Stoat vs Discord in 2026

Stoat is an open-source community chat platform that launched under the name Revolt in 2021. The project rebranded to Stoat in late 2025, along with a significant overhaul of its infrastructure, bot framework, and user experience. The core mission stayed the same: give communities a Discord-like experience without corporate control, surveillance advertising, or closed-source lock-in.

The rebrand was more than cosmetic. Stoat shipped a new bot API with first-class support for interactions and rich embeds, revamped its voice infrastructure, and improved mobile clients substantially. The result is a platform that genuinely competes with Discord on features while offering something Discord never will: full transparency and user sovereignty.

You may still see “Revolt” in older references, forum posts, and documentation. Stoat and Revolt are the same project. If you're searching for “Revolt vs Discord,” this is the comparison you're looking for.

Before diving into differences, it's worth acknowledging how much these platforms have in common. Both Stoat and Discord provide the core building blocks for online communities:

• Servers and channels. Both organize communities into servers with text channels, categories, and channel permissions. The mental model is identical.
• Roles and permissions. Both support hierarchical roles with granular permissions per channel. You can gate channels behind roles, assign colors, and manage access at a fine-grained level.
• Bots and integrations. Both have bot APIs that let developers build automated tools, moderation bots, and interactive experiences. Stoat's bot framework is newer but rapidly maturing.
• Direct messages. Private messaging between users, with group DM support on both platforms.
• Voice channels. Real-time voice communication. Discord's voice is more polished, but Stoat's voice has improved significantly since the rebrand.
• Rich embeds and media. Image, video, and file sharing with inline previews. Both support custom embeds from bots.

If you're running a community on Discord today, you'll find the core experience on Stoat immediately familiar. The learning curve for members is minimal.

Open source.Stoat's entire stack is open source: server, clients, bot framework, and infrastructure. You can audit every line of code, contribute features, and fork the project if you disagree with its direction. This is not possible with Discord, a closed-source platform owned by a corporation with its own priorities.

Self-hostable.You can run your own Stoat instance on your own hardware. This matters for communities that need data sovereignty, regulatory compliance (GDPR, HIPAA-adjacent workflows), or simply want independence from a third-party service. Self-hosting means your community data never touches servers you don't control.

Privacy-focused.Stoat does not mine user data for advertising. There is no tracking pixel economy, no behavioral profiling, no targeted ads. Your community's conversations belong to your community. Discord, by contrast, collects extensive telemetry and has faced ongoing criticism over its data practices.

No ads, no upsells. Discord increasingly surfaces Nitro promotions, boost prompts, and premium feature gates throughout the interface. Stoat has none of this. The interface is clean, focused, and designed for the user, not for conversion funnels.

Community-driven development.Stoat's roadmap is shaped by its community. Feature requests, bug reports, and PRs come from the people who use the platform. Discord's roadmap is shaped by investor returns and ad revenue targets.

Customizable. Because the source code is open, communities can theme, extend, and modify Stoat in ways Discord does not allow. Custom CSS, client modifications, and server-side plugins are all possible and encouraged.

Ecosystem size. Discord has hundreds of millions of registered users and tens of millions of active servers. The network effect is enormous. Your members are almost certainly already on Discord. They may not be on Stoat yet. This is the single biggest advantage Discord has, and it is a significant one.

App integrations.Discord's app directory has thousands of verified bots and integrations, from Spotify status to GitHub notifications to game activity. Stoat's bot ecosystem is growing but is still a fraction of Discord's size.

Streaming and activities. Discord has native screen sharing, Go Live streaming, and Activities (embedded games and apps within voice channels). These features are polished and widely used. Stoat has basic screen sharing but nothing comparable to Activities.

Mobile polish.Discord's mobile apps have years of refinement. Push notifications are reliable, the UI is responsive, and the experience is close to the desktop client. Stoat's mobile clients have improved with the rebrand but still lag behind Discord in smoothness and reliability.

Market recognition.When someone says “join my server,” everyone knows they mean Discord. Brand recognition drives adoption. Stoat is still building awareness, particularly outside of open-source and privacy-focused circles.

If you're building a community that generates revenue through subscriptions, premium content, courses, or supporter tiers, the monetization landscape is dramatically different between the two platforms.

Discord has its own Server Subscriptions feature, which takes approximately 30% of your revenue. Beyond that, there are many third-party monetization tools for Discord: MEE6, Whop, Patreon, Upgrade.chat, Memberful, LaunchPass, and more. The ecosystem is mature, if crowded.

Stoat had no monetization tools at all until Arcalotl launched with native Stoat support. Arcalotl is the first and currently only subscription management platform for Stoat. If you want to monetize a Stoat community, Arcalotl is your option.

This is not a dig at Stoat. Every platform starts somewhere. Discord had no monetization tools for years either. The point is that if monetization is a priority, you need to plan for it. On Discord, you have many choices (with varying quality). On Stoat, you have one excellent choice in Arcalotl, with more likely to come as the platform grows.

Arcalotl's pricing is the same on both platforms: $0/mo with a 2% transaction fee and 5% on recovered revenue. There are no monthly fees, no platform lock-in, and you keep the vast majority of what you earn. Compare that to Discord's native 30% cut or Patreon's 8-12%.

The honest answer is that it depends on your values and your audience.

Choose Stoat if you value open source, privacy, data sovereignty, and community-driven governance. If your members care about these things (and increasingly, they do), Stoat signals alignment with those values. Self-hosting Stoat gives you control that is impossible on Discord.

Choose Discord if you need the largest possible audience, the most integrations, and the most polished mobile experience today. If your community members are already on Discord and you need to meet them where they are, Discord remains the pragmatic choice.

Choose both if you want the best of both worlds. This is increasingly what we see community builders doing: maintain a Discord server for reach and a Stoat server for the core community. With Arcalotl, you can run the same subscription plans on both platforms simultaneously. One dashboard, one set of plans, two platforms.

The platforms are not mutually exclusive. You do not have to burn bridges to try something new. Start a Stoat server alongside your Discord, direct your most engaged members there, and see how the community evolves. If Stoat works for your audience, lean into it. If not, you've lost nothing.

Whatever you choose, Arcalotl has you covered for monetization on both platforms. Check out our Stoat integration page to get started, or read about how communities are using Arcalotl in our Stoat communities use case guide.