using Discord. Heck, it can even bridge communications from Discord and other platforms. Sadly, as time goes on, the nicks from the rough edges start to accumulate.

Before going further, we need to define some terms. Matrix is the federated, encrypted messaging protocol published and maintained by the Matrix Foundation. Synapse is their "reference implementation" server technology written in Python. Synapse is the most common way folks start their own Matrix servers. There are other server implementations, now including "Synapse Pro," which I guess is a partial rewrite of Synapse in Rust? Element is the first-party client that users would use to connect to Matrix. They need an account on a server, and of course matrix.org is the flagship Matrix server where the vast majority of users have their accounts. But you can point Element at any Matrix server to log in, as long as you have an account on that server.

Confused yet? If users are unwilling to select a Mastodon server, do you think they'd be willing to put up with this?

Ah, but I get ahead of myself. Let's start with what's good.

Matrix uses a similar end-to-end cryptography scheme to Signal. "Rooms" (chats, channels) are not encrypted by default, but they can be made so. There have been noted issues with the previous cryptography library used by Element, but the newer vodozemac library is in much better shape. Of course, not all Matrix clients use the new hotness.

A given Matrix server can create multiple rooms (channels), and even group them into "spaces" such that they appear quite similar to Discord servers.

Inside the rooms, things feel familiar. We have threads, emoji reacts, and message search (sorta). On some clients (but not Element), there is the possibility of custom emoji.

And that's...it. Element promises more, like native video conferencing, but heaven help you if you're trying to self-host it. It is technically possible, but by no means simple.

"Technically possible, but by no means simple" aptly describes up the entire Matrix experience, actually.

I ran a private Matrix server for about a year and a half. Why private? In two public Matrix rooms I had joined—including the room for Synapse admins—I experienced a common attack in which troll accounts spam the room with CSAM material. Horrible, but not just for the participants and admins in the room. Through the magic of federation, every server who has a user participating in the room now has a copy of the CSAM material, and has to take action to remove it. This requires a manual curl request on the server itself, because Synapse has an appalling lack of moderation tools. It's so bad that, without third-party tooling, you can't even ban a user outright from a server; you have to manually ban them from every single room.

Oh, and one additional very special aspect of Matrix. It turns out that, even for encrypted rooms, servers store media (including URL previews) unencrypted on the server, with metadata visible. Let me repeat that. Any image posted in an encrypted room is in fact not end-to-end encrypted, and anyone with access to a participating server can see it.

Then came September 2, 2025. The outageof matrix.org caused by drive failures was not an indictment of Matrix's database management or recovery process—in fact, I was quite impressed with their response. But it did put the lie to Matrix's decentralization for me. Almost none of my friends could use Matrix, even though I was hosting my own server. The onboarding pipeline (especially via Element) is so focused on the flagship server, I daresay it comprises the plurality of Matrix accounts. It's not easy to get any statistics for all Matrix users, but that is my guess. How "decentralized" is that, really? Just because something can be decentralized doesn't make it so.

Isn't that right, ATProto?

I'm probably a little too close to this one. I so badly wanted Matrix to work, and I tried to make it work for my purposes for a long time. Ultimately, the pain points overcame the benefits. But if you care most about an intersection of message encryption, federation, and decentralization, and you're willing to put in quite a lot of admin time, Matrix can be viable community chat platform.

Rocket.Chat

https://rocket.chat

Best for: communities that want a smooth Slack-like experience and are willing to pay for independence

What if you could self-host Slack? That's basically the Rocket.Chat experience. It's slick, easy to get set up, and loaded with integrations. All of this comes, as you might expect, at a price. While there is an "open source" Community Edition, its featureset is limited, and you may quickly find yourself looking at the paid plans for additional features or support. Rocket.Chat is one of several platforms that follow this freemium model. I don't really begrudge them this approach, but it can be frustrating for a community just finding its feet. To their credit, they do offer discounts for open source projects, not-for-profits, and other organizations on a per-request basis.

Rocket.Chat does support end-to-end encrypted communications. Key management can be a little clunky, but I was impressed it had the feature at all.

Be aware, however, that these centrally-managed services will of course allow administrators to audit messages. That is a documented part of the moderation flow for Rocket.Chat. If you demand anonymity or an inability for administrators to view your messages what are you doing in that community? Rocket.Chat might not be right for you.

I'll quickly mention why I gave it a score of 3 on decentralization. Seems a bit high, right? Until recently, Rocket.Chat supported Matrix federation. Since October 2025, it has pursued a native federation scheme that would allow separate Rocket.Chat instances to share rooms and DMs across server boundaries. This, although not open source, is extremely compelling.

I really enjoyed my experimentation with Rocket.Chat, and found myself thinking seriously about it as an alternative to where I was. The cost is just steep.

Zulip

https://zulip.com

Best for: A split between forums and real-time chat

I've been playing with Zulip for a bit now, and I still don't really know what to make of it. From one perspective, it has a bit of an identity crisis, unsure of whether it's a forum or a chat platform. From another perspective, this dual identity is its greatest strength: real-time when you want it, asynchronous when you don't.

Zulip is self-hostable, with some caveats. As the plans and pricing detail, anything beyond 10 users starts costing some cash. It adds up quickly. Frankly I don't appreciate how much is locked behind a paywall, even for a self-hosted application. Things like SAML integration shouldn't be paywalled, in my opinion. While there is great functionality to be found, it comes at a rather steep price for organizations of any size. Although to their credit, they do offer a community plan with many of those higher-tier features available for qualifying organizations.

