15 Surprising Discord Server Statistics (2024)

My husband and I hang out with our friends several times a month. But we’re not meeting at a fancy restaurant or someone’s house. No, instead, our hangout spot is a Discord call. It’s there where we screen-share our favorite group game — Trivia Murder Party 2, anyone? — and engage in friendly competition in the form of Mario Kart 8 on our Switches.

Instantly, the miles between us disappear. Even though we’re physically scattered across the Northeastern region, these gaming sessions feel like we’re all in the same room, whether there are 4 or 12 of us. I sometimes wonder if we’d ever get to enjoy these moments without a reliable platform such as Discord.

Discord has been around since 2015, and over its young life, it’s already evolved into something beyond its original intentions. Even with that said, plenty of surprising statistics shed light on Discord’s impact and influence — so, without further ado, let’s dive in.

As of this year, Discord is only around a decade old but already has 586 million registered users on its platform. What’s even more impressive is that it’s also up 87% from June 2020, when it only had 300 million users.¹

This significant growth may be due to the COVID-19 lockdown period and, subsequently, when the use of digital services increased.² The Gen Z generation also has a greater online presence, which may play a significant role in the increase.

While there are millions of registered users for Discord, only a fraction use the platform monthly, but it’s still at an impressive 245 million monthly visitors.³ To put this in perspective, that’s more than half the population of the entire United States.⁴

Discord is headquartered in San Francisco, so it may be no surprise that the platform’s largest audience is the US. But other countries — Brazil, Russia, India, and the UK— are also gaining interest in the instant messaging platform.³

Moreover, the US has around 244.5 million monthly active users; Brazil has 115.9 million; Russia has 39.9 million; India has 38.4 million; and the UK has 34.8 million monthly visitors.

About 16% of US adults have a Discord account.⁵ And while the number of UK users may not seem very impressive, it actually is, considering its population is only 67 million!⁶

Servers are individual spaces dedicated to a specific community or friend group. There are a whopping 19 million servers — or communities — on Discord.⁷ These servers span the gaming, entertainment, education, science and tech, and music industries. (Don’t worry: We’ll get into the most popular servers next.)

Out of the 19 million servers on Discord, the platform’s top two most popular servers are Midjourney and LimeWire.⁸ Midjourney has nearly 18 million members, while LimeWire has around 2.3 million.

And no — this isn’t the LimeWire you used to store all your music in the mid-2000s. In 2022, LimeWire rebranded as a platform designed to create generative artificial intelligence (gen-AI) art. LimeWire competes directly with popular gen-AI platforms like Midjourney, DALL-E, and Leonardo.

The Roblox game Blox Fruits has achieved 114 billion lifetime visits since it came out in 2019.⁹ Blox Fruits is Discord’s #1 gaming server with that impressive number in mind.⁸ It has 1.5 million members.

Blox Fruits is based on the “One Piece” manga/anime series. The series’ live-action remake surged to the top of Netflix’s global charts in 2023.¹⁷

Discord is known for mainly serving the gaming community, but in recent years, it has appealed to all types of people — not just those who like games.

Of its millions of users, those surveyed said they don’t use Discord for gaming content only. Nearly 75% of the community uses it for other interests, like music or technology.¹⁰

Discord, whose motto is “Your place to talk,” shared more than 4 billion messages daily on the platform.¹¹ Discord also recently raised $100 million to enhance existing and new features of the instant message service.

As Discord becomes more popular among other communities and industries, it’s also becoming a common instant messaging and voice conferencing app for workplaces and friends who want to hop on a call with one another.

To comply with this demand, Discord has more than 850 physical servers across 13 regions dedicated to voice calls.¹⁰ If you’ve ever joined a call and noticed it maxed out at 25 participants, it’s because Discord has set this limit to maintain optimal performance.

Across its 850+ physical servers, Discord also has 30 data centers solely dedicated to housing them.¹² This ensures better ping time between two calls, even if the users are on opposite sides of the globe.

Gen Z is the most common demographic to use Discord with 44.19% of Discord users in the 18 to 24 age group.¹³

This younger generation is the most active among all internet users in the US, with nearly half of those surveyed stating they’re almost constantly online.¹⁶

Following closely behind are users aged 25 to 34, constituting 28.23% of the user base. The age groups of 35-44, 45-54, 55-64, and 65+ make up 14.1%, 7.08%, 3.73%, and 2.67%, respectively.

Furthermore, about 65% of Discord users are male, while 35% are female.

Although Discord is primarily used for instant messaging, it ranks as the fourth most popular video game streaming platform among US gamers.¹⁸ Twitch, YouTube, and Facebook come in first, second, and third, respectively. Behind Discord are BigoLive, Disco Melee, and DLive.

Visitors who visit similar websites, like Twitter, Reddit, and YouTube, are also more likely to search tags, including #news, #games, and #software.¹³ This information is based on the top tags on websites Discord and other platform users visit.

More specifically, Discord visitors are primarily interested in video game consoles and accessories, programming and developer software, computer electronics and technologies, adult entertainment, and graphics multimedia and web design.

Discord is free, but you can upgrade to Discord Nitro for new features and more personalized options. About 10 million, or 4% of active users, are Nitro subscribers today.³

Nitro is a paid subscription service that unlocks features and benefits within Discord. You can level up your servers with custom emojis, a custom Discord number tag, animated avatars, 50 to 500MB uploads, custom profiles, HD video streaming, and server boosts. It comes in two levels: Nitro Basic and Nitro.¹⁵

Discord Nitro, introduced in 2016, has actually seen a slight decrease in sales revenue from $208 million in 2022 to $207 million in 2023.¹⁴

Experts theorize that Discord’s strategic decision to provide users with a handful of free features justifies this dip. So, while the user base is expected to grow, the growth in connection to direct revenues is not guaranteed.

It’s clear Discord isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

What started as a platform where gamers from all walks of life could come together quickly has evolved into a catch-all instant messaging, streaming, and conferencing platform for those interested in games, entertainment, education, news, and technology.

And if you’re not already a Discord member, chances are there’s something there bound to pique your interest.

1. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1367922/discord-registered-users-worldwide/

2. https://techreport.com/statistics/discord-statistics/

3. https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/discord-users-by-country

4. https://www.census.gov/popclock/

5. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1338866/us-users-having-discord-account-by-gender/

6. https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/uk-population/

7. https://www.marketingscoop.com/small-business/how-many-discord-servers-are-there/

8. https://discord.com/servers

9. https://www.pockettactics.com/blox-fruits/14-billion

10. https://www.cloudwards.net/discord-statistics/

11. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1349341/discord-messages-sent-per-day/

12. https://discord.com/blog/how-discord-handles-two-and-half-million-concurrent-voice-users-using-webrtc

13. https://www.similarweb.com/website/discord.com/#demographics

14. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1368269/discord-sales-revenue-estimates/

15. https://discord.com/nitro

16. https://www.statista.com/topics/2576/us-millennials-internet-usage-and-online-shopping/

17. https://www.dexerto.com/anime/one-piece-live-action-becomes-the-top-series-in-over-50-countries-2276351/

18. https://www.emarketer.com/chart/245227/platforms-used-by-us-gamers-watch-livestreams-of-video-games-feb-2021-of-respondents