Matrix has spaces, which are collections of rooms.
There's also XMPP. It's not quite the same as discord, but it's another federated chat protocol.
It's not federated, but revolt.chat is probably the closest open source discord alternative.
this post was submitted on 22 Apr 2025
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Matrix has "communities" (or "spaces"?) which can kind of work like discord servers
You sure? It's not identical but it's close enough. (matrix) these are spaces
To answer your question, there's no alternative besides matrix. Sorry.
How do you find spaces/communities to join?
This doesn't cover all rooms. However, for a bigger list use: https://matrixrooms.info/
On element:
Press "Join public room"
On cinny:
Ah my hero. Thanks!
Does it have voice channels?
yes it does, and it works as well as discord, it's just in beta and not supported everywhere yet
Really? My mistake (other reply) will edit, thank you
See blisterexes comment
Look my edit I created at the same time
It doesn't? What's the telephone icon then on the linked screenshot? Or is it like only 1to1 calls instead of multi user rooms to join like discord/teamspeak u mean?
Oh, i see your edit now. I did a little testing, sadly this only applies to rooms with two people (including you) only, so it only functions like a normal 1:1 call (there's group videochat tho)
What’s the telephone icon then on the linked screenshot
If you mean my very top comment, there's no telephone icon :p I guess you mean that person symbol? Those are DMs :D
Or is it like only 1to1 calls
Yep
multi user rooms to join like discord/teamspeak u mean?
Also yeah sadly. If you're insistent on it, as i said mumble is a good choice; FOSS, not tied to one server. Here's a link https://www.mumble.info/
There is revolt and rocket.chat but yes I'd still do matrix over the others unless a direct discord-like clone is absolutely a must for some reason
Yep, but OP asked for a federated one and neither of those federate, which is why i didn't include them
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it's only rooms instead of servers with channels..
Literally the same thing but with different names. I use Matrix with Element, and it is exactly the same as Discord. Laid out the same, functionally the same (actually better since it encrypts everything), and even the UI is nearly identical.
From a chat standpoint, the two are near identical - yes - but Matrix lacks the "voice/video calls as persistent rooms" feature that Discord has. This was planned a while back, but has recently been pushed on the backburner^[1]^ as they work on Element Call.
Early on Matrix was sort of being built up as an IRC/Discord alternative, but recently they've pivoted more towards a WA/Telegram/Slack alternative as most of their financial support comes from European governments and companies looking for strong and secure internal communication solutions they can manage themselves.
So, TL;DR you probably won't see the exact Discord like features you want land in the spec any time soon as they're not being funded.
So that means, right now:
- No persistent voice/video rooms (but they are on the roadmap!)
- No push-to-talk or "game friendly" settings like voice auto-detection (also not really on the roadmap)
Having said all that, Matrix is brilliant and I highly encourage people to check it out. I use a Matrix <-> Signal bridge for most of my comms with my friends, and we voice chat on Mumble. Not ideal, but you get to avoid Discord and you get a very similar experience! Bonus points for Mumble as it's super lightweight.
~[1] It's not really on the backburner so much as it's something that will have to be worked on after the new VOIP stack - Element Call - is integrated in the wider Matrix ecosystem. There is an experimental "video rooms" feature, but that really isn't the same as a native, persistent voice-only room.~
Do people not use discord for voice chat? Hop in hop out permanent voice channels that show if your friends are already in or not?
Last I looked you have to use Discord, Teamspeak, or Mumble for this
Element has both voice and video chat. It needs to be enabled first in the settings.
It has voice calls and video conferencing, not the same.
There are "servers" on Matrix. They are called communities
Here is the relevant part of the documentation for that: https://matrix.org/docs/communities/getting-started/
Wait, I thought those were called spaces. Have I been calling them wrong all the time?
That document seems to use communities in the normal English sense and spaces in the "collection of Matrix rooms" sense. I would say spaces are what they're called and a community is just an informal group of like-minded people who can be better-organized using spaces.
IRC still exists
The AP is not really good for chats, so I would rather use the Matrix protocol that Element, for example, offers as a client.
No ActivityPub federated one yet. Someone might make it someday though.
Dansup of Pixelfed and Loops fame is working on an IM app called Sup. Info seems sparse on it though.
That isn't exactly a discord clone, though. More like WhatsApp but federated. At that point I'd actually just rather use matrix than a messaging app by that cocky dev.
I hope you're ok with waiting for a long time, dansup sure as fuck takes his time with everything.
I never became a discord guy, but it seems like IRC (not federated the same way lemmy/mastodon/etc are but functionally similar) would meet the requirements.
While it's probably not exactly what you're looking for, I wanted to give vibe coding a try and wound up making a discord like client if you think it might be handy. It's not actually a chat server, it's just a client that uses a chat style layout to display posts under the mastodon api.
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