One feature you won't find anywhere is end-to-end encryption. The developers seem rather against the idea. Multi-factor authentication must be enabled in the config files, not the admin frontend—hardly ideal.

Unless I'm missing it, there do not appear to be any serious content moderation tools in Zulip. The documentation barely mentions the concept of server moderation. I don't really know how this is possible, unless the conceit for Zulip is usage only within a pre-existing consent context. But that's not really a community-building platform then, is it? That's a tool for a community built elsewhere. And maybe that's what Zulip really is.

Lastly, on decentralization, it's mostly a miss. Even for self-hosted plans, anything above the free tier requires a zulip.com account for plan management. And federation? Forget about it. Although every Zulip server can technically host multiple Zulip instances, they don't interact with one another.

If anything, writing this overview has left me more confused about Zulip than when I began. I just don't know where it fits, or who can afford these prices for a growing community.

Mattermost

https://mattermost.com

Best for: Fortune 100s and governments

Take a look at the front page of the Mattermost website, and you'll get an idea of the kind of organization they expect to be using this thing. Odds are, your nascent online community ain't that. While the software may superficially look like some of these others, its intention is entirely other. Community building is not what's going on here. Rather, Mattermost's objective is highly-focused, integrated workflows that involve human communication alongside machine automation. Business operations are what...matter most.

Mattermost describes itself as "Open core," and the core is...rather tiny. Even when installing the self-hosted version, you'll soon need a rather expensive license for real work. Starting at $10/user is a clear indicator of the intended customer base. It ain't me, that's for sure.

Mattermost prides itself on a certain kind of security—specifically, the regulatory kind. Configurations for all manner of compliance regimes are provided in the documentation. Normal security is present as well, including MFA. Not so much end-to-end encryption, although mention is made of encrypting the PostgreSQL database. That's novel, although not a solution to the problem addressed by E2EE.

I honestly don't think Mattermost's developers are capable of imagining a positive argument for an audit-resistant application. This thing is designed for monitoring user activity six ways from Sunday.

Consequently, "safety" in the way we've defined it here is absent from Mattermost's conception of the universe. If you're logging on to a Mattermost server, about a thousand other trust mechanisms are in place to guarantee you won't act like a doofus on this app.

Hardly a point to mentioning decentralization here, beyond the possibility of self-hosting. Ultimately though, you only get what your license key allows, and since the server is only open core, Mattermost itself is quite the point of failure.

Discourse

https://discourse.org

Best for: anything but real-time chat, really.

I'm gonna be honest: I kind of love Discourse. I'm not sure I have a reason to deploy it, but I want to. Everything Joan Westenberg writes in this piece in praise of Discourse resonates with me. Community for the long-haul? Transparency in governance? Built-in systems for establishing human trust?

That's what's up.

But Discourse has one significant difference from everything else on this list: it is primarily a forum, not a real-time chat app. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, necessarily, but it sure is different. If your community expects instantaneous communication, Discourse may be a big adjustment. Or it might not be sufficient on its own for your needs.

But what does it do well? Forums! It's very easy to navigate categories and topics. The UI provides clear signals for when something happened. Oh, and search is simple.

Maybe the best way to think of Discourse is as an anti-Discord. It's everything Discord isn't: asynchronous, open source, and self-hostable.

Discourse is 100% open source. I'm running it right now in my homelab, with access to all the plugins and features I'd expect, costing me only the time it took to install.

I was additionally quite impressed with the moderation tools. Not only are they plenty of tools to track user activity, but the moderation decisions are public by default. This is a good thing! The community can hold its leaders accountable for upholding their end of the bargain: to act in good faith in support of the community.

One area in which it falters a bit is, of course, end-to-end encryption. Very few of these tools enable it, and when they do, it can be clunky. It's entirely possible that the right option for a community is one of these and Signal for sensitive, out-of-band communications.

If you start to look around, you'll notice Discourse fora everywhere. There's a good reason for that! The software is rock solid for what it is. And maybe your community needs its depth of features more than it needs instantaneous messaging.

Revolt Stoat??

Best for: Appreciating how much work it takes to make one of these work

Stoat, née Revolt, was meant to be an open source Discord alternative. Recently, they received a cease-and-desist regarding the name Revolt, and renamed to a...weasel.

Anyway this thing is so far from being ready for prime time, I only include it here to call out the project. I wish them the best and hope for good things, especially since you can self-host the server. But a lack of stability and features prevent this from being useful for anything beyond experimentation. Maybe someday.

The Tool is Not the Community

Choosing a platform on which to build a community is just the beginning. It's vitally important, yet insufficient to a community's success. Tools do not make a culture; the people engaging on it do. Most of my time building the culture of TTI has not been a technical endeavor. What we have—and I think it's pretty special—has little to do with Discord's featureset. It just happens to be where the people are. The options presented to you here allow you to seek a path that aligns with your objectives, principals, and needs at a purely mechanical level. The rest depends on the human element.

Score Breakdown

PlatformFunctionalityOpennessSecuritySafetyDecentralizationTotal
Discord4134113
Signal2452114
Matrix3431415
Rocket.Chat5343318
Zulip4222212
Mattermost4242113
Discourse3535319
Stoat??????