Reference · Unofficial
Notes on Discord,
its product, and its platform.
Discord is a voice, text, and video platform for communities. This page collects the essentials: what it is, the shortest way in, and the places developers actually go when they build on it.
01What Discord is
Discord is a communication platform organised around private community spaces called servers. It launched publicly on under the name "Discordapp", a side project of the game studio Hammer & Chisel and its founders Jason Citron and Stanislav Vishnevskiy. The company reorganised around the product and is now Discord Inc., based in San Francisco.1
It began as low-latency voice chat for gamers and broadened into general community infrastructure: study groups, open-source projects, fan communities, and small companies now run ordinary social life on it. Discord reports more than 200 million monthly active users, with on the order of 19 million servers active in a given week.1 Clients ship for Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, Android, and the browser.3
Terms used on the platform
- Server (guild)
- A community space with its own members, channels, and rules. One account can belong to hundreds.
- Channel
- A text or voice room within a server. Channels keep discussion grouped by topic.
- Thread
- A small, temporary conversation branch inside a channel.
- Direct message (DM)
- A private conversation between you and one or a few people, outside any server.
- Roles & permissions
- Granular access control: who may read, write, moderate, or administer each space.
- Apps & bots
- Programs that run inside Discord through its developer APIs: moderation tools, games, music, integrations.
- Nitro
- The optional paid subscription: larger uploads, animated avatars, and server-boost perks.
02Get in — the shortest routes
No install is required to try Discord; the web client runs in a browser tab. Desktop and mobile apps exist for everything else. Use the copy button on any row to grab a link.
-
Open the web client
Run Discord in your browser, no install.
discord.com/app -
Download the apps
Official installers for Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, and Android.
discord.com/download -
Create an account
One account, used across every client.
discord.com/register -
Log in
Sign in to an existing account from any device.
discord.com/login -
Nitro
The subscription tier, if you want the upgrade.
discord.com/nitro
03Discord-hosted community servers
An invite link is the only way into a server. The two below are Discord's own communities — the developer server and the feedback server — served at Discord-hosted invite URLs. Whether a given invite remains current is something Discord controls, so if one stops working, verify from the Help Center.
04Building on Discord
The developer platform exposes the product itself: a REST HTTP API, a persistent WebSocket Gateway, OAuth2 authorisation, and an interactions model for apps. SDKs cover bots, embedded Activities, and a Social SDK for shipping games against Discord's friend graph.2
-
Developer Portal
Dashboard for applications: keys, OAuth2, and app management.
discord.com/developers -
Create an application
The first step: register a new app or bot.
discord.com/developers/applications -
Documentation
Guides, tutorials, and the API reference for apps and games.
discord.com/developers/docs -
Developer help center
Articles, FAQs, and support tickets for app developers.
support-dev.discord.com -
Issue tracker on GitHub
Report bugs in the public API, libraries, and SDKs.
github.com/discord/discord-api-docs
05Getting help
-
This site's live status
Auto-refreshing status for Discord and this reference site (not official).
status.html -
Help center
Guides on accounts, servers, billing, and safety.
support.discord.com -
Status page
Live uptime for the API, gateway, voice, clients, and regions.
discordstatus.com -
Safety center
Community guidelines and safety resources.
discord.com/safety -
Blog
Product announcements and patch notes.
discord.com/blog
06Selected milestones
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| Public release as "Discordapp", built by game studio Hammer & Chisel (Jason Citron, Stanislav Vishnevskiy).1 | |
| Jan 2016 | Three million registered users, growing by roughly one million a month.1 |
| Jun 2020 | Passes 100 million monthly active users as remote work and study surge.1 |
| Sep 2021 | Reported peak private valuation near $15 billion on a $500 million round.1 |
| 2024 | About 19 million servers reported active in a given week.1 |
| 2025 | Discord reports more than 200 million monthly active users.1 |
07Notes & sources
This is an unofficial reference, maintained for convenience. Figures are Discord's own where mentioned; third-party statistics vary by source and sampling, so this page uses the most conservative figure in the cited source. Unmarked links in the reference lists above point to official Discord pages; the numbered list below shows where each claim comes from.
- Wikipedia, "Discord" — launch date, founders, company, and the user, server, and valuation figures used in this page. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discord
- Discord Developer Platform — Documentation — platform capabilities: HTTP API, Gateway, OAuth2, and SDKs. https://discord.com/developers/docs
- Discord Help Center — supported clients and product documentation. https://support.discord.com
- Discord Status — live service components used by the status page. https://discordstatus.com
- Discord Safety Center — community guidelines referenced in the help section. https://discord.com/safety
08Colophon & maintenance
- Maintained by
- justsadnyx-ux
- Status component
- github.com/justsadnyx-ux/discord-hub — the status page and its API, open source.
- Last revised
- Feedback
- Report a problem or request an addition by opening an issue.
- License
- MIT
- Privacy
- This page sets no cookies, runs no analytics, and collects nothing. Cloudflare, the host, may record standard request logs.