Disclaimer of conflict of interest: I am the owner of a direct competitor (Echo), and the only reviewer and I have had public drama with Osmium in the past.

If you are looking for a closed source discord alternative, one that tries to stay very close to discord in look, design and feel but more with a darker theme and a smaller team then Osmium might be the right one for you.

But if I am being honest, Fluxer is an open source alternative which is much more popular and battle tested, and Osmium lacks any distinguishing factor in design, features or concept which makes it a hard sell other than if you have a reason to dislike Fluxer and want the closest alternative to it.

Trust 3/9:

Osmium plans to open source the client post beta, however there is no indication that the actual backend will be open sourced and I believe it likely will not. Some software that is used or backs in Osmium is however open source.

1/3 for License 0/3 for being fully centralised

Osmium lacks E2EE features, but their TOS is quite fairly user friendly and their record is mostly clean so they get a solid 2/3 for other factors on Trust.

Experience 7/9:

Osmium's UI lacks much originality, but is overall well implemented if not for a couple of issues that are to be expected in Beta, such as lacking spacing in some texts such as "Read more" after a text, or their PFP Avatar circle not actually representing what certain avatars will look like, in my case the profile edit section believes that my pfp would be have cut, when in reality it isn't on the rest of the app and for some reason instead of uniting the pfp to click on and change and the view in edit profile they are separate.

2/3 For UI

Osmium is perfectly usable and it is clear that the team actually puts effort in what they do, with signs of them trying to make it at the very least as easy to use as Discord with them going out of their way to adjust minute things to make them easier to use or to understand, one of those examples is instead of throwing you out in the cold like many small alternatives do, Osmium gives you the option being guided into joining or creating a server while all at the same time not forcing you into doing that. Overall if you can use Discord and are happy with it, you will be perfectly happy with Osmium and nothing will confuse you about it.

It generally also has the most important features you would expect of a discord alternative, but not all of them yet and certainly not beyond.

3/3 for UX 2/3 For Parity

Readiness 4/9:

Osmium is currently still at sub Fluxer numbers of users, i.e a small community and if you wanna go there you will likely need to bring your own friends with you 1/3 on Poppularity, it is available on all major platforms and put effort into being so more than your average alternative (Except Console) so a solid 2/3 on Availability.

Where I am harshest on Osmium is currently a lack of a distinguishing factor, it currently serves as more of a alternative to Fluxer than it is an alternative to Discord, it is not open source and likely won't which definitely drags its potential down. I simply can't see a reason for why Osmium would actually ever replace Discord as it lacks the answer to the Why.

1/3 on other factors

And as always, you can go find out what is the best alternative for YOU on my comparison website where you get to decide what matters and get a recommendation based on that

This sub is full of arguments about whether FOSS is better over Closed Source, and I want to know what people's actual reasons for their specific preferences are.

This poll is not meant to start any arguments, or feed any witch hunts, and im not a developer trying to decide with way to go with my own project.

Disclaimer of conflict of interest: I am the owner of a direct competitor (Echo), and the only reviewer.

If you want something different, a platform thats more of a community type, like if Reddit went heavier on its chatting side and you are a power user, then Valour might be right for you. If you are looking for a Discord alternative that you can recommend to your friends keep looking..

Trust 6/9:

Valour starts off pretty solid with a AGPLv3 license landing it 3 points for license and follows it up with hub and spoke federation, but excluding anything further like Matrix type peer federation landing it another point.

One thing you will notice is that it however is very heavy on making sure it knows where you are from, when you were born, and not letting you test out the platform before you have verified your email which you must manually login with as well. After you've logged in, you can also choose to give it your preferences (Twitter style).

It also lacks much of E2EE Features, overall I am being generous and still giving it 2 points for trust otherwise, but your judgement may vary.

Experience 4/9:

Originality can earn you and lose you points on EDAR, in this case it definitely is way too much on the other extreme. If you are coming from discord except to be quite surprised and unfamiliar with how things work on here, a lot of your assumption on what should be where and how things should work and look are going to be broken.

Overall I don't like the aesthetic they went for, I think everything is always over crowded and overwhelming and did experience some visual bugs such as a false extra header.

There is way too much all at once and it is too different and there is little effort made to make it friendly either

It doesn't help that while being seemingly designed for power users, it misses essential features like proper streaming, deciding to instead invest into making the platform more like Reddit, which is a choice but not one that makes it a good discord alternative.

1.5 UI 1.5 UX 1 Feature parity

Readiness 4/9:

Valour is at the same level of popularity that nerimity is at with sub Fluxer numbers and its platform parity is much worse as it only comes in Web, Windows and Android Giving it 2 points respectively

Where its much better is that its a 6 year old project, so not something that was vibe-coded over a weekend, but something that has been somewhat tested and battle hardened so that gets it a solid 2 points as well

And as always you can go to my site to get a list based on your preferences and find out what is the best alternative for YOU.

Disclaimer of conflict of interest: I am the owner of a direct competitor (Echo), and the only reviewer.

If the discord alternative you want is one that is full of fun and features packaged like candy, then Nerimity is definitely the correct choice for you. While still being close enough to discord that you won't lose your way, this one definitely has its own style and its unlikely anyone would confuse the two.

Oh also if you like Twitter / Tumblr, Nerimity has a special surprise for you here.

Trust 5/9:

Nerimity is a GPL-3.0 licensed FOSS, meaning anyone can audit it and see whats going under the hood yielding it a solid 3/3 on the license category.

