Choose Discourse if...
You want chat, voice rooms, and organized discussions in one place. You want search that covers everything your members have written, a site anyone can find on the web, and full ownership of your data.
Choose Discord if...
You rely on Go Live game detection, rich presence, soundboards or activities, or your members spend nearly all their time in live hangouts.
How the two differ
Discord built a chat app and added forum channels. At Discourse, we started with a world-class discussion platform and expanded into live chat, voice, and video. While both platforms now offer the same core features, our priorities differ fundamentally. Discord puts ephemeral, real-time chatter first. Discourse puts your community’s collective knowledge first - ensuring that every great answer, debate, and idea is organized, searchable, and preserved for the members who join you next year.
What’s new in Discourse
Concord: A First-Class, Chat-Oriented Theme
We’ve now built Concord, a first-class, chat-oriented theme that gives your community a Discord-style layout they already know how to use. Members land right in your #welcome channel with organized channel groups, DMs, and AI chats neatly tucked into the left sidebar, plus a live member list on the right. Spin up text, voice, or forum channels from a single + button with a seamless experience across desktop and mobile. Want to change course later? Switch the theme off anytime and your entire Discourse site - every topic, channel, and member - stays completely intact.
Discourse Live
Bring your community face-to-face with built-in voice, video, and screen sharing - all right alongside your chat channels and deep-dive topics. Best of all, Live is included on every single plan, even Free.
Managed Hosting for $0
Start building your community for free. We handle the hosting and give you full access to real-time chat, Live voice and video, and structured discussions, with zero per-member fees.
Chat as Your Front Door
Set any chat channel as your homepage so new and returning members drop straight into the live conversation instead of a static topic list.
Side by side
|
Discourse
|
Discord
|
|
|---|---|---|
| Text chat, DMs, chat threads | Yes | Yes |
| Voice and video rooms | Yes, with Discourse Live | Yes |
| Screen sharing | Yes | Yes |
| Organized discussions | Topics, categories, tags and wiki posts | Forum channels |
| Search | Full-text search across topics and chat | Chat search |
| Web search visibility | Every public topic on every site, from your first post | Discoverable Servers only, starting November 2026 |
| Moderation | Trust levels, rate limits, slow mode and AI spam detection built in | AutoMod, plus third-party bots |
| Your data | Full export; self-host any time | Stays on Discord's servers |
| Open source | Yes | No |
| Price | Free plan; flat pricing with no per-seat fees | Free; Server Boosts and Nitro unlock more |
| Go Live game detection, rich presence, soundboards, activities | No | Yes |
Pricing
Discourse
- Free: $0
- Pro: $100/month
- Business: $500/month
- Enterprise: custom pricing
- Self-hosted: free, open-source software; you pay only for your own hosting, typically $10–$100/month
We charge a flat price per plan, with no per-seat fees. Chat and Discourse Live come with every plan.
Discord
Discord costs nothing to run. Owners pay for Server Boosts ($4.99 each) to raise upload limits and stream quality; members buy Nitro for themselves. Owners usually pay for premium moderation bots and bot hosting too. When members who pay for Boosts cancel, the server loses those features, so many owners end up paying to keep them on.
Where Discourse fits best
Support and product forums
Customers search past answers before they post; Google sends new people straight to them.
Technical and developer groups
Members share code with proper formatting, keep docs in wiki posts and find old threads in seconds.
Creators and their members
You run live chats and voice rooms for your regulars and keep Q&As, FAQs, and long posts where new members can find them.
Professional groups
Members get a clean, professional space.
Groups that want search traffic
Every public topic you publish can rank on Google.
Groups that need to own their data
You can export everything, read the source code, and move to your own servers whenever you like.
Questions
Does Discourse chat work as well as Discord?
For text chat, DMs, threads, reactions, mentions, uploads, and voice and video rooms, yes. Discord still offers game detection, rich presence, soundboards, and activities, which we don’t.
Can I make Discourse look and feel like Discord?
Yes. Install Concord and set a chat channel as your homepage. Members see a channel list, a member list, and a #welcome channel when they arrive. You can switch back to the standard layout whenever you want.
Discord now shows up in web search. Why does that matter?
Discord only opens Discovery to servers with more than 1,000 members; even then, only some public-channel messages will appear in search. On Discourse, you can make every public topic searchable from day one, whatever your size.
Can I use Discourse for a gaming group?
Yes. Gaming groups use Discourse for guides, patch notes, bug reports, and feedback; they also use Discourse Live for voice. If your members depend on game detection or soundboards, keep Discord for hangouts and connect it to your Discourse site.
Which has better mobile apps?
Discord’s apps are more mature for chat and voice. Members use Discourse in any mobile browser or in the Discourse app; Concord gives them a Discord-style layout on their phones.
How much does it cost to start?
Nothing. You can launch on the Free plan and upgrade when you need to.
Decide
Choose Discourse if…
- You want chat, voice, and video, and organized discussions in one place
- Members need to find old answers through search
- You want your public topics on Google from your first post
- You want flat pricing with no per-member costs
- You want to own your data and keep the option to self-host
- You want moderation tools built in, without stacking up bots
- You care about open source
Choose Discord if…
- Your members rely on Go Live game detection, rich presence, soundboards or activities
- Live chat and voice make up nearly everything your members do
- Nobody needs to find past conversations
- You don’t want anything to set up
Run both if…
- You host a gaming server on Discord and want a support forum or knowledge base on Discourse
- You have the people to look after two platforms
