Discord Alternatives in 2026: 9 Apps Compared

Guilded is the easiest move for a gaming group that wants Discord style servers without paying for premium perks. Voice and text channels work in a familiar layout, and calendars, docs, forums, and media channels are built in rather than added through bots. Tournament brackets and recruitment forms help competitive teams organize tryouts and matches.

The main drawback is reach. Friends outside gaming may not have an account, and the integration library is smaller than Discord or Slack. Still, for a guild or esports team that plans events every week, the built in scheduling alone can replace several separate tools. Guilded is owned by Roblox, so groups should review its current terms before moving a large community.

Stoat, formerly known as Revolt, is the closest like for like alternative for people who like how Discord feels. Servers sit on the left, channels are grouped by type, and roles and permissions control who can speak, post, or manage a space. Voice, text, and media sharing cover the daily needs of a friend group or fan community.

Because Stoat is open source, groups can self host if they want full control, or use the hosted service for free. The tradeoff is maturity: bots, integrations, and mobile polish are still catching up to Discord. Test it with your core members first, and keep your Discord server open during the move so no one is stranded if a feature is missing.

Slack is the best choice when the group is really a team with tasks, files, and outside tools. Channels keep topics separate, threads keep replies tidy, and integrations connect chat to calendars, code, and customer tools. Huddles add quick audio calls without scheduling a meeting, and canvases help teams draft notes in the same workspace.

Pricing is the catch for open communities. The free plan hides messages older than 90 days, and Pro costs $7.25 per user per month billed annually, or $8.75 billed monthly. Slack charges only for active users, which helps, but a public community with thousands of members can still face a large bill. Use Slack for work, not for a free for all fan server.

Microsoft Teams suits schools, offices, and clubs that already use Word, Excel, Outlook, or OneDrive. Chat channels, video meetings, and shared files live in one place, so a team does not need a separate meeting app. The free version offers unlimited chat and meetings up to 60 minutes for up to 100 people, which is enough for many small groups.

Teams Essentials costs $4 per user per month, and Microsoft 365 Business Basic, which includes Teams plus web Office apps, is listed higher in recent pricing guides. The tradeoff is tone: Teams feels like work software, and casual gaming groups may find it less fun than Guilded or Stoat. If your group already pays for Microsoft 365, Teams is often the cheapest serious option.

Element is the strongest privacy pick for groups that do not want one company to hold all their messages. It runs on Matrix, an open federated protocol, so different servers can talk to each other and organizations can run their own server. Private rooms and direct messages use end to end encryption, and bridges can connect Matrix rooms to Slack, IRC, and other networks.

The client itself is free and open source, while managed hosting starts at about $5 per user per month through Element services. Self hosting gives full control but needs technical upkeep, including updates and backups. For a privacy minded community or a nonprofit with technical help, Element offers control that hosted apps cannot match.

Rocket.Chat is a practical self hosted option for teams that want Slack style chat on their own server. Channels, direct messages, threads, and video calls cover daily work, and the marketplace adds bots and integrations for common tools. Omnichannel features also let support teams handle live chat and social messages in the same system.

The community edition is free for self hosting, while cloud plans start at about $4 per user per month on some listings and $7 on others, so check the current pricing page before budgeting. The honest cost is time: the server needs a database, updates, and monitoring. Teams with IT support will find that tradeoff fair, while small casual groups should pick a hosted app instead.

Mattermost is built for engineering and operations teams that live in code, tickets, and incident channels. Markdown messages, code blocks with syntax highlighting, and integrations for GitHub and GitLab fit developer workflows better than a general chat app. Playbooks help teams run repeatable incident steps in the same channel where they talk.

The self hosted Team Edition is free with no per user fee, apart from server costs, while Professional is listed at $10 per user per month. Free self hosting limits integrations in some guides, so check the current plan table if you need many plugins. For a dev team that wants data control and a Slack like feel, Mattermost is a strong, serious choice.

TeamSpeak predates Discord and still wins when voice quality and delay matter most. Competitive teams use it for clear, low latency audio, noise suppression, and detailed permissions over who can speak in each channel. Whisper features let leaders talk across channels during large matches, which Discord does not match as cleanly.

The client is free, and self hosting a small server with up to 32 slots is free for non commercial use. Larger self hosted licenses start at $30 per year for 32 slots in older pricing, while hosted TeamSpeak 6 servers start at about $4.99 per month for 11 slots in recent guides. TeamSpeak is a voice tool first, so groups that live on memes, threads, and bots will miss Discord style community features.

Mumble is the leanest voice option in this list, and that is the point. The client and server software are free, voice traffic is encrypted, and positional audio places teammates by their in game location in supported titles. Detailed access controls let admins shape channels for large groups, podcasts, or radio style use.

There is no central hosted service to browse, so a group must run its own server or join a public one. That setup step puts off casual users, but it also means no company controls the server or its rules. For a small clan, a podcast group, or a privacy minded team that only needs reliable voice, Mumble remains hard to beat on cost and control.