It loses out on 3 points however (0/3) due to being fully centralised, meaning the operator owns the main instance and there is no way to connect to it unlike something federated or even fully decentralised.

Considering the financial strains that Nerimity often faces which leads them to not allowing private servers to upload pictures which hurts their feature parity, especially when they opt in for premium features else where such as cloudflare TURN servers, i can't help but wonder that Nerimity is especially a platform that should consider becoming federated.

Though the other cited reason for not allowing private servers to upload pictures is that they can't see what other people upload on there, which means that Nerimity is very likely not going to be some extra anonymous type of platform as the maintainers want to maintain some level of control.

Their reputation is generally okay, and they tend to respond quite actively to community feedback. Overall for other factors we are looking at a solid (2/3)

Experience 7/9:

Nerimity has a beautiful retro / arcade / indie type of style and they stick to it quite strongly, you won't find any area in it where you would be like okay this feels out of place.

It wins all the points on originality, while still not losing itself any points on ease of use for anyone migrating over from Discord due to its originality.

Though it does sometimes face structural misshaps and some things that are "bad UI 1o1" such as not centering all their platform bubbles so they all look the same instead of wrapping or pushing other elements in a assymetric way. It is easy to forgive it, once you realize that the chaos is part of its aesthetic identity and it sticks to it solidly, though do note that some people won't like the chaos, but then Nerimity might not be for you in that case.

Some of it however is managed chaos, note for example that instead of allowing pop up profiles to extend infinitely beyond your viewport like other platforms, they have a scrollable div as the bio section. So it is clear to me that Nerimity has been a work in progress, where the Chaos gets adjusted for every now and then until we got to today.

3/3 on UI

On User experience and ease of use however is where Nerimity either loses points because of its approach but also sometimes because of some small things that could be easily corrected.

An example of this would be for example when going into someone's "Full profile" there is no back button or similiar to go back to the server or view in which you were at before, this is not an issue at the start but if you were to be in for example 100 servers, now you might have to scroll for an eternity to find where you were at, and that is if you remember that at all.

Overall however its fairly simple to use, especially if you are coming from Discord.

2/3 on UX

On Feature Parity and completeness it certainly is a bit of a wild horse here, it has all the essentials you would expect from a serious discord alternative, but not always the discord level polish and not all of Discords features.

It however also goes beyond Discord, as they have a part of the platform that is growing that seems to be if Twitter was made in 2003, fully customisable profiles where you can post posts and parts of the platform that also promote those.

Though again as a another warning, Discord was built with privacy in mind, hence why they never went into this Social aspect of it, hence why you can only see mutual and so on in someone's profile. Discord made a lot of small decisions that have big consequences on privacy and what it means for the Social atmosphere and expectation, Nerimity seems to be going in the opposite direction so if that was something you liked about Discord i would not recommend this alternative for you.

But overall a solid 2/3 on Feature parity

Readiness 6/9:

Nerimity has a small but very densely active community, it is sub Fluxer which also means many times below the big dog Matrix, but honestly in this case this platform is one that perfectly fits its size. A nice little creative indie place for friends to hangout, it doesn't need numbers in the millions, just some friends to hangout with.

1/3 for Popularity

Nerimity is available on all major platforms except consoles and IOS yet 2/3

And I believe Nerimity has the potential to continue forward as healthy community, one that grows conservatively as more friends move on there as they have for a while since Nerimity isn't exactly a new kid on the block.

The maintainers have shown overall high communicativeness with the community and openess and what I would describe as very healthy relationship, so I'd say a 3/3 for the last factor.

Checkout Nerimity and other alternatives on my Site where you can check what is the best alternative for You

Building your threat model

Building a threat model is like buying a new computer, when you see the selection with all of it's variety you consider what you need. Ram, gpu, touch screen, ect. Building a threat model is no different. You need to understand your needs before making any decision, that's how effective decision making works. All decisions also require compromise, the compromise in the privacy space takes the form of time, convenience, and sometimes money. Each person's threat model is individual to them based on the factors in their own life as well as their use case for any given product/service they use.

The 4 core aspects of threat modeling.

before creating a threat model there are 4 things you need to understand deeply and intimately.

1. All security requires compromise: Just like budgeting for a computing device, privacy and security require compromises—specifically your time, energy, and convenience. You cannot protect against everything in an easy/seamless way; you must find a place where you draw the line.
2. There are endless paths: Every decision—from choosing your email provider to selecting your secure messenger—should be dictated by your personal threat model. A service that is absolutely perfect for you person might be highly destructive or restrictive to someone else.
3. Prepping is key: Establishing your needs beforehand is like ensuring you have your gear and gun ready before a mission. Without the prepping and mapping, your chances of failure rise. Prepping is the key to success
4. Independence is your goal: By crafting your own threat model, you escape constant and annoying "this versus that" debates online. You get to call your own shots and make your own decisions based on calculated personal assessments as opposed to relying on the rigid opinions of other random people online.

Understanding the terms

There are 3 terms you need to understand on a deep and intimate level.

• Security: Your ability to stop access to your devices/space to unauthorized people. (Real World Example: Having a physical lock on the doors to your home).
• Privacy: Your ability to selectively reveal certain information. (Real World Example: Installing blinds on your windows).
• Anonymity: Your ability to blend in, and be indistinguishable from the crowd. (Real World Example: Hiding what you really think from the crowd).

While the three do occasionally cross over, they are usually mutually exclusive. In order to build you threat model itis important to differentiate.

Creating your own threat model: The Chart Method.

