Best Discord Bots for Your Server: Free and Paid Picks
Sapphire and YAGPDB handle moderation for free. MEE6 now keeps moderation and levels for Premium at $11.99 a month. Groovy has closed.
A Discord bot is an app you add to a server to do a job for you: remove spam, hand out roles, run a quiz, record a call. Most servers need one bot for moderation and one or two for whatever the community is about. More than that and you are mostly managing bots.
We read each bot’s own website and its page in Discord’s App Directory, and took prices only from pages the makers publish. Two things stood out. MEE6, the most famous name here, now does very little without a subscription. And the big music bots that played YouTube audio were shut down.
Discord bots compared
| Bot | Use it for | Free | Paid, as the maker publishes it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sapphire | Moderation, auto moderation, logs, roles, welcome messages | Everything, within limits | $2.99 a month to lift the limits; custom branding from €5 a month |
| YAGPDB | Auto moderation, custom commands, role menus, feeds | Yes, with limits such as 100 custom commands | Premium through Discord or Patreon; no price on its page |
| Carl-bot | Reaction roles, automod, logging | Yes, with 250 reaction roles per server | Premium through Patreon or Discord; no price on its page |
| MEE6 | Moderation, levels, welcome messages, social alerts | Very little | $11.99 a month, $49.99 a year or $89.99 once |
| Arcane | Levels and XP | Yes, with 15 role rewards | Monthly or yearly plan; no price on its public page |
| Tatsu | Levels, profile cards, an economy game with pets | Yes | Optional supporter page |
| TriviaBot | Quiz games | Yes | £3 a month, £8 a quarter, £30 a year or £99 once |
| sesh | Events, RSVPs, polls | Yes | From $6.99 a month, billed yearly, for one server |
| Ticket Tool | Support tickets | Yes, up to 10 tickets a minute | $7.99 a month |
| Craig | Recording voice channels | Yes, 6 hours a recording, kept 7 days | Patreon tiers at $1, $4 and $8 a month |
Moderation and server management
Sapphire is the one we would add first. Its website describes it as completely free, and the feature list is long: moderation with case management, more than ten auto moderation modules, over 80 kinds of log, reaction roles, welcome messages and alerts for Twitch, YouTube and TikTok. The limits on each feature are there, the site says, to keep it free for everyone. Lifting them all costs $2.99 a month, and a version with your own bot name and avatar starts at €5 a month.
YAGPDB, short for Yet Another General Purpose Discord Bot, is for people who like to configure. Its automoderator can mute, kick or ban after a set number of violations in a set time, and its custom commands go as far as regular expressions and a small database. It is open source, so you can host it yourself. The free limits are generous: 100 custom commands and 25 automod rules, against 500 and 150 on premium. It has dropped its built-in typed commands that began with a dash, so you use slash commands now.
Carl-bot is best known for reaction roles, where members click to give themselves a role. The free tier allows 250 per server, with automod, logging, welcome messages and custom commands alongside. Its own comparison puts levels, sticky messages and timed reaction roles on the premium side. Premium is sold through Patreon or a Discord subscription, and the page gives no price.
MEE6 is the famous name, and the answer to “is MEE6 free” is now “barely”. The plan comparison on its support portal marks moderation, reaction roles, welcome messages, and XP and levels as not available on the free plan. What stays free is short: the search command, achievements, the starboard and a single timer. Premium is $11.99 a month, $49.99 a year or $89.99 for a lifetime plan, per server. Twelve months at the monthly rate come to $143.88, so the yearly plan saves $93.89, and the lifetime plan costs less than two years of the yearly one.
If levels were your reason for MEE6, Arcane gives levelling and up to 15 role rewards free, and says in its App Directory entry that it has no vote locks. Voice levelling and unlimited rewards are premium. Its premium page offers a monthly and a yearly plan, with a “Login to purchase” button where we expected a price.
Fun and community
Tatsu turns chatting into a game. Members earn XP and credits for talking, spend them on profile cards, pets and furniture for a virtual house, and compete on server leaderboards. Server owners can set up a store that sells roles for points. It is the one bot here that did not come up when we searched Discord’s App Directory, so you add it from tatsu.gg.
TriviaBot runs quiz rounds in a channel, and members answer by typing. Its directory entry counts over 160,000 questions in more than 50 categories, with three game modes, teams and a free public leaderboard for every server. Premium, from £3 a month, adds your own questions, longer quickfire rounds and scheduled games.
Events, tickets and recordings
sesh is a calendar. You create an event in one message, typed the way you would say it, and members RSVP and get reminders in their own time zone. Polls and a link to Google Calendar are free. Recurring events, custom RSVP options and two-way Google Calendar sync are in Premium.
