Or pay nothing and host it on your own.
this post was submitted on 13 Feb 2026
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Fuck it. I'm making the CPU cores and harvesting the silicon myself. Hand crafted indie servers and infrastructure from scratch.
You really should. I made the switch six months ago and my skin has never been more vibrant!
As you can read in the other responses that misunderstood the post, some people do not want to self-host and want something hosted. That's the beauty of opensource though: whatever suits you.
This kind of lack of perspective is why open services always struggle. It seems like it's the only tool the advocates of it use since they fall into the "I have a hammer to everything that isn't a nail doesn't matter" trap.
This post could have been a list of free instances to join. But instead it offers people to learn hosting and sysadmin stuff.
I'm sure there will be a bunch of replies trying to teach me how easy it is... But I am a sysadmin. I'm not your audience, and some people don't see a difference.
People who use corporate platforms do it because it's easy. Joining matrix instances is pretty easy. Presenting Matrix like people need to host servers to use it is detrimental.
But instead it offers people to learn hosting and sysadmin stuff.
It does not. The post says paying for a hosted matrix server. That means you pay for somebody to host it. There's nothing more to it.
The full discord nitro plan costs 10$/month. That can get you a server for your friends and you can communicate with other servers. If everybody chips in, it's the cost of discord nitro minimum if you're 5 friends.
I think they're complaining you don't list where to host it/managed hosting.
That literally what the link provides
I'm aware, just guessing.
This isn't that, though.
OP's link is to a list of companies you can pay to host a matrix instance for you, so you don't have to deal with any of the hosting yourself.
But I agree most people would be sufficiently served by an account on a public instance.
Yeay its maybe not that bad. Sorry I think I might be chasing the argument. I'm an old bastard who still has friends on IRC from 35 years ago and they STILL argue IRC serves the role of Twitter, discord, etc. I share their passion but more often than not I feel like they turn away allies.
I'm also still in some IRC channels from way back, and I can't deny I hate what discord did to the IRC community. ("Look how they massacred my boy...")
Of course, Discord pulled it off for a good reason - the experience was seamless, featureful, rich, and modern - none of which IRC can claim. And it's only cantankerous sticks in the mud such as I who care about ideological concerns like interoperability and open standards.
And another thing that Discord did is to absolutely explode the channel count. In the IRC days, a particular community or friend group would make do with one single channel. But that group moves to Discord, and suddenly creates a general channel, announcements channel, music channel, games channel, cooking channel - all for one single friend group, and multiply that by the number of groups you are in - because the Discord model permitted it and made it frictionless.
And I think that's why for some people who use Discord at the moment, it wouldn't be enough to simply have a channel on a public Matrix instance. People are used to having a whole 'server' to themselves (of course discord 'servers' aren't servers, but let's set that aside) and so they'd need at least a 'space' in Matrix, being the more reasonably named analogue.
How do hosts of those instances afford to make them free?
I've been trying out different alternatives with my friends. Screenshare and audio sharing capabilities across Linux, Windows and Mac is the one feature that Discord does right that no one else seems to. I really like Element (and by extension Matrix), but they really like to stick their head in the sand when it comes to important feature requests. The lack of screenshare with audio is a big thing that helps bring about the unfortunate choice to stick with Discord.
I know it's a tricky thing to get right, and I have love for the work that open source does; I don't have quite the level of skill yet to make/contribute an implementation myself. But it's strange it's been this long and nobody seems to have gotten this feature working, despite a big want for it.
EDIT: After taking a look at the issues on the element repos, it seems like this is getting worked on! https://github.com/element-hq/element-web/issues/29891 https://github.com/element-hq/element-desktop/pull/2850
But it’s strange it’s been this long and nobody seems to have gotten this feature working, despite a big want for it.
It's not strange at all that the feature hasn't been implemented. Not enough people donate, so there isn't enough funding to implement features. Most people wait around until something is there or pay for closed source stuff. Funding is the major issue. If there were funds, people could spend time to implement such complicated features. Discord had millions in seed funding and has thousands of developer hours sunk into the platform. The developers of element have to juggle element and their jobs.