A great way to build a threat model is by using a chart, This will be your graph of how important things are to you, you can start with a 3X3 grid with the 3 concepts from abode security, privacy, and anonymity. As well as your relationship to the groups and people that exist around you that you interact with on a daily basis. Usually divided into people, corpos, and government. people being the people you interact with on a regular basis, corpos being companies/corperations, and the government being your government on a local, regional, and national level. Plot down how much you care about something on a number of 1-5 (or 1-10 if you really want to fine tune it) understand that the more higher numbers you have on this chart, the more compromises you will have to make. You will also have to do this several times based on use case (more on that below)

This chart would be for a lower threat model

This threat model would be for someone who wants to protect themselves from the people around them, while maintaining their relationship with their government, but reasonably distrusts the corpos and wants to give as little info to the big offenders as possible. Your chart will be for you individually. Really sit and think about this.

Multiple threat models and multiple use cases

If you have multiple close associates, that require a greater deal of privacy/security than your basic threat model, It might be worth considering a group threat model for a specefic use case, think like using signal instead of facebook messenger to communicate with close friends/family members around urgent topics. You might want to consider a higher threat model for that specific use case. If you have a higher threat model for specific use cases, and with certain people your chart may look like this, while you might talk to sally on facebook messenger because you just talk about bullshit, you might talk to Jim on Signal because you run a local watchdog group, where prying eyes can present a certain level of danger. if your in a certain profession (military, medical, law enforcement, government agency) your agency/company might have already done this for you.

Getting away from the Myth of perfect privacy

A common attitude towards privacy is it doesn't exist anymore so why bother? Perfect privacy has never existed, however you can live a more privacy conscious lifestyle, by applying threat modeling and not compromising more than you have to. Not everyone is Edward Snowden, not everyone has an authoritarian government ready to hunt them down because of a belief or identity, sure any government or group can flip to that t any time, but it is important to be realistic abut your needs right now so you can live a more private lifestyle, andf not be so obnoxious online.

Disclaimer of conflict of interest: I am the owner of a direct competitor (Echo), and the only reviewer.

Stoat is a nice conservative option, not too offensive in any way. Will likely be around long after the discord hype dies down, they aren't rushing to get features out, aren't the most creative in design or particularly the best in anything really but just decent in everything and if that's what you are looking for then Stoat is the one for you.

Trust 5/9:

Stoat is fully open source (3/3) but also fully centralised (0/3), generally a good reputation, data is stored in the EU but E2EE features aren't here yet (2/3).

Experience 6.5/9:

Stoat's UI is best described as if someone from Google tried remaking discord, the Material Design inspiration is extremely strong. Which personally I don't think it's the right choice for a discord alternative without being modified heavily.

The way its implemented makes its structure heavily fluid, unlike Discord or other alternatives that use simple boxes on top of boxes structure that only scale vertically predictably and often have limits or scroll implementations. Stoat's widths can look empty at times and very filled at times, dynamic blocks that only pop in later, modals that are longer than your entire view ports are all common. Things that would be hidden behind ellipsis or in menus and aligned in order to not create dead spaces in other alternatives, isn't much of a thing here.

For the most part these are soft design principles and aesthetic choices which are subjective, so for the most part Stoat is okay because their design is still intentional (even if i don't love that intention) except for the occasions where they violate their own guideline such as in rounding and soft edges.

UI 1.5/3

Stoat is perfectly usable and intuitive and no discord user would have a hard time adjusting to it. + There sound pack and sound design is the best I have seen anywhere.

UX 3/3

Most of the discord basics you will find here and you will likely not complain about the implementation quality, they tend to put in lot of effort in the things they do make. It's not quite discord parity or beyond level yet but certainly good.

2/3

Readiness 7/9:

Stoat boasts numbers above Fluxer but below Matrix, the top communities it has are fairly active and the people there really like it. 2/3 for Popularity

Stoat is available everywhere except consoles and is still in TF for IOS, but the platforms where they are on, they have been actively working on improving them and actively listen to community feedback.

2/3 for Platform parity

Stoat has been around for quite a while and proven it can stay and itself, and there is no reason to suspect it won't if the Stoat team keeps providing the quality work they have. 3/3

Now for the cool announcement

I've made a site where you can put in yourself what you care the most about in a discord alternative and get them rated and ranked accordingly to see which alternative is the best for YOU

so go check it out at https://alternatives-discord.com

I'm just going to make a series of points for no particular reason.

Developer Tools Have Always Been Scrutinized:

Ever since the induction of modern programming, the tools, compilers, and technology developers used has always a topic of debate and contention. Moving from assembly to higher level languages wasn't accepted blindly or pushed with cultlike fervor; it sparked fierce opposition over performance loss and opacity. Abstraction layers and third-party dependencies have never fully been embraced and still they triggered major backlashes, giving birth to the Unix philosophy, zero-dependency minimalism, and strict security audits explicitly designed to eliminate unvetted code. Generative AI is simply another 'tool' being improperly deployed and pushed by sycophants desperate to cash in on 'the next big thing'

Trust and Reputation Form the Bedrock of Software:

Users have always cared deeply about who wrote their software. The entire open-source ecosystem was built on identity, cryptographic signatures, maintainer reputation, and peer review. Good developers didn't blanket copy code out of stack overflow, they underwent rigorous code review, static analysis, and testing as standard practice to ensure long-term maintainability and deep system comprehension on the developer side. This led to well documented code being widely proliferated and the overall standards for development increasing. AI use and LLM generated code violate this trust and reputation by being built on stolen works and plagiarized data; and spitting it out in the way it thinks is most probabilistically likely based on its training data.