Ticket Tool opens a private channel between a member and your staff when someone asks for help. The free Standard plan is capped at 10 tickets a minute, which a small server will not reach. Premium at $7.99 a month adds full customisation, ticket claiming, direct messages to users and automatic closing of old tickets.
Craig records a voice channel with a separate audio track for each speaker, which is what you want for a podcast or a game session you plan to edit. Free recordings run up to 6 hours and are kept for 7 days. Supporters on Patreon get up to 24 hours and 30 days, and the top tier adds transcripts. Tell everyone in the channel before you record them.
What happened to the music bots
Groovy and Rythm, two of the best-known music bots, both closed in 2021. Groovy’s website still carries the message: it “has ended its service” after receiving a legal notice. Asked about alternatives, its makers wrote that they discourage using any music bot after this. Rythm’s notice from the time, saved by the Internet Archive, says it ended its service to comply with a notice from YouTube, its main source of music, and shut down on 15 September 2021.
Bots that advertise YouTube playback are still easy to find. We have left them all out: Groovy and Rythm were both told to stop, and Groovy’s makers wrote that they did not expect to be the only ones. That includes Pancake from our old list. It is still running, but its website leads with music “from multiple sources” and does not name them.
Rythm itself is back in a different form. It has a page in the App Directory, and rythm.fm now describes a music streaming service with a Discord bot, a Discord Activity and desktop and web apps. Its terms say the music comes from Rythm and its content licensors. Premium removes the adverts.
Discord has two answers of its own. Watch Together is a Discord Activity for watching YouTube videos with others in a call, with a shared playlist. And if you connect Spotify to your account, friends can use Listen Along, though Discord notes they need Spotify Premium.
How to add a bot to a Discord server
Discord’s support page on discovering and adding apps gives the steps. You must own the server or have the Manage Server permission.
- Click the server name at the top left and choose Server Settings, then App Directory. The directory works in the desktop app, in a browser and on Discord’s website.
- Find the bot and read its Overview.
- Press Add App and choose the server.
- Read the screen that lists the permissions and access the bot is asking for.
- Select Authorize.
The bot then appears in the member list and under Server Settings, Integrations. You can also add a bot you have seen posting in a chat: select its profile and press Add App. To remove one, kick it from the member list or use the Integrations page.
Permissions to check first
The permissions screen is the part people skip. Look for Administrator. Discord’s own guide to roles calls it the most powerful permission, one that grants every other permission and bypasses all channel restrictions.
Bots differ widely here. In the App Directory, the install links for MEE6 and Arcane include Administrator. Carl-bot’s asks for a long list that includes kicking, banning and managing roles, but not Administrator. Craig asks for five permissions: view channels, send messages, embed links, connect to voice and change its own nickname.
Match the request to the job. A moderation bot needs to kick, ban and delete messages. A quiz bot does not. After adding a bot you can still cut its powers: Discord says to open Server Settings, Roles, and edit the role that carries the bot’s name. Under Integrations you can also limit which members, roles and channels may use its commands.
What happened to the old list
Pokécord shut down in 2020. Its website said at the time that it had closed indefinitely, and that address now leads to its developer’s personal page. Tatsumaki is the bot now called Tatsu, and its old address forwards to tatsu.gg. Pancake is covered in the music section above.
We could not find the GameStats bot we described in 2019. The bots with similar names in the App Directory today are small ones built for other jobs, such as Battlefield statistics. The TriviaBot in the table comes from Brainbox at triviabot.co.uk, and we cannot confirm it is the same bot as the one in the old article.
Quick answers
Is MEE6 free?
Only in a small way. MEE6’s own plan comparison lists moderation, welcome messages, reaction roles and levels under Premium, which costs $11.99 a month, $49.99 a year or $89.99 once.
What is a free alternative to MEE6?
Sapphire for moderation and welcome messages, Carl-bot for reaction roles and Arcane for levels. All three do those jobs on their free tiers.
What happened to the Groovy bot?
It closed in 2021. Its website says it ended its service after receiving a legal notice, and that refunds were started for premium users.
How do I add a bot to a Discord server on mobile?
Discord’s instructions place the App Directory in the desktop app, a browser and its website. Its other route does not depend on the directory: select the bot’s profile where you see it in a chat and press Add App. Bot websites also carry an Add to Discord button that opens the same authorisation screen in a browser.
Which permissions should a Discord bot not have?
Be slow to grant Administrator, which Discord says bypasses all channel restrictions. Give a bot only what its job needs, and trim its role afterwards under Server Settings, Roles.
