The Best Discord Alternatives in 2026, Compared

Why People Are Leaving Discord in 2026

In a breach disclosed in October 2025, attackers compromised one of Discord's third-party customer support vendors and took data belonging to users who had contacted support, including roughly 70,000 government ID photos that people had uploaded for age-verification appeals. Those IDs existed to be stolen only because Discord collected them in the first place. Discord disputes the attackers' larger claims about the haul, but the government IDs are confirmed.

The collection is expanding. Under the UK's Online Safety Act, Discord began requiring UK users to verify their age with a face scan or an ID upload in 2025, with similar checks in Australia by the end of the year. In early 2026, Discord announced it would take age verification global, defaulting accounts to a teen experience until the user proves they are an adult, partly through an AI model that guesses your age from your activity. The backlash was loud enough that Discord delayed the worldwide rollout to the second half of 2026, the window we are in now.

Is Discord Encrypted? Your Text Isn't

Discord introduced end-to-end encryption for voice and video with its DAVE protocol in 2024 and made it the default for every call in 2026. Text messages got nothing. Your DMs, your server chat, and your full channel history sit on Discord's servers in a form the company can read, scan, and hand over in response to legal requests. Discord's VP of core technology confirmed there are no current plans to encrypt text. If you have ever asked whether Discord can read your messages, the answer is yes, all of them, going back years.

Automated Bans That Are Hard to Appeal

Search "banned from Discord for no reason" and you will find years of near-identical stories: an account disabled overnight, an appeal that returns an automated denial or nothing at all, and no human to reach. A Discord ban is platform-wide, so you lose every server and DM at once, even if the supposed problem was in one server you barely used. This is a widely voiced user grievance rather than a measured statistic, but the pattern of automated moderation with weak human appeals is exactly why an unbannable account appeals to so many people.

An IPO, and the Ads That Come With It

Discord spent years saying it would never run ads, then shipped sponsored Quests in 2024 and video ads on mobile in 2025, and partnered with ad measurement firms to track how those ads perform. In January 2026, Bloomberg reported Discord had confidentially filed for a US IPO. Going public raises the pressure to squeeze more revenue out of users, and the ad business already built points in one direction. Discord says it does not sell your personal information, but it does target ads using your account activity, and that is the model a public company will be asked to grow.

What to Look For in a Discord Alternative

Most "best Discord alternative" lists rank apps by feature checklists. The questions that actually protect you are different, and they are the columns in the chart below:

• Is group chat end-to-end encrypted? Not just calls, and not just one-to-one DMs. The messages your whole community sends.
• Can one company shut it down? If the app runs on a single company's servers, that company can ban you or simply switch it off, as Roblox did with Guilded in December 2025.
• Is it open source, and can you self-host? So you can audit it, fork it, and run it on hardware you control.
• Does signup demand personal information? A phone number, an email, or an ID is a record that can leak, as Discord's did.
• Are there ads? Ads mean your attention and your activity are the product.

Discord Alternatives Compared

Here is how the popular options stack up on the questions that matter. A green check is a clear yes, red is a no, and amber is a qualified or partial answer, explained in the notes below the table.

App	Encrypted group chat	No company kill switch	Open source	Self-hostable	Sign up without personal info	No ads
Armada	Yes. End-to-end by default	Yes. Decentralized on Nostr relays	Yes. AGPL-3.0	Yes. Run your own relay	Yes. Nostr key, no email	Yes. No ads, no paid tier
Discord	No. Calls only, not text	No. One company	No. Proprietary	No. Hosted only	No. Email or phone, ID in some regions	No. Quests and video ads
Matrix / Element	Yes. On for new private rooms	Yes. Federated homeservers	Yes. AGPL / Apache	Yes. Run a homeserver	Partial. matrix.org needs email; other servers vary	Yes. No ads
Stoat(ex-Revolt)	No. Not encrypted	No. Central instance; self-hosts are islands	Yes. AGPLv3	Yes. Yes, but no federation	No. Email required	Yes. No ads
Fluxer	No. Not offered	No. Central instance; self-hosts are islands	Yes. AGPLv3	Yes. Yes, but no federation	Yes. No email needed	Yes. No ads
Mattermost	No. TLS and at-rest only	No. Per-instance, no federation	Yes. MIT / AGPL	Yes. Its main use case	No. Email, admin-controlled	Yes. No ads
Rocket.Chat	Partial. Optional, off by default	No. Per-instance	Yes. MIT	Yes. Yes	No. Email typically	Yes. No ads
Signal	Yes. Always on	No. Centralized	Yes. AGPL / GPL	No. Not practical	No. Phone number required	Yes. No ads
Telegram	No. Only 1:1 secret chats	No. Centralized cloud	Partial. Client only, server closed	No. No	No. Phone number required	No. Channel ads
Flotilla	Partial. DMs yes, spaces no	Yes. Decentralized on Nostr relays	Yes. AGPL	Yes. Run your own relay	Yes. Nostr key, no email	Yes. No ads