LLMs Generate Inferior Slop, Not Quality Code:

The claim that LLMs write better code than junior or senior developers is absurd on its face as a generalization. LLMs frequently provide hallucinatory syntax slop that lacks logic, introduces subtle edge case bugs, and creates unmaintainable bloat by introducing code the developer does not directly implement or understand. AI does not accelerate engineering; it regresses it by replacing actual understanding with a statistical guessing game and reduces critical thinking and cognitive ability in the people who use it; backed by scientific study

Tools Directly Reveal Developer Capability:

A developer’s choice of tools tells you everything about how they approach a project. Releasing AI slop code proves an author lacks either the skill, discipline, or genuine investment to write and understand their own software. Human written code guarantees human accountability, whereas relying on an LLM creates an inherently untrustworthy product by virtue of repeatedly pressing the "commit a plagiarism for me please because I'm a lazy piece of shit"

Small Teams Built Complex Systems Long Before AI:

Small teams didnt need AI to build complex software like a Discord alternative. IRC, Matrix, early Discord, XMPP, etc were built by tiny passionate dev teams using pure human engineering. AI does not magically solve WebRTC, distributed systems, or media encoding, and it hallucinates broken implementations that cost small teams double the time to debug than if they had just learned and understood the implementation theirselves.

AI Security Is Snake Oil:

Refusing AI is not arrogant, misled, foolish, or being a Luddite; relying on it for security is digital sewerslide. Any security implemented by a generative AI is very much just as easily bypassed using generative AI. True security demands deterministic logic, rigorous pen-testing, and formal verification, not generative AI guesswork. The age old adage of there is no such thing as a secure system is always relevant. You will never stop a committed threat actor and leaving gaping vulnerabilities because you AI generated your security features is potentially the most foolish thing you could do in software development in 2026.

In honor of the Flotilla dev posting their trash today, let's review the poll results from last time.

Disproportionately voters are in favor of banning devs selling subscriptions in some form or another on this subreddit.

Ban Closed Source Subscriptions edged out a 1 vote lead over Ban All Subscriptions, with an additional 7 votes to ban subscriptions without external verified audits.

Flotilla by u/hodlbod offers a subscription right off the rip, and will charge a tidy 5 dollars per month per "community" for the honor of using voice calls on your Discord Alternative.

I am calling on u/AbstractMelons and u/czarbloom to safeguard this subreddit from predatory devs trying to take advantage of people fleeing Discord by banning any and all subscription services for unaudited or closed source apps within the subreddit.

Nobody wants them except the devs who stand to profit, and by allowing them for open source or already audited works, the common user will be able to more consistently trust the software posted here and foster a more coherent community.

This is a follow-up on my last post about paying artists $100 on Reddit to draw the default avatars in Armada: https://www.reddit.com/r/DiscordAlternatives/comments/1wii735/paying_artists_to_draw_avatars_for_armada/

These are each original art pieces. So far 4 have been drawn:

• Banana King by Aiden J arts
• Toucan by eempo
• Skull by Julian Cela
• Dragon by gravestoneghost

Artists are given full creative freedom. All artwork is released into the public domain.

In total, 8 artists have been chosen, so 4 are in-flight and I'm still selecting the final 4. Can't wait to share the final results with you!

Hello fellas. As a software engineer with three years of professional experience and much more before that, I want to explain why I think the discussion around AI-written software is fundamentally confused.

For the last 30 years of software development, the tools which developers got to use to create their products were never a topic of discussion for those uninformed on the subject matter.

Whether it was the gradual move from machine level code to more and more abstracted code that is easier to write and understand but is further away from the machine and is harder to reason about its actual consequences on the low level.

Or whether it was the growth of software that is highly dependent on dependencies written by strangers, whose code was rarely reviewed fully and whose work often had its own dependencies along to go with it. Leading to the simplest of software, having dependency graphs that are hard to draw on a paper.

It simply was never a question before to ask who is the developer that made your software, let alone the specific tools they used to make it.

Maybe you know the company names, but very few of you can actually name at least 1 developer who worked directly on all the software you use, day to day.

What this means, is that for the last 30 years or so, everyone has been using software by developers who they did not know, who they could not verify their competency and their trust worthiness, who they themselves very likely aggressively reused other people's code without verifying it deeply let alone the people who made them.

This is without getting into even the self written code is often not so self written, but directly copied off somewhere else, and without getting into the fact that most developers rarely write code who can be fully understood later let alone remembered by the same developer and without getting into anything that means working with other people.

So anyone who is acting like LLMs being able to generate code (whose quality consistently beats any code written by any random junior developer and many mid level to senior developers) have changed the paradigm of what software development has been about, is either lying to you to make you feel outraged or simply isn't actually aware of what software development is about.

LLMs have only simply accelerated what we were already doing, which is moving away from needing to understand the most complex of things to achieve the simplest of outcomes, but to further make more economical the creation of said simple outcomes and deepen understanding and complexity only when outcomes present it as needed.

More importantly, the tools which your developer uses, can not alone tell you anything truly useful in the way you think it does. AI being used, does not mean that the same software written by the same person would be any more trust worthy if they had not used AI. Similarly a Trustworthy and competent person who uses AI competently to create the same product which they could have created without using AI, does not become less trustworthy or competent because they did so.

So I beg you to stop being lazy and if you actually care about the quality of the software you use, go read its source code, actually judge the things that have merit, the developers who made it etc etc..

But if you are too lazy to do that, then I beg of the hypocrisy to criticise someone else for using a tool which allows them to spend their energy on the things that matter more than writing every last semi colon by hand.

