Home  >  Companies  >  Discord
Discord
Chat and voice software for gaming communities and interactive online experiences

Revenue

$725.00M

2024

Valuation

$15.20B

2025

Growth Rate (y/y)

21%

2025

Funding

$1.00B

2025

Details
Headquarters
San Francisco, CA
CEO
Jason Citron
Website
Milestones
FOUNDING YEAR
2015

Revenue

Sacra estimates that Discord hit $725M in annual recurring revenue (ARR) at the end of 2024, up ~21% year-over-year from $600M in 2023.

Discord monetizes primarily through three channels: Nitro, its premium subscription that offers enhanced features like higher-quality streaming and larger upload limits; server boosting, where users pay to unlock perks for their favorite communities; and most recently, advertising, including Sponsored Quests and Video Quests that launched in April and October 2024 respectively.

While subscriptions drove the bulk of Discord’s early growth—scaling from $45M ARRR in 2019 to $600M by 2023—ads are now emerging as a major second engine. The expansion of ads has helped lift Discord from an estimated $660M ARR in August 2024 to $725M by year’s end, maintaining steady growth even as overall momentum slowed from the COVID-era peak.

Valuation

Discord last raised at a valuation of $15.20B as of 2023. The company's current revenue multiple is 25.3x, based on 2023 revenue of $600M against its $15.20B valuation.

The company has raised approximately $1B in total funding across multiple rounds. Key investors include Tencent Holdings, Sony, and major venture capital firms like Greylock Partners and Accel.

Other strategic investors include Dragoneer Investment Group, Fidelity Investments, and Franklin Templeton, demonstrating strong institutional backing from both technology and financial sectors.

Product

None

Discord is a real-time communication platform that combines group text chat, voice calls, and video conferencing designed around persistent servers that function like customizable community hubs. Users create or join servers organized into text channels for threaded conversations and voice channels for live audio communication with 30-300ms latency optimized for gaming coordination.

The platform's core architecture enables seamless transitions between text and voice communication within topic-specific channels. A gaming community might have separate text channels for general discussion, game strategies, and announcements, alongside voice channels for different games or casual hangouts. Users can jump between channels instantly, share screens at up to 4K/60fps with Nitro, and use integrated bots for moderation, music, and custom functionality.

Discord's Activities feature transforms voice channels into interactive spaces where users can play embedded games like Chess or Gartic Phone, watch YouTube videos together, or use collaborative tools like whiteboards. These mini-applications run directly in the browser without installation, leveraging Discord's Social SDK that provides identity, voice, and presence data to developers.

Recent product expansions include Stages for audio-only events similar to Clubhouse, Server Video for group video calls, Scheduled Events for community organization, and Threads for organized discussions. The platform integrates with gaming services like Steam and Twitch to display user activity and streaming status, while productivity integrations with GitHub and Trello enable developer communities to receive notifications directly in Discord channels.

Business Model

Discord operates a freemium B2C model where core communication features are free for unlimited users, with premium subscriptions and platform fees generating revenue. This approach flips the traditional enterprise communication model used by Slack, which charges $7-13 per seat and becomes prohibitively expensive for large communities.

The primary monetization comes through Discord Nitro subscriptions at $2.99 and $9.99 monthly tiers, offering enhanced features like custom emojis, higher upload limits, HD video streaming, and server boosting capabilities. Server boosting creates a community-driven revenue model where Nitro subscribers can enhance their favorite servers with perks like better audio quality and custom features, aligning individual and community incentives.

Discord's platform monetization strategy includes a 10% fee on Server Subscriptions where creators can gate premium content and charge recurring fees to community members. The new Quests feature creates an advertising-adjacent revenue stream by rewarding users with in-game items for streaming specific games, while the Shop enables sales of digital goods like custom avatars and profile effects.

The company's cost structure centers on infrastructure for real-time communication and content delivery, with a global network of servers optimized for low-latency voice and video. Unlike traditional social media platforms, Discord avoids the content moderation costs associated with algorithmic feeds by organizing communication around user-created servers with community-driven moderation.

Competition

Vertically integrated gaming platforms

Steam Chat and console-integrated voice systems pose the most direct threat to Discord's gaming stronghold. Steam Chat offers seamless in-game overlay integration with Shift-Tab access, eliminating the resource overhead of Discord's overlay system. With Steam's 140 million monthly active users adopting the service by default, it creates natural friction-free voice communication for PC gaming squads.

Similarly, PlayStation's Discord integration and Xbox Party systems reduce context-switching by embedding voice directly into gaming ecosystems.

Guilded, owned by Roblox, leverages vertical integration to offer features like 1080p/60fps streaming and tournament brackets for free while Discord paywalls similar capabilities behind Nitro.

Roblox's ownership enables deep integration with account systems and game item linking, creating a captive funnel from Roblox's 70 million daily active users. If Guilded expands its API to other game engines beyond Roblox, it could significantly challenge Discord's position with competitive gaming teams.

Low-latency specialists

TeamSpeak 5 and Mumble target professional esports organizations and privacy-conscious communities with sub-30ms latency compared to Discord's occasional 100ms spikes.

TeamSpeak's $55 annual pricing for 64-slot servers appeals to teams willing to pay for performance and reliability, while its decentralized model attracts organizations concerned about Discord's outages and terms of service restrictions.

These platforms sacrifice Discord's community features and ease of use for superior voice quality and self-hosting capabilities. While they serve niche markets, they retain loyalty among competitive gamers and professional teams where voice latency directly impacts performance.

Broad communication platforms

Slack continues competing for startup and developer communities, particularly where companies want to build external communities around their products. Despite Slack's per-seat pricing disadvantage, its enterprise features and Salesforce integration create switching costs for business users.