Notes: Revolt renamed itself Stoat in October 2025; it is the same app. Guilded (owned by Roblox) shut down in December 2025 and is left off the chart. Matrix rooms are encrypted by default only for new private conversations; large public rooms usually are not. Rocket.Chat's encryption is optional and has had audited weaknesses. Flotilla is another Nostr app: its direct messages are encrypted, but its community "spaces" are not end-to-end encrypted.

What Each Discord Alternative Offers

Matrix and Element

Matrix is the most mature open, federated, encrypted option, and Element is a capable client. Rooms can be end-to-end encrypted, and because the network is federated, no single company can take it down. The trade-offs are real: federated servers still see metadata like who is in a room and when they post, key management and device verification are fiddly, and moderation and large-community features lag behind Discord. If you want the most battle-tested decentralized option and do not mind running or trusting a homeserver, Matrix is the one to beat.

Revolt, Now Stoat

Revolt is an open source Discord clone that feels familiar right away, and it renamed itself Stoat in October 2025 after a trademark dispute. It is AGPL licensed and self-hostable. Two caveats matter: it is not end-to-end encrypted, so its servers can read chat history the same way Discord can, and self-hosted instances do not federate, so each one is an island. It has also struggled to stay up during the traffic surges that follow every Discord controversy.

Fluxer

Fluxer is a newer open source Discord clone out of Sweden, AGPL licensed, with a genuinely nice touch: you can sign up in seconds without an email. It is self-hostable and ad-free. Like Revolt, though, it does not offer end-to-end encryption, and its architecture is a central instance with self-hosts that do not federate. It is a good pick if your priority is a low-friction, no-email Discord clone rather than encryption.

Signal and Telegram

Signal is the gold standard for encrypted messaging, always on, for text and calls, and it is open source and non-profit. It is also centralized and requires a phone number, and it is a messenger, not a server-and-channel community platform. Telegram is the opposite trade: huge and feature-rich, but its group chats and channels are not end-to-end encrypted, its server is closed source, it wants a phone number, and it runs ads. Neither is a Discord replacement, but both come up in the conversation, so they are in the chart.

Mattermost and Rocket.Chat

If your "community" is really a team or a company, these two self-hosted, open source platforms are strong. Both are built to run on your own hardware. Neither is a great fit for a large, public, voice-first community, and neither gives you end-to-end encryption you can rely on: Mattermost has none, and Rocket.Chat's is optional, off by default, and has had security flaws found in audits.

Armada: Encrypted, Unstoppable Discord Alternative

Armada is the only option in the chart that is a Discord-shaped community app, encrypted by default, un-shutdownable, open source, self-hostable, and signup-free of personal information, all at once. It is built by Soapbox on Nostr, an open protocol that works like email: many independent servers, one identity you own, and no company in the middle. If you have used Discord, the layout is instantly familiar: communities on the left, channels in a sidebar, chat in the middle, members on the right.

Every Community Is Encrypted by Default

Where Discord encrypts only calls, and where Revolt and Fluxer encrypt nothing, Armada encrypts every community end to end using the open Concord protocol. Messages are locked on your device before they leave it, and the relays that carry them see only sealed ciphertext, with the sender and even the community's name hidden. We trust it enough that Team Soapbox shut down our company Signal and moved all internal chat to Armada, and we run a public bug bounty on the implementation. The first payout, $1,000, went out in June for a role-revocation flaw that was fixed the same day it was reported.