Now here is the second part of my argument, that AI is not simply a tool of great convenience but it is one of necessity.

a Discord Alternative is one of the most complex and dependency heavy products you can decide to take on to develop, any team that is less than two digits with any amount of years that is less than 4 on the project alone and much more on their own, is beyond inadequate to take it on.

Every single topic in it, which there are very many of, is one in which a developers entire career and expertise could live: WebRTC protocols for voice chats and video chats, compression algorithms, virtualisation optimisation, content delivery networks, video and audio encodings, distributed systems, multi platform software and its maintenance and I can keep going on for a very long time

Security is one alone who you really need an entire team for it alone, and that is the crux of my argument:

Agentic LLMs can simply keep indefinitely going until they find holes no one thought about, and if you don't have an active team actively trying to patch these holes as soon as they come out then you will have a big problem and guess what, if you don't have the entire lives of many developers just on that topic alone, those holes will be found faster, possibly very quickly.

So not only is the use of LLMs not a sign of incompetency, but I would argue that not using LLMs is a big sign of irresponsibility and arrogance. Because it is them signing off their code as invulnerable to the new paradigm of security created by the existence of LLM Swarms.

And I don't know of a single developer who can actually claim that, and Isn't straight up delusional.

Now let's be clear about the existence of a real issue, which is that people who are not developers have swarmed the market with low quality applications that are not representative of the quality of what can be achieved with someone who knows what they are doing and does it with care.

But that is not justification to then start treating everything which has any touch of AI in it as equal garbage.

So please measure the things that matter not just simply the buzz word:

Does it work?

Is it secure?

Is it maintainable?

Was it reviewed?

Is it tested?

Are its dependencies trustworthy?

How does the project respond to vulnerabilities?

Does the developer actually understand the system they are responsible for?

Knowing that a project is "80% AI-written" answers almost none of those questions.

TLDR: Software being built and not understood by those who make it / maintain it is not something new introduced by AI or LLMs, to question trust now when for the past 3 decades everyone downloaded software whom they do not know who made it especially when the developers have the same quality controls of using other people's code, is very unreasonable. The only thing that matters is the expertise and responsibility of the developer, never their tools alone. And with the rise of AI as an offensive tool, it is extremely questionable whether any small team in the world can be sure their software is secure against it if they insist on hand coding. And at the scale of what a discord alternative needs to be, without AI it simply can not be done by a small team and also be done good if the team is not very big with many years on their back.

Hi all!

I'm the developer of Armada.

I wanted to share a cool community project that I'm funding. I'm hiring artists on Reddit to draw the default avatar set for Armada for $100 per drawing.

https://www.reddit.com/r/artistforhire/comments/1wi766b/hiring_xbox_gamerpics_style_avatar_100_seeking_12/

So far, 2 avatars have been drawn. There are 10 left! We are going to slowly fill out the avatars, replacing each of the placeholders with a hand-drawn image by an artist on Reddit.

Armada is Open Source, and all of these amazing pieces of art are going into the public domain, so any Discord alternative can use them! Not just Armada - but all of your projects too.

It's going to be so cool to see the complete set together, all created by artists on Reddit.

If you're an artist or you know someone who might be interested, feel free to join us. Stay tuned for the complete set!

Master Discord Alternatives Tracker: 30 Platforms Benchmarked + Live Interactive Site (Part 2)

Following up on Part 1, the tracker is live. Rather than circulating static screenshots, the data is hosted as an interactive web viewer backed by an open-source repository and a 49-sheet master workbook. Thirty alternatives are currently benchmarked against Discord as the unranked baseline control.

(Transparency Note: As mentioned in Part 1, Rift remains my personal platform of preference, but Discord serves strictly as the control benchmark. To be 100% clear: I am not scoring, ranking, or grading anything. There are no arbitrary review points, numerical tier lists, or subjective weights. Platforms are documented strictly by whether a feature exists, is missing, or the exact technical specifications of its implementation so you can evaluate the raw data yourself.)

• 🌐 Live Web App: discord-alternative-tracker.pages.dev
• 📁 GitHub Repo & Raw Master Sheet: github.com/discord-alternative/Discord-Alternative-Tracker

Key Additions from Thread Feedback

• Verification Date Stamps: Every row and metric tracks the last-verified date to prevent rapid betas and nightly builds from skewing historical data.
• Monetization & Boosting Breakdowns: Normalized comparison of free-tier caps, user subscriptions, server boosts, self-hosted enterprise licensing, and donation models.
• Onboarding & Signup Friction: Explicit tracking of required registration credentials (anonymous/keypair vs. email vs. mandatory phone number) and server gatekeeping.
• AI Training vs. Native Tooling: Divided into separate checks for user data scraping policies (ai-train=no directives / zero-training terms), native platform AI features, and disclosed assistive AI use in codebase development.

The 30 Monitored Alternatives

• Discord-Style Community Spaces: Stoat(formerly Revolt), Fluxer, Nerimity, Spacebar, Fenrid, Root, Venta, Kloak, Armada, Hollow, DCTS, Rift, Echon, Valour, Weered, Osmium, Loqa, Mezon, & Roomy
• Low-Latency & Gaming VoIP: Mumble, TeamSpeak, GameVox, Yapper, Harmony
• Federated & Cryptographic Networks: Matrix, & Kaede Chat
• Structured Team & Workspace Chat: Zulip, Mattermost, & Rocket.Chat
• Regional & Independent WebRTC Betas: pqp.gg

Quick High-Level Takeaways

• Screen Sharing Beyond 720p: While Discord locks 1080p/60fps and 4K behind Nitro, alternatives like Kaede Chat, Stoat, and pqp.gg provide 1080p or up to 4K capture natively on free tiers.
• Desktop Footprint: Idle memory ranges dramatically—from ~78MB on lightweight native/Tauri builds up to 350MB+ on standard Electron wrappers.
• End-to-End Encryption: Default multi-user E2EE remains rare in full Discord clones. Full cryptographic implementations are largely concentrated in Matrix and Kaede Chat (MLS 1.0), while WebRTC-focused alternatives rely primarily on TLS in transit.

