Slack vs Discord: Which One for Work, Teams and Communities

Pick Slack for a company and Discord for a community. Slack is built for work: 2,600+ business apps, shared channels with other companies, and admin tools such as retention settings, data exports and single sign-on on paid plans. It costs $7.25 a user a month on Pro, paid yearly. Discord is free for everyone, keeps your full message history, and lets groups drop into voice channels without paying. It has no single sign-on, retention settings or compliance exports, which is why most companies do not run on it.

Both apps show whether you are around, and both use the same 10-minute timer. Slack turns your dot grey 10 minutes after your last keyboard or mouse input. Discord's own client code, which we read on 9 October 2026, switches you to Idle after 600,000 ms, also 10 minutes.

Slack vs Discord, side by side

Sources, read again on 3 November 2026: the price and history lines on slack.com/pricing, the plan prices and upload sizes on discord.com/nitro, and Discord's File Attachments FAQ (edited 30 September 2026), which says the free limit rose from 10 MB to 20 MB in August 2026.

Discord vs Slack free tier

Discord's free tier is more generous. It keeps all your messages, allows group voice and video, and has no app limit. Nitro only adds personal perks such as bigger uploads and custom emoji; nobody on your team has to pay for the server to work.

Slack's free plan shows only the last 90 days of messages and files, deletes data older than a year, allows 10 apps, and limits huddles to two people. The full list is in Slack free plan limits. If you want a work tool with full free history, see free Slack alternatives.

Is Discord better than Slack for business?

For most companies, no. Four things hold Discord back at work:

• • No company controls. No SAML single sign-on, no SCIM provisioning, no retention policies, no data export of private channels and DMs for admins. A company cannot remove a former employee's access through its identity provider.
• • Personal accounts. People join with their own Discord account, often the one they use for games, with their friends list next to work.
• • Fewer work integrations. Jira, Salesforce, Google Drive and GitHub all have deep Slack apps. On Discord, most integrations are bots and webhooks.
• • No shared channels between companies. Slack Connect links two companies' workspaces; on Discord, outsiders join your server.

Discord makes sense for small teams that are really communities: open-source projects, game studios that talk to players, creators, and startups that care more about free voice rooms than about compliance.

Slack vs Discord for community

For a public or semi-public community, Discord usually wins. It is free at any size, keeps history, has roles and permissions built for large groups, stage and voice channels, and forum channels. Many members already have an account. Slack communities hit the 90-day history limit on the free plan, and paid Slack costs per member, which rarely makes sense for a community.

Slack still suits professional communities where members use Slack at work all day and would rather not open another app.

Custom emoji rules differ too: Slack caps an emoji at 128 KB and Discord at 256 KB, with 50 static slots per server. Fixes for a rejected upload are in Discord emoji too big.

Status and presence: Slack vs Discord

What Discord's client code says about Idle

Discord serves the same JavaScript to its browser app and its desktop app. This script downloads it from discord.com/app and prints the lines that decide Idle:

import re, urllib.request
UA = {"User-Agent": "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh) Chrome/141"}
get = lambda u: urllib.request.urlopen(urllib.request.Request(u, headers=UA), timeout=60).read().decode("utf-8", "ignore")
html = get("https://discord.com/app")
print("build", re.search(r'BUILD_NUMBER\W+(\d+)', html).group(1))
web = [s for s in re.findall(r'src="(/assets/[^"]+\.js)"', html) if "/web." in s][0]
js = get("https://discord.com" + web)
print("threshold:", re.search(r"n7=6e5", js).group(0))
print("desktop poll:", re.search(r"setTimeout\(e,10\*u\.A\.Millis\.SECOND\)", js).group(0))
print("browser poll:", re.search(r"setInterval\(N,30\*u\.A\.Millis\.SECOND\)", js).group(0))
print("browser input:", re.search(r'window\.addEventListener\("mouseup",e\),window\.addEventListener\("wheel",e\),window\.addEventListener\("keypress",e\)', js).group(0))

Output on 9 October 2026:

build 633029
threshold: n7=6e5
desktop poll: setTimeout(e,10*u.A.Millis.SECOND)
browser poll: setInterval(N,30*u.A.Millis.SECOND)
browser input: window.addEventListener("mouseup",e),window.addEventListener("wheel",e),window.addEventListener("keypress",e)

The idle check compares the time since your last activity with that 600,000 ms constant. In the desktop app, Discord asks the operating system for its idle time every 10 seconds, so typing in any app keeps you online, the same way the Slack desktop app reads the computer's idle time. The desktop app also marks you idle at once when the screen locks or the computer sleeps. In a browser tab, Discord counts only mouse clicks, scroll-wheel moves and key presses inside the Discord tab, and checks every 30 seconds.

On Slack the away timer is fixed and you cannot change it; see can you change Slack's away time. How to look offline is in can you appear offline on Slack.

Discord's Invisible status has no Slack equivalent: it shows you as offline while you keep chatting. What it hides and what still gives you away is in Discord invisible vs offline. Discord's yellow moon is covered in what does idle mean on Discord, and the phone rules in does Discord show idle on mobile. Every Discord color and symbol, next to the Slack icons, is in Discord status icons meaning, and custom status steps are in how to set a custom status on Discord.

Slack vs Discord vs Teams

• Slack: best for chat-first companies that use many apps and work with clients in shared channels.

• Microsoft Teams: best for companies already paying for Microsoft 365, where Teams costs nothing extra. See Slack vs Teams.

• Discord: best for communities and small informal teams that want free voice and full history.

FAQ

What is the difference between Discord and Slack?

Slack is a paid work tool with business apps and admin controls. Discord is a free community app with voice channels, full history and personal accounts.

Is Discord better than Slack?

For communities, often yes. For companies, usually no, because Discord has no single sign-on, retention settings or compliance exports.

Is Discord free for teams?

Yes. Servers are free at any size. Nitro is an optional personal subscription.

Can I use Discord instead of Slack at work?

You can, and some startups do. You give up SSO, admin exports, retention settings and most business integrations.

Did Discord copy Slack?

They grew from different places. Slack launched in 2014 as team chat for companies; Discord launched in 2015 as voice and text chat for gamers. Their channel lists look alike, but the products target different users.