Open Source Discord Alternatives

Why Look Beyond Discord

Discord dominates community chat with over 200 million monthly active users, but its centralized model creates concerns that push privacy-conscious communities and organizations toward open source alternatives. Discord's terms of service grant the company broad rights to scan, analyze and moderate content on its servers. Community owners do not truly own their servers, as Discord can disable accounts, ban users, or shut down entire communities without appeal. All data lives on Discord's infrastructure with no option to self-host, export, or audit what is collected.

For gaming communities, open source projects, educational groups and organizations that need community spaces, open source alternatives offer ownership over the platform itself. Self-hosting means the community controls its data, sets its own moderation policies without external interference, and avoids sudden changes to features or pricing that have affected Discord users repeatedly.

The trade-off is smaller user bases and less polish. Discord has had years of investment in UX design, mobile apps and integrations. Open source alternatives are functional and improving rapidly, but they require more effort to set up and may lack some convenience features that Discord users take for granted.

Stoat (Formerly Revolt)

Stoat, rebranded from Revolt in 2025, is the closest open source equivalent to Discord in terms of interface design and feature set. The application closely mirrors Discord's layout with a server list on the left, channels within each server, text and voice channels, and a familiar message composer at the bottom. Users transitioning from Discord will find the experience immediately recognizable.

Core features include text channels with markdown formatting, file uploads, emoji reactions and message pinning. Voice channels support real-time voice chat, and screen sharing has been rolling out through 2026. The platform supports custom emoji, role-based permissions, server invites, and a ban system for community moderation. Theming support lets server owners and users customize the interface appearance.

Stoat can be self-hosted using the official Docker Compose stack, which bundles the API server, database (MongoDB), file server, and WebSocket gateway into a single deployment. The project is written primarily in Rust (server) and TypeScript (client), and its source code is available under the AGPL license. The Stoat team also operates a hosted instance at stoat.chat for communities that prefer not to self-host.

Development activity picked up significantly in 2025 and 2026 after a quieter period in 2023-2024. The project has an active contributor community and a public roadmap. Current limitations compared to Discord include fewer bot integrations, no video calling (voice only), and a smaller ecosystem of third-party tools. For communities that prioritize data ownership and are willing to accept these trade-offs, Stoat is the most Discord-like open source option available.

Element and the Matrix Protocol

Element provides a community chat experience built on the Matrix protocol's decentralized architecture. While its interface differs from Discord's server-and-channel model, Matrix spaces and rooms can be organized in a similar hierarchical structure. A space functions like a Discord server, containing multiple rooms (channels) for different topics, with roles and permissions controlling access.

The key advantage Element offers over Discord is end-to-end encryption and federation. Every message in an encrypted room can only be read by the intended participants, not even the server operator. Federation means communities on different Matrix homeservers can interact, join shared rooms, and communicate across organizational boundaries without anyone needing to create accounts on a central service.

Element supports text messaging, voice calls, video calls (through Element Call or Jitsi), file sharing, threads, reactions, and room directories. Bridges allow Element communities to connect with users on Discord, IRC, Telegram and other platforms, which is useful during migration periods when parts of a community still use the old platform.

Self-hosting Element requires deploying a Matrix homeserver. Synapse is the reference implementation (Python), while Conduit and Dendrite are lighter alternatives written in Rust and Go respectively. The Element web client can be hosted alongside the homeserver or users can connect using the hosted Element client. Mobile apps for iOS and Android connect to any Matrix homeserver.

Element is the strongest choice for communities that value privacy and interoperability. The trade-off is that its UX is more utilitarian than Discord's polished interface, and setting up a homeserver requires more technical knowledge than deploying Stoat or Mattermost.

Mumble: Low-Latency Voice Chat

Mumble is an open source voice communication application designed specifically for low-latency, high-quality voice chat. Unlike the other platforms in this article, Mumble is not a full team chat solution. It focuses entirely on voice, making it the best choice for gaming communities, raid groups, and any use case where crystal-clear voice communication with minimal delay is the primary requirement.

Mumble uses the Opus codec and its own audio processing pipeline optimized for low latency. In practice, Mumble's voice latency is noticeably lower than Discord's, which matters for competitive gaming, live music rehearsals, and real-time coordination scenarios. The server (Murmur) is lightweight and can handle hundreds of concurrent voice users on modest hardware.

Features include positional audio (3D sound based on in-game position), overlay support for games, channel hierarchies with granular permissions, text chat within channels, access control lists (ACLs) for fine-grained user management, and certificate-based authentication. The client is available for Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS and Android.

Mumble is entirely self-hosted. The Murmur server can run on almost any Linux machine with minimal resources, and configuration is straightforward through a config file or the built-in web admin interface. For communities that primarily need voice chat and want the lowest possible latency with no compromises, Mumble remains unmatched even after decades of development.

Other Notable Alternatives

Spacebar

Spacebar is an open source, self-hosted platform that implements Discord's API protocol, which means existing Discord bots and clients can connect to a Spacebar server with minimal modification. The project aims to provide full API compatibility, making migration from Discord easier than with any other alternative. Spacebar is still in active development and not yet recommended for production communities, but it represents an interesting approach to the compatibility problem.

Mattermost and Rocket.Chat

While Mattermost and Rocket.Chat are primarily designed for workplace team chat, they can also serve community use cases. Mattermost supports public channels, guest accounts, and plugin-based customization. Rocket.Chat offers federation, public channels, and omnichannel features. Both are more polished and stable than newer Discord alternatives, though their interfaces are designed for professional communication rather than community engagement.

Jitsi Meet

Jitsi Meet is an open source video conferencing platform that handles group video calls, screen sharing and chat. It does not replace Discord's persistent server model, but it fills the video and voice calling gap for communities using text-focused platforms like Zulip or basic Matrix setups. Jitsi Meet can be embedded into other applications, self-hosted, or used through the free public instance at meet.jit.si.

Choosing the Right Discord Alternative

For communities that want the most Discord-like experience with servers, channels, voice and roles, Stoat is the closest match. It looks like Discord, works like Discord, and can be self-hosted to give the community full data ownership.

For communities that prioritize privacy, encryption and the ability to communicate across organizational boundaries, Element and the Matrix protocol provide capabilities that Discord fundamentally cannot match due to its centralized architecture.

For gaming groups where voice quality and latency are the top priority, Mumble delivers the best audio performance of any option, open source or proprietary.

For communities that need a mature, stable platform with professional-grade features, Mattermost or Rocket.Chat offer the reliability and polish that comes from years of enterprise deployment, even if their interfaces are more business-oriented than community-focused.