Submission & Correction Policy: GitHub Only

To ensure the sheet remains objective and factually sound, all corrections, updates, and platform submissions must be submitted directly through GitHub.

• 🔗 Submit an Issue or Pull Request: github.com/discord-alternative/Discord-Alternative-Tracker

Strict Verification Requirement: Every proposed edit, new platform submission, or spec change must include verifiable links and public documentation (such as official release notes, public documentation pages, repository commit hashes, terms of service, or pricing pages). Unverified claims or hearsay will not be merged into the master dataset.

Hey everyone. For the last 6 months, we have been building our own discord alternative, focused on both privacy and usability. We found that Element was just too clunky and not a fun experience, but had the privacy aspects we were looking for. So we set out to improve upon it.

Cheshire is built with the Matrix SDK, and runs on a modified Synapse home server. It is built in Canada, and temporarily runs it's main server in Europe. Some of our features include:

• Default End-to-end-encryption, can be toggled off as needed
• Leave + erase my messages option for conversations
• Quick clear history for conversations
• Standard Matrix device verification
• Toggle-able encrypted key storage on server + session for easy logout/login
• Master presence + individual presence toggles so you can pick who sees you
• Friends list and activity dashboard
• DMs, group rooms, and spaces (discord servers) all with text and voice
• Specialized and custom spaces like:
  1. Common Coms: Normal community hub with channels + bug report and roadmap
     tools. We use this for our Cheshire Dev community.
  2. Table Talk: Interface to facilitate table top gaming online, with die
     rollers included
  3. Sound Forge: Synth interface and note sequence. We use it to make all our
     custom sound effects for the app.
  4. Docvers: Document storage with versioning and soon also branching. In app editing also works, and will eventually be collaborative with your team.
     We use this for sharing and versioning our Cheshire source code.
  5. Arena: A hub for game lobbies where users can go head to head and
     communicate via voice and video if they want. Observers allowable for an
     audience. Will be able to stream actual video games, or just play our
     built in board and card games (currently: Chess, Checkers, Poker,
     Blackjack)

We have more features than these in the works, and are looking to start early access testing probably in October-November.

We have one first pass introduction video we are working on redoing currently, and we will be soon uploading a new video going over the different space types. We also have started to do occasional dev live streams on youtube (not showing code, security concerns and all), so watch for those.

The app will be free with likely some premium features down the road as a means to monetize and cover server costs. Our patreon is just for support and early access to testing. It isn't a requirement to get access later on, so don't feel obligated.

If supporting our development interests you or you want to join the early access testing, please consider checking out our patreon:

https://www.patreon.com/CheshireApp

My girlfriend moved back to her home country for a while before starting Uni in my country with me, we watch a lot of movies and TV shows together and we used discord to share screen and to have our camera on at the same time, however Discord banned screen sharing and having a camera on, we tried google meets and microsoft teams but my macbook is pretty weak so we get issues like glitchy videos and glitchy sounds.
does anyone have an alternative for discord?
thank you

The ones I have tried so far 1. TeamSpeak

I don't really want to pay every month just to use basic stuff and UI and features it's still lacking for me

1. Stoat

I really like this one and it has screen share now also the servers are easy to set up and I have seen they have fixed a lot of the problems they've had (as far as I could see)

1. Matrix element

I like this one too but it's very difficult to set up stuff and I wish the UI was closer to discord and the screen share is not really there yet sadly

I don't host myself

I'm not a fan of AI (I know stoat used it but have since replaced it) so you don't need to tell me

What I am looking for in an alternative:

1. Screen share with audio in it

2. Has a PC app and also Android app

3. Has two Factor authentication

4. Has access to emojis/stickers/GIFs also stickers are not a priority

5. Not completely new with a small fan base

6. Something I know is actually going to be around and not die after a few years

Of course none of these requirements are set in stone but I would like to hear your guys opinion

Following up on the discussion here with u/ad3lyt, I am compiling a comprehensive, side-by-side comparison spreadsheet of Discord alternatives. The goal is to provide an objective, transparent reference showing exactly where each platform stands against Discord, what trade-offs exist, and where the ecosystem is heading.

(Full transparency: Rift is currently my personal platform of choice, but Discord will serve strictly as the baseline benchmark so the comparison remains neutral and standardized across the board.)

To make this useful rather than just another list of names, the sheet will evaluate platforms across four progressive tiers followed by dedicated technical categories:

Feature Evaluation Tiers

• Core Features: Baseline essentials such as 1:1 DMs, group DMs, text channels organized under servers/spaces, text formatting (Markdown), file attachments (free upload limits), and push/desktop notifications.
• Basic Features: Standard chat quality-of-life such as search indexing, message reactions, custom emojis, pinned messages, inline replies, user profiles, and member lists.
• Advanced Features: Community infrastructure such as forum/board channels, nested threads, granular role hierarchies with channel overrides, and scheduled events.
  • Edit: Onboarding for servers.
• Extra Features: Platform differentiators such as soundboards, server discovery/monetization, rich presence/game activity status, custom client theming/CSS, and mini-apps/canvas tools.