Telegram's growth to 700 million monthly active users with similar pseudonymous group features and recent premium subscription launch directly mirrors Discord's monetization strategy, though with weaker gaming integration and lower revenue generation.

TAM Expansion

Platform and monetization diversification

Discord's Embedded App SDK transforms the platform from a communication tool into a mini-app ecosystem where developers can build games, productivity tools, and AI applications directly inside servers. This platform approach opens access to the $60 billion global social gaming micro-transaction market, with Discord taking a 10% cut of in-app purchases while developers retain 90% of revenue.

The Quests advertising system creates a new revenue stream by connecting game developers with Discord's engaged gaming audience through rewarded actions like streaming gameplay for in-game items. Video Quests expanding to mobile in 2025 will tap into the broader mobile gaming advertising market, while the Shop's digital goods marketplace enables monetization of profile customization and server enhancements.

Community expansion beyond gaming

Approximately 45% of new Discord servers in 2024 were created for non-gaming communities including school clubs, fandoms, cryptocurrency projects, music groups, and developer meetups. This diversification reduces dependence on gaming industry cycles while expanding into adjacent markets like education and professional development.

The platform's voice-first collaboration features position Discord to capture portions of the $10-15 billion team communication market currently dominated by Slack and Microsoft Teams. Coding bootcamps and game studios are piloting Discord's persistent voice lobbies for always-on collaboration, creating hybrid models between casual community chat and professional team communication.

Geographic and demographic growth

Discord's fastest user growth comes from mobile-first markets in India, Brazil, and Indonesia, where over 40% of new signups originate. These emerging markets represent massive TAM expansion opportunities as mobile gaming and internet penetration accelerate, with localization efforts and carrier partnerships like Brazil's Claro Nitro promotion driving adoption.

The platform's expansion of payment rails beyond US, UK, and EU markets will unlock in-app purchase revenue across Asia-Pacific and Latin America. As Discord builds local payment integrations and content moderation capabilities for different regulatory environments, it can capture the growing global demand for community-based communication platforms.

Risks

Content moderation: Discord's value proposition as a largely private, lightly moderated platform creates regulatory and reputational risks as the company prepares for public markets. The platform has faced criticism for hosting communities engaged in harassment and hate speech, and increased moderation could alienate core users while insufficient moderation could trigger regulatory action or advertiser boycotts that limit monetization options.

Gaming dependency: Despite diversification efforts, Discord remains heavily dependent on gaming communities and gaming industry health for user growth and engagement. A prolonged downturn in gaming, shifts toward integrated platform communication, or changes in gaming social behavior could significantly impact Discord's core user base and revenue growth trajectory.

Monetization scalability: Discord's low ARPU of $2.54 reflects the challenges of monetizing pseudonymous social platforms without advertising. While the subscription model avoids advertiser pressure, it may limit revenue scaling compared to ad-supported platforms, and adding advertising could damage the user experience that differentiates Discord from competitors like Facebook and Twitter.

Funding Rounds

Share Name Issue Price Issued At
Series I $550.6244 Sep 2021
Share Name Issue Price Issued At
Series H $280.2487 Dec 2020
Share Name Issue Price Issued At
Series G $144.1809 Jun 2020
Share Name Issue Price Issued At
Series F-1 $87.24902 Jan 2019
Series F $76.91687 Apr 2018
Share Name Issue Price Issued At
Series E $37.11848 Feb 2017
Share Name Issue Price Issued At
Series D $14.11418 Jun 2016
Share Name Issue Price Issued At
Series C $5.91703 Apr 2016
Share Name Issue Price Issued At
Series B $3.39214 Feb 2015
Share Name Issue Price Issued At
Series A $1.94573 Nov 2014
View the source Certificate of Incorporation copy.

News

DISCLAIMERS

This report is for information purposes only and is not to be used or considered as an offer or the solicitation of an offer to sell or to buy or subscribe for securities or other financial instruments. Nothing in this report constitutes investment, legal, accounting or tax advice or a representation that any investment or strategy is suitable or appropriate to your individual circumstances or otherwise constitutes a personal trade recommendation to you.

This research report has been prepared solely by Sacra and should not be considered a product of any person or entity that makes such report available, if any.

Information and opinions presented in the sections of the report were obtained or derived from sources Sacra believes are reliable, but Sacra makes no representation as to their accuracy or completeness. Past performance should not be taken as an indication or guarantee of future performance, and no representation or warranty, express or implied, is made regarding future performance. Information, opinions and estimates contained in this report reflect a determination at its original date of publication by Sacra and are subject to change without notice.

Sacra accepts no liability for loss arising from the use of the material presented in this report, except that this exclusion of liability does not apply to the extent that liability arises under specific statutes or regulations applicable to Sacra. Sacra may have issued, and may in the future issue, other reports that are inconsistent with, and reach different conclusions from, the information presented in this report. Those reports reflect different assumptions, views and analytical methods of the analysts who prepared them and Sacra is under no obligation to ensure that such other reports are brought to the attention of any recipient of this report.

All rights reserved. All material presented in this report, unless specifically indicated otherwise is under copyright to Sacra. Sacra reserves any and all intellectual property rights in the report. All trademarks, service marks and logos used in this report are trademarks or service marks or registered trademarks or service marks of Sacra. Any modification, copying, displaying, distributing, transmitting, publishing, licensing, creating derivative works from, or selling any report is strictly prohibited. None of the material, nor its content, nor any copy of it, may be altered in any way, transmitted to, copied or distributed to any other party, without the prior express written permission of Sacra. Any unauthorized duplication, redistribution or disclosure of this report will result in prosecution.