Discord is free until it isn’t, and Nitro creep plus AI-training rumors made a lot of small communities look elsewhere. Revolt copies the Discord interface closely, adds self-hosting, and skips the data harvesting.

What you gain

• Familiar channels, voice, threads, and roles, lifted straight from Discord’s UX
• Self-host the entire stack or use the public instance free
• No ads, no Nitro upsell, no data sales
• Open-source clients on web, desktop, mobile

What you give up

The user base is small, so this works for invite-only servers, not public communities you hope to grow. Voice quality is fine but stage events, rich activities, and Discord’s ecosystem of bots are mostly absent. Mobile app is functional rather than polished.

The math

Revolt is free. Self-hosting on a small VPS is around $5/month. Discord Nitro runs $120/year and most users buy it for one or two perks.

Who should switch

Friend groups, small dev teams, and private communities that don’t depend on Discord’s ecosystem. If your audience is on a public Discord server with thousands of members, don’t fragment them.