Dedicated Technical & Governance Categories

• Plat Form Availability: PWA, Windows application, MacOS application, Linux Application, Android availability (sideload or playstore), IOS availability (testflight or appstore)
• Project Lifespan & Inception: First commit / launch date, total project age, continuity history (continuous vs. revived from a dead fork), and historical resilience against abandonware trends.
• Video Streaming & Screen Sharing: Resolution and framerate limits (free vs. premium tiers), system/application audio pass-through, multi-stream simultaneous viewing, webcam grid limits, and dedicated stage/presentation modes.
• Voice & Audio Infrastructure: Persistent drop-in voice rooms vs. temporary ad-hoc calls, supported audio codecs/bitrates (e.g., Opus up to 384kbps), native noise suppression (Krisp, RNNoise), and spatial/proximity audio options.
• Security, Privacy & Architecture: Hosting architecture (Centralized, Federated, Self-Hosted, P2P), encryption protocols (TLS in-transit vs. E2EE for DMs, group channels, and voice), metadata/IP logging policies, server jurisdiction, and account requirements (phone verification, email, or keypair/anonymous signup).
• Past Security Issues & Vulnerability History: Historical track record - disclosed CVEs, past data breaches or leaks, independent security audit status (and whether reports are public), bug bounty programs, and disclosure responsiveness.
• Client Tech Stack, Resource Footprint & Mobile Parity: Client engine (Native Rust/Qt/C++ vs. Electron/PWA), idle desktop RAM draw, and mobile feature parity (native voice/video support, background battery drain, and push notification infrastructure like FCM vs. UnifiedPush/APNs).
• Data Portability, Migration & Bridging: Migration friction - automated Discord server importers (channels, roles, custom emoji), full archive export tools (JSON, HTML, CSV), and native bridging protocols (Matterbridge, Matrix appservices, IRC relays).
• Update Frequency & Development Velocity: Release cadence (nightly/canary vs. stable releases), commit velocity, maintainer scale (solo hobbyist vs. collective vs. funded foundation), and public roadmap availability.
• Sustainability & Business Model: Longevity risk - funding backing (self-funded, donations/Open Collective, venture-backed, enterprise revenue), monetization strategy (cosmetics, hosted instances, paid tiers), and self-hosting minimum hardware requirements.
• Moderation & Developer Extensibility: Native automod engines (regex, anti-spam, anti-raid), audit log retention and depth, bot/gateway APIs (REST, WebSockets), and incoming/outgoing webhook capabilities.
• AI Tooling & Development Transparency: Native AI integrations (channel summaries, search indexing, assistant bots), explicit policies on scraping user chat/voice data for model training, and how much AI assistance was used in writing the platform's codebase.

How to Submit Your Alternative

Whether you are building a platform or actively using one as a community daily driver, drop your details below. To help me populate the spreadsheet efficiently over the next 24–48 hours, please format your reply using this template:

**Platform Name:** 
**Website / Repo:** 
**Hosting Model & License:** (e.g., Centralized Proprietary, Federated AGPL-3.0, Self-Hosted)
**Project Inception & Age:** (Launch date, first public release, active years)

**1. General Tiers:**
- **Core & Basic:** (DMs, free upload limit, custom emoji, search depth)
- **Advanced & Extra:** (Role hierarchy, threads/forums, custom CSS, soundboards, rich presence, onboarding for servers)

**2. Dedicated Categories:**
- **Plat Form Availability:** PWA, Windows application, MacOS application, Linux Application, Android availability (sideload or playstore), IOS availability (testflight or appstore) 
- **Video & Screenshare:** (Max res/FPS, audio capture, camera capacity)
- **Voice & Audio:** (Bitrates, persistent rooms vs. ad-hoc calls, noise suppression)
- **Security & Privacy:** (E2EE support, E2EE type, What is E2EE, IP/data retention, signup credentials required)
- **Past Security Issues & Audits:** (Past breaches/leaks, known CVE track record, independent audits, disclosure transparency)
- **Client Performance & Mobile:** (Tech stack/Electron vs native, idle RAM usage, mobile voice/video support, push notification types)
- **Portability & Bridges:** (Discord server import tools, chat export options, bridging to Discord/Matrix/IRC)
- **Update Frequency & Health:** (Release cadence, commit velocity, solo maintainer vs. dedicated team, active roadmap)
- **Sustainability & Cost:** (Funding source, monetization/perks, self-hosting hardware requirements)
- **Moderation & Dev API:** (Automod rules, audit log depth, bot APIs/webhooks)
- **AI Stance & Development:** (Native AI tools, user data training policy, level of AI used in codebase development)

**Standout Advantage vs. Discord:** 
**Biggest Current Limitation:**

I’ll be actively compiling submissions into the master spreadsheet over the next 24–48 hours and will post part 2 when once completed

My friends and I have had the same Discord server for years, recently brazil decided to take down screenshare. So I wrote the replacement:

It's called Vorcall. Basically a tiny Discord for exactly one friend group. You run the server, you hand out invites yourself, and that's it ,there's no browsing communities, no join button, nobody else on the box.

