Discord vs Mattermost 2026: Price, Free Plan & Verdict
Discord vs Mattermost compared: free plans, prices, platforms and licenses from official pages checked October 23, 2026.
•2 min read•Team Chat, Meetings & Phone
Verdict:Choose Discord for a hosted community; choose Mattermost when the organization running the chat needs control over its deployment. Discord combines persistent voice and text spaces with video, game streaming and shared activities. Mattermost emphasizes work channels, threaded discussions, integrations and collaborative playbooks for repeatable team processes. Those are different daily workflows, even though both products provide chat. Discord has an optional Nitro subscription for extra perks, with regional prices checked in the app. Mattermost sells paid plans through sales and provides an evaluation path; a free evaluation should not be read as an unrestricted production entitlement. Its licensing varies by edition, so review the applicable license before deployment. The practical trade-off is operating responsibility. A friend group can join Discord without provisioning infrastructure. A team selecting self-hosted Mattermost needs someone to maintain the installation, apply updates and manage access. Enterprise identity and retention features also depend on the purchased plan. This comparison uses documentation rather than a deployment test. If your requirement is a free, openly licensed team-chat server, review the alternative tools below and their own hosting requirements before committing to either product.
Quick comparison
| Tool | Price | Platforms | Best for | Tested |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Discord | Free; paid from $2.99 per per month (Nitro Basic; Nitro $9.99); cost varies by country | Web | Chat and community | Docs only |
| Mattermost | See pricing page | Web, Self-hosted | Team chat that you run yourself | Docs only |
| Zulip | Free (Cloud Free: 10,000 messages of search history, 5 GB storage; self-hosted free with all features); paid from $6.67 per user/month, Cloud Standard, billed annually ($8 billed monthly) | Web, Self-hosted | Team chat | Docs only |
| Element | Free (Element Server Suite Community: free front end and back end) | Web, Self-hosted | Team chat | Docs only |
Independent comparison. Paid placements are labelled separately; editorial links earn no affiliate commissions. Learn more.
Discord vs Mattermost side by side
| Compared | Discord | Mattermost |
|---|---|---|
| Free plan | Free to use; Nitro is an optional paid upgrade | No free plan; a limited-use evaluation edition is free |
| Paid from | $2.99 per month (Nitro Basic); Nitro is $9.99; varies by country | No public price; paid plans are sold through sales |
| License | Proprietary | Mixed: enterprise license plus a main license; compiled releases MIT per the repo README |
| Self-hosting | Not offered; hosted service only | Yes, listed as a self-hosted platform |
| Conversation workflow (Discord, Mattermost) | Persistent voice and text spaces, video chat and game streaming | Work channels, threaded discussions and integrations for operational teams |
| Shared activities (Discord, Mattermost) | Built-in activities for watching, playing and listening together | Collaborative playbooks and workflow dashboards for repeatable team processes |
| Administration focus (Discord, Mattermost) | Community spaces and personal profiles | Enterprise options include identity management, retention and controlled deployments |
| Best for | Chat and community | Team chat that you run yourself |
Choose Discord if
- You are running a community or friend group and want chat with no server to maintain.
- You want an optional paid upgrade at $2.99 per month rather than a sales conversation.
- You want hosted community voice, video and shared activities without maintaining a server.
Choose Mattermost if
- You need chat on your own infrastructure, with your own access rules.
- You are a company that is comfortable buying through sales rather than a public price list.
- You want the option to evaluate a limited-use edition for free before buying.
Free alternatives to consider
- Zulip: Free (Cloud Free: 10,000 messages of search history, 5 GB storage; self-hosted free with all features); paid from $6.67 per user/month, Cloud Standard, billed annually ($8 billed monthly). Apache-2.0 (open source).
- Element: Free (Element Server Suite Community: free front end and back end). AGPL-3.0, GPL-3.0 or a paid commercial license (open source).
More options
Limits of this review
This is a dated documentation review. It does not measure performance, migration fidelity, security or support quality. Verify current regional availability, billing period and account limits before choosing.
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Kevin Fan
Kevin Fan is a SaaS founder. He runs Free Instead Of, which tracks free and open-source alternatives to paid software and checks each price and free-plan limit against the vendor's own pages.
Methodology
Discord vs Mattermost uses the vendors' own pricing, license and platform pages, checked October 22, 2026 to October 23, 2026. It is a documentation-based comparison, not hands-on testing.