Discord alternatives: 11 team messaging tools compared
People look for a Discord alternative when a community or small team chat tool built for games and friends has to carry work. Discord sells only personal Nitro subscriptions, so there is no seat price, admin tier or workspace contract to buy. They move to open-source chat they can host, to per-seat team messengers, or to a suite tool.
Short answer: The first three alternatives to Discord in our team messaging software ranking are Element, Zulip and Rocket.Chat. Places 1 to 3 go to challengers, vendors outside the best-known brands in a category, wherever the category has them; the established names follow from place 4 in their ranked order. Choose Element if you want to host your own community chat and keep the data on your servers. All 11 alternatives below are ranked products from Best Team Messaging Software in 2026, and each says where it differs from Discord.
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Pricing: Nitro subscriptions per user per month, published; no business seat plan seen
Established in: United States
Built for: Communities and hobby groups that want voice and text rooms for people outside any company
Not for: Companies needing seat pricing, admin controls or an exportable archive
01
Why buyers look past Discord
01
Paid plans are personal, not per seat
Discord's Nitro page shows two paid plans, Nitro Basic at $2.99 a month and Nitro at $9.99 a month, with a note that prices vary by country and plan. The perks listed are personal ones such as custom emoji, larger uploads and HD streaming. The page describes no business or team plan, so a company cannot budget seats from it.
02
Built around games and communities
Discord's homepage describes group chat for playing games and chilling with friends, or building a worldwide community. A company that needs retention rules, SSO or audit logs finds none of them named on the pages we read. That is a scope fact, not a fault: the product is aimed at a different buyer.
03
Leaving with your data is a personal request
Discord's privacy policy lets a user request a copy of their own data in User Settings, delivered within 30 days. That covers one account. We found no workspace-wide archive export described, which matters if a team has years of decisions in its channels. Slack, by comparison, documents export options plan by plan.
Free plan; one published per-user Business plan; Enterprise quoted
Small-team chat with built-in tasks; the free plan stops at five members
you have a small team and want task management built into the chat
#6
03
What each one does differently
1
Element
United Kingdom · Community edition at no charge, AGPL; Enterprise and Sovereign priced per seat per month on request
A chat client for the Matrix network. The Community edition is free of charge under the AGPL for 1 to 100 users, self-hosted; Enterprise is priced per seat per month from 100 users, and Sovereign per deployment, air-gapped. Element is headquartered in the UK. You run a server, which Discord never asks of you.
Switch from Discord if you want to host your own community chat and keep the data on your servers.
United States · Free cloud plan with limited history; per user per month above that, published; self-hosted edition at no charge
Organises chat into topics inside channels rather than one stream per room. Zulip Cloud has a Free plan limited to 10,000 messages of search history, then Standard at $6.67 per user per month billed annually. A self-hosted edition is free. It documents export tools that move data between Cloud and your own server, which Discord does not.
Switch from Discord if you want threaded discussion and an exit route to your own server.
United States · Commercial plan quoted by sales; Starter plan for evaluation; self-managed deployment
Sells to organisations, not individuals. Starter is a free self-managed workspace for evaluation, small businesses and non-profits, and the Commercial plan is priced by contacting sales. Deployment can be on-prem, private cloud, air-gapped or a Rocket.Chat-managed dedicated cloud. Its pages put the headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware.
Switch from Discord if you need a self-managed chat server with a commercial vendor behind it.
United States · Quoted per organisation; limited-use evaluation edition; self-hosted or vendor-managed cloud
Shows no prices: Professional, Enterprise and Enterprise Advanced are annual seat licences quoted through sales, all offered self-hosted, with a Mattermost-hosted single-tenant Enterprise cloud. A limited-use edition exists for evaluation. It is built for security-conscious organisations, not for open public communities with strangers joining.
Switch from Discord if your company wants chat on its own infrastructure and accepts a sales-led quote.
United States · Free plan; Pro and Business+ per user per month, published; Enterprise+ quoted
The mainstream paid workplace messenger. The Free plan keeps 90 days of message history; Pro is €6.75 per user per month on annual billing and Business+ €15, as shown for a euro locale. Full export of private channels and direct messages is documented only from Business+. It has no gaming or voice-lounge focus.
Switch from Discord if you want the best-known workplace app and per-seat contracts your finance team recognises.
United States · Per user per month subscriptions; Teams Essentials standalone; add-on licences extra; amounts not readable this session
Chat and meetings sold per user, standalone as Teams Essentials or inside Microsoft 365. Audio Conferencing and Teams Phone are separate add-on licences. A team holds up to 25,000 members and 1,000 channels. Essentials requires all users to share one domain. It suits organisations already on Microsoft, not open communities.
Switch from Discord if your company already runs Microsoft 365 and wants one admin console.
United States · Free plan for unlimited users; three paid plans per seat per month, published
Has a Free plan for an unlimited number of users with unlimited message history. Paid plans are Pro at $2.49, Business at $3.99 and Enterprise at $6.99 per seat per month billed annually. It is made by CAKE.com, which also sells Clockify and Plaky. Group meetings need a paid plan.
Switch from Discord if you want a low per-seat price and free unlimited history for a small team.