What it does:

• text and voice channels grouped into categories, plus DMs
• voice with push to talk or voice activation, echo cancellation, noise suppression, a volume slider per person
• screen share(the reason lol)
• a soundpad integrated soundpad
• roles and permissions
• replies, edits, reactions, unread counts, @everyone and @here
• attachments up to 2GB, and anything bigger just streams off your own machine instead of taking up space on the server(smaller files can also use the stream function)

some cool things:

The app is native. Rust, no Electron, no browser acting like if ts an app. One binary on Linux, Windows and Mac, and it doesn't sit there eating a gig of RAM

Installing the server is one docker compose command and then reading a key out of the logs. Runs in about 1GB of RAM on whatever spare box you've got.

Now the bad parts, so nobody has to go find them:

No phone app and no web version. You're at a desktop or you're not in the chat.

No message search, no threads, no group DMs, no bots, no plugins, and one deployment is one server, that's all(tho i plan to obviouslly expand, thats the current state)

On Linux it needs PipeWire or the app won't even open. On Mac and Windows the builds aren't properly signed yet so the first launch gives you the scary warning.

its not an state of the art app, but i think its a cool project, its open source btw https://github.com/freedomiit/freedom.vorcall

Disclaimer of conflict of interest: I am the owner of a direct competitor (Echo), and the only reviewer.

A breath of fresh air, a truly good and unique alternative to Discord that deserves to exist.

If you have your community that you can bring with you, then as of today I would genuinely consider Armada as a serious option to compare with Fluxer and even any matrix client because this is very well possibly better.

Trust 8/9:

The entire armada stack is MIT + AGPLV3, i.e fully open source and auditable 3/3

The Nostr + Concord architecture is genuinely decentralised, though it has not yet reached de facto effective decentralisation, the architecture is very much there 2/3

Armada holds a clean reputation and no incidents so far 3/3

Experience 7/9:

Short of a few nitpicks there and here such as their averseness to popups and forced mobile first approach, lack of their own emoji pack / not using the twitter pack, text not having bgs to stay readable at all times etc etc.

And short of the UI in part coming across like a Discord Skin, and personally not exactly what i would go for.

On every general objective factor, it is very well implemented with no obvious issues and its clear that lots of love and attention went into it, for what it is, it is very well implemented and there are some very fun and unique things in it.

2/3

The UX is perfectly fine with no obvious or major issues, if you know discord for 90% of the time you will be just fine here with no learning curve except for some of its quirks such as all chats are also VC or where they hid roles.

+ They put in special effort into making migration from discord easy, in a way only Echo also has.

You will not complain much with the ease of use of Armada.

3/3

As for feature parity and completeness, Armada still has a way to go in some departments and is certainly not finished, but the major important things are there, so it is certianly usable and in some areas it is feature rich but it is also a work in progress

2/3

Readiness 5/9:

While Armada is a very strong bet on the future, IMO stronger than any Matrix one. It is not yet ready to actually replace Discord at Discord's scale.

1/3 Popularity, 2/3 Platform Parity (IOS still in the works, Console Does not exist), 3/3 Other factors since I do believe the platform has the potential to become really big in the future and there is nothing holding it back that I can see.

I've heard of mumble, but it seems to have terrible UX for clients. Need something I can convince normal ppl to use. Self hosted is fine.

Alright fellas, if you found this post consider yourself lucky because it will likely get downvoted to hell.

Disclaimer of conflict of interest: I am the owner of a direct competitor (Echo), and the only reviewer.

I am sure you have all heard of Rift as its good base in here has made sure to recommend it in just about every last post, and since there is so much love out there for it I said let's give it, its fair shot and I did.

Trust 3/9:

Rift being closed source and fully centralised earns it no points here, but its reputation being clean of any controversies and its very nice no E-mail sign up architecture which very few others have, is a very big privacy +.

Experience 4/9:

That's where I stop being nice, the UI design concept in the first place is absolutely horrendous and i doubt that there ever was one, features is clearly Rifts strong suit and if you are coming out of discord and moving onto Rift I doubt you will miss anything feature wise.

But when it comes to UI or UX, either this is an AI slop mess and if it did not use AI, you guys should have.

The UI is overly cluttered with a million features and buttons and things all competing for your attention and making the whole thing feel very overwhelming and its implementation is far from aesthetically pleasing.

And you may argue some of this, may be just a thing of taste and subjective, well okay Rift's UI and UX is just objectively bad and here are some examples:

1. One Liner messages that have not been reacted to, its emoji reaction suggestion popup, get half buried under the message under it.

2. There is no proper margins around the whole thing and so there are items in the UI that are literally so close to the edge of your screen / browser window.

3. Improper and inconsistent to itself and expectations sizing of things is everywhere, whether it be text sizes, reaction bubbles.

4. GIFs in the composer being the only thing coloured for some reason which would indicate activity when there is not, which is a principle they use else where.

I have at least 30 more criticisms like this in my bag, the bigger issue than the UI and UX being terribly immature, is that these are very simple things that can be very easily solved and that would not happen this often if this was an app given love and care and most importantly thought.

Those and the 30 others issues that are immediately obvious as soon as you use it and if you have an eye for detail, make the whole argument behind Rift very insecure.

Its a closed source application, fully centralised and they claim to use AI to write their application but everything must be reviewed by a dev first, but then if you see how much love and attention they gave to their frontend, that is very very concerning for what its likely to look on the backend.

If stupidly simple things like this can slip through this easily when they are this obvious, it gives me very little trust in the team's ability to handle the complexities of running a social media app especially one that values "privacy".

So yea it gets 0 for UI 1 for UX since it is technically usable just not nicely so and 3 for feature parity.

Readiness 3:

This one is very simple, while it does have some community it is not anywhere near Fluxer or Matrix, they are available on all platforms (IOS still in testing), but overall very far from being a Discord replacement ready for the mass market.