That is exactly why I'm saying: if you have the money to pay for discord nitro, throw some money Matrix's way. It'll benefit us all instead of some money-hungry enshittifiers.
It's mostly rust but there's typescript, js and go too.
Donate, buy merch, become a member, etc...
People pay for Discord Nitro?
I pay for Discord Nitro because it's where the vast majority of the people I have real interactions with online are and I like being able to send my own emojis outside of my own server. I also like having better audio and video quality for my server's voice chat. Dumb, maybe, but it's literally less than a club cover fee per month.
Legcord's fake nitro is free.
Does it improve video and audio quality?
No clue, I'm not on discord, just trying to be helpful
Vencord.
Unfortunately, yes.
wait for the free trial, sign up with it using like a gift card that has a few cents on it or an empty paypal account. trial lasts like 2 weeks but you'll get more than a month as they email you daily "we can't charge your account, you'll lose nitro in 3 weeks"
Repeat this every time they offer you a trial, which they will, without verifying that you've already had a free trial. I've had Nitro for months doing this and have never paid them a dime.
Seems like a lot of hassle to go through for something I absolutely don't care for.
The higher file size limitations are pretty handy for sending videos and high res pictures in chat
I'd rather not deal with those arbitrary limitations and being nickel-and-dimed at every turn.
But why?
dumb reasons really. I like having an animated avatar but don't want to pay for it. It's stupid I know.
Haha, hey at least you recognize it for what it is. Can't knock you for that. Eff it, enjoy your animated avatar. Don't let anyone take that away from you.
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From everything I've seen matrix is not comparable to Discord, but instead like a slightly amped Signal. What am I missing?
But it is. I made the move with some friends. We created a space with some rooms for games and calls and some for memes and general shit.
Everything that discord does as well. If you don't care about the themes and personalisation of your space it is great and free.. And open source... And offers encrypted spaces
Actually I did just ask the same thing, and the TL;DR is that most clients do handle it as signal with group chat folders. Cinny does look like Discord, but currently lacks voice calling. It's currently web only with PWA support for mobile, though.
commet is basically discord running on matrix as far as I’ve seen. Still needs some work but i think it’s promising
Okay, then if it really is not discord, or to be specific, not self-hosted discord (because I don't care about the upfront cost of self-hosting), then I'm gonna start ignoring these matrix posts because they seem to be trying to convince people who want - someone in your link used burgers as a metaphor - A burger to instead get a hot dog.
I don't want a hot dog.
Yeah, they all really do feel like "Oh you want to stop playing World of Warcraft, but still want an online game to play? Try Second Life!" and I think that's partly because there isn't an app out there that feels like Discord besides Discord. Cinny (Matrix), IRC, and Stoat come close, but none support voice calls at this point, at least that I can find. Matrix itself supports calling (though I think that's still experimental), but Cinny doesn't. If it ever ends up supporting voice calls, that will likely end up being the Discord alternative In wouldn't feel bad recommending.
Until then, though, we don't really have a true Discord alternative. Just various chat apps that don't quite hit the mark.
Cooool. Now just convince everyone else on discord and we're good.
What's that, you say? You can't? You're still trying to convince people to get off Facebook after 10 years? Huh.
With that attitude no one would ever move. It takes time to change
It also isn't going to come by just abandoning a platform and no longer interacting with the communities on it. Torpedoing my ability to communicate with my friends doesn't make them all change platforms.
Can Matrix do emotes like Discord yet?
YES there's a client that adds support for GIFs and custom emojis https://commet.chat/
Looks promising, but I need an iOS client too.
Fluffychat does this I believe
Any providers that have hosted Matrix servers?
That's the link of the post 🤔 It seems like you're not the only one mistunderstanding that. Why is that?
Oh I see it now. It looks really close to like an ad that my brain immediately filtered it out, sorry about missing that.
No problem. I wasn't sure how to frame it. It just bothers me that people are willing to pay for closed source stuff, but as soon as it comes to opensource it must be free and have all the features, otherwise they won't use it.
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