Switzerland · Free plan for five people; SMB per person per month, published; Enterprise custom
Focused on secure messaging for organisations. Free covers teams of up to 5 people; Wire for SMB costs €7.45 per person per month billed annually for up to 100 people, and Enterprise is custom. Its parent company is incorporated in Berlin, Germany. It is built for confidential business chat, not for public servers.
Switch from Discord if your priority is end-to-end encrypted chat for a business team.
Not stated by the vendor · Free plan; one paid plan per user per month, published
Made by Doist for asynchronous work: threads rather than a live stream. The Free plan shows only the last month of messages; the Unlimited plan is €6 per user per month. Single-channel guests are free on both plans. It has no voice lounge or screen-share community model like Discord's.
Switch from Discord if you want calmer, threaded team talk instead of an always-on chat room.
Not stated by the vendor · Free plan up to 20 members; Pro plan with 30-day trial; Enterprise quoted
Starter is free for teams of 1 to 20 members, with 10 public channels, 5 GB storage and 10,000 searchable messages. Pro has a 30-day trial, and its price was not readable in the page text. Enterprise for 100+ members is quoted. Flock's footer names Titan Solution Ltd SEZC. Group video calls need Pro.
Switch from Discord if you run a team of up to 20 and want a free plan with a hard message-search cap.
Not stated by the vendor · Free plan; one published per-user Business plan; Enterprise quoted
Free plan for up to 5 team members with unlimited searchable history; Business is €3 per user per month. Enterprise is quoted and mentions an on-premise possibility, and a separate Chanty onPremise offer is sold by quote. It is a small-team messenger with built-in tasks, not a community platform.
Switch from Discord if you have a small team and want task management built into the chat.
Discord stays the right choice for a community, a hobby group or a group of friends where members are individuals who choose to join. Its pages describe exactly that use, with voice and text spaces and optional Nitro perks for people who want them. It is the wrong base for company records: the only data export we found covers one user's own data within 30 days, and no seat plan is published.
05
What moving off Discord involves
01
Decide what must move, because there is no workspace export
The data request in Discord's privacy policy returns a copy of one person's data. We read no workspace-level archive tool. Before you pick a replacement, decide whether old conversations matter, and if they do, ask each member for their own copy or accept starting clean.
02
Expect members to join again, not to be migrated
A community tool has no seat list to import. Members of a Discord space sign up on the new tool themselves, so the move is an invitation campaign. Tools with free self-hosting such as Zulip or Element let you try a server before asking anyone to leave.
03
Check what the replacement counts and limits
Free plans cap different things: Slack Free keeps 90 days of history, Twist Free shows one month, Flock Starter searches 10,000 messages, Zulip Cloud Free searches 10,000 messages. Read the cap before you move a long-running channel onto it.
06
Questions about replacing Discord
6 answers
What does Discord cost?
Discord's Nitro page shows Nitro Basic at $2.99 a month and Nitro at $9.99 a month, and says prices vary by country and plan. Both are personal subscriptions. The page describes no seat-based or business plan.
Does Discord have a business plan?
Not on the pages we read. The homepage describes group chat for games, friends and worldwide communities, and the Nitro page lists only personal perks such as custom emoji and larger uploads. Ask Discord directly if you need contract terms.
Can I export my whole Discord server?
We found no workspace-level export. Discord's privacy policy describes a request for a copy of your own data in User Settings, delivered within 30 days. For comparison, Slack documents workspace exports by plan, and Zulip documents organisation exports.
Which Discord alternative can I host myself?
Element's Community edition is free under the AGPL, Zulip has a free self-hosted edition, Rocket.Chat offers a free self-managed Starter workspace, and Mattermost sells self-hosted licences by quote. Chanty also lists an on-premise offer by quote.
Which alternatives publish a free plan?
Slack, Pumble, Twist, Flock, Chanty, Wire and Zulip Cloud all show a free plan, each with its own limit: for example 90 days of history on Slack, a one-month window on Twist, and up to 5 people on Wire and Chanty.
Where is Discord based?
Discord's terms give Discord Inc. at 444 De Haro Street, San Francisco, California, and Discord Netherlands B.V. at Schiphol Boulevard 195, Schiphol, the Netherlands. The privacy policy names the Dutch company as data controller for users in the EEA.
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Sources
Checked 19 October 2026
Discord Nitro: Nitro Basic and Nitro prices, prices vary by country, personal perks, no business plan shown.
Discord homepage: group chat for games, friends and worldwide communities.
Discord privacy policy: data copy request within 30 days, Discord Netherlands BV as EEA controller.
Discord terms: Discord Inc. in San Francisco and Discord Netherlands B.V. at Schiphol.
Zulip plans and pricing: Free 10,000-message search history, Standard price, free self-hosted edition, open-source software.
Zulip export help: importable organisation export between Cloud and self-hosted.
Element pricing: Community edition free under AGPL for 1-100 users, Enterprise per seat, Sovereign per deployment.
Founder of The Knowledge Engineers and of 2 Steps Ahead, an AI search visibility agency. Editorially responsible for every page on this site; research and drafting are AI-assisted.
Written, edited and fact-checked by Sebastiaan Smits. Last reviewed
19 October 2026. How we review.