No Company, No Kill Switch

Your Armada account is a cryptographic key you hold, the same kind of key used across Nostr. Since no company issued it, no company can revoke it, so a platform-wide ban is technically impossible. Communities get the same treatment: a Concord community publishes to several independent relays at once, and if one relay drops the community or goes down, clients reroute to the others and nothing is lost. There is no server to seize and no headquarters to pressure. Guilded's shutdown is the cautionary tale on the other side of this: when a company owns your community, it can end it.

Sign Up With No Email, Phone, or ID

Signing up for Armada takes about a minute: open the app, tap sign up, and a key is generated for you. That key is the whole account. There is no email confirmation, no SMS code, and no age-verification selfie, so there is no database of your documents waiting to leak. The same key logs you in on the web, on Android, and on desktop, and it works across other Nostr apps too. Back it up carefully, because the flip side of an unbannable account is that you are the one holding the key. Our guide to managing your Nostr key covers how.

Things Even Other Alternatives Can't Do

• Bluetooth mesh chat. On Android, phones near each other relay messages over Bluetooth with no internet at all, at a protest, a festival, or during a blackout. It is compatible with bitchat.
• Notifications without Google. Pings on Android arrive directly from your community instead of through Google's push servers, so no third party learns who messages you.
• Buzz workspaces. Armada also connects to Buzz communities, Block's open source team chat, with forums, git projects, and AI agents.
• A Discord bridge. You do not have to move everyone at once. A two-way bridge can mirror a Discord server into an Armada community while people migrate.
• An identity that outlives the app. Your key works across the whole Nostr ecosystem, so your profile, name, contacts, and DMs are yours even if you stop using Armada.

Armada Is in Open Beta

Fair warning: Armada is early software, version 0.x, with releases landing almost daily on the road to v1.0. Everything above works today on the web, Android, Linux, and Windows. There is no iOS app yet, though the web app works fine on an iPhone, and some Discord conveniences are still catching up, so expect occasional rough edges. The trade for that is that the features people ask for this month tend to ship the next. The full story of how it was built, including every protocol tried and abandoned, is in Building an Armada.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the best Discord alternative in 2026?

It depends on your priorities. For an encrypted, decentralized, Discord-shaped community app, Armada is the closest match. Matrix is the most mature federated option, and Signal is the strongest pure messenger, but neither is a drop-in replacement for a server-and-channel community.

Are Revolt, Stoat, and Fluxer encrypted?

No. Revolt (now Stoat) and Fluxer are open source and easy to use, but neither encrypts chat end to end, so their servers can read message history the way Discord can. Matrix, Signal, and Armada do encrypt chat end to end.

Which Discord alternative needs no phone number or email?

Armada and Fluxer both let you sign up without an email or phone number. Armada uses a Nostr key, so there is no email, phone, face scan, or ID at any point. Signal and Telegram require a phone number.

What happened to Revolt and Guilded?

Revolt renamed itself Stoat in October 2025 after a trademark dispute; it is the same app. Guilded, bought by Roblox in 2021, was shut down in December 2025, a reminder that a company-owned alternative can be acquired and then killed.

Can a Discord alternative be shut down like Discord?

Centralized ones can. Revolt/Stoat, Fluxer, Signal, and Telegram all run on one company's servers. Federated and decentralized options like Matrix, Armada, and Flotilla spread across many independent servers or relays, so no single operator can erase your identity or delete your community everywhere.

Is Armada free and open source?

Yes. Armada is free and open source under the AGPL-3.0 license, with no ads and no paid tier. Use it at armada.buzz or install the Android app from Zap Store.

Try It With Us

The easiest way to judge Armada against everything above is to open it and look around. Grab the app, then browse the encrypted communities already running on it.

Try Armada on the WebGet on Google PlayGet on Zap Store

An iOS app is coming soon. For now, the web app works on iPhone.

Related Reading

• Armada: The Open Source, Encrypted Discord Alternative
• Building an Armada: Our Voyage to Encrypted Communities on Nostr
• Use Buzz on Your Phone: Armada Adds Buzz Communities
• Nostr 101: A Beginner Guide to the Decentralized Social Network
• How to Disappear From the Surveillance Internet