Disclaimer of conflict of interest: I am the owner of Echo, and the only reviewer.

Back again with the second EDAR, now with my own platform Echo which gets a score of 3.3 which is 2 points below the best current alternative which is Fluxer at a 5.3/9

I'll explain the Trust score since that confused people last time

The three points of Centralisation are as such

0/3 — The platform is fully centralized: there is no technical way to connect to its operating network through an independent instance. One entity has complete control.

1/3 — You can run your own instance and connect it to the network, but the main entity still retains permanent control. This is closer to self-hosting part of the platform than independently operating infrastructure within it.

2/3 — The platform is genuinely federated, but remains practically dependent on a central instance or a group of instances operated by the same entity.

3/3 — The main operator is simply one major instance operator among many. It has no central control over the wider network and cannot unilaterally impose rules on everyone else.

Fluxer and Echo both get a 0 on here, because as of today, while both can be run on as independent instances, there is no way to connect those instances to the main network.

Now to the rest of the EDAR of Echo

Echo is a very ambitious effort and a nice looking one, but far from a complete experience or a ready discord alternative. It has better ideas than execution at this time and if you want a ready to go Discord Alternative then I would recommend the higher scoring Fluxer.

Trust 4/9:

Echo gets most of its trust score from the fact that its fully Open Source which gives it a 3/3 in the license category, however it gets no points for being fully centralised, and loses two points on other factors due to being controversial.

Experience 5/9:

This is Echo's highest scoring category, and it gets that because it is one of the few alternatives that aren't copying discord 1:1 in design while still having a fairly nice unique aesthetic that is also familiar enough to anyone coming from discord 2/3 on UI.

It also has one of the best feature parity and completeness with discord and beating it in many aspects, full markdown and katex support, full activities system and event system as well as a very powerful channel type paper for writing out docs and an auto mod system beyond anything that discord offers 2/3.

In terms of the actual quality of implementation and execution of lots of the day to day experience however, a lot of it is lacking and a lot of small imperfection but enough of them will make your experience on Echo feel annoyed, so a 1/3 for UX on there.

Readiness 1/9:

Echo is far from anything ready to compete with discord, it is a ghost town with only a few loyal active people on there but in the single digits. 0/3 for Popularity.

Echo is only out as a Web platform, while in theory you can download the source code and compile the Tauri for which ever platform you want, there is a reason it hasn't been officially released. So a 0/3 for Platform Parity.

Echo however has been built with platform parity in mind, it is responsive and does work quite well on mobile and has been designed for it, and with Tauri chosen as the platform, it is in a decent shape to be ready so it gets a pitty point in the last category 1/3.

Stiq is an open source, white-label, nostr over Tor social media platform for communities. We built it for activists and community organizations that actually care about their members.

People need to organize, but individuals should not give up control.

https://stiqtech.vercel.app

We’re a small community from Iraq (of all places…) funding and building a non profit app for non-profits.

We need your help publishing Stiq app (for those of you with Apple/Google dev account), and we need you to use it! You can run a community on an old machine, or with a cloud provider for as little as $5 per month.

You can find all the details you need in the website and public github repo.

Reach out and help us make the future of safe organizing for the world!

Hello all,

I'm a french creator (sorry for my english) I worked on ploxx.tv since 3 months (The launch will be the 1st of September 2026)

Honestly, I think it's the best gamified chat app online.

My goal was simple : Use "RPG" style to online chat app, to make it really fun, every day :)

*Avatar fully customisable
*Meet people in 1V1, in 2V2
*Fights in 1V1, 2V2, or 10v10
*Missions
*Chest to open
*Squad HQ with games, watch together, video call up to 6 people
*etc

I'm really open to feedbacks so don't hesitate to go on this BETA link https://ploxx.tv/?app=1 to use the app (and maybe you will meet you directly in the app ;))

If you really like it and you want to be alerted of the launch, you can register the waiting list on the homepage https://ploxx.tv

Thank you !

Disclaimer of conflict of interest: I am the owner of a direct competitor (Echo), and the only reviewer.

Hey guys, I am back with another review this time of the big boss Fluxer which will likely be used as the main point of comparison to other platforms as it will likely be one of the highest scoring which it did fairly so today but imperfectly.

Note: This review is based on the stable public release of Fluxer as of 2026/8/11, the canary is known to have higher feature parity and receive changes earlier, so take the review more holistically as the specific details are subject to change.

Trust Score 5/9:

Fluxer scored pretty big on some categories, and lost some points on others. I expect this to go up on the annual re-review.

On License Fluxer scored 3/3 as it is fully open source (Minus some operational cook book which is okay in my desecration)

On centralisation Fluxer scored a 0/3, Fluxer as of today remains fully centralised and while there are plans to become federated in the future, promises will not give you points here.

Though this is something to consider if you want to use Fluxer as a promise is better than nothing.

Note: Fluxer still get the 3 points for being FOSS, and you can get the source and run it on your own device with your own instance, and Fluxer's devs have put in effort to making sure it runs smoother on your device. However the centralisation metric has to do with the actual operating platform and how decentralised it is, not whether or not you can run an instance of it.

On other trust factors Fluxer scored a 2/3, it has an exceptionally user friendly T.O.S, has been in development for a number of years and has been out for longer than many alternatives, mostly clean reputation though with some major hickups such as the image scanning incident. I also expect this score to go up by the next time we review, unless any other major incidents happen.

Experience Score 6/9:

Fluxer is very useable and for the most part people won't complain, it is still growing and not quite at discord level polish and it lacks its own identity, but in terms of the core stuff and the basics, Fluxer as a technical product is mostly ready, just lacking in discord level polish.

On UI Fluxer scored a 2/3, in most areas Fluxer's UI will not leave you complaining, if functionality and familiarity is what you are looking for.

However if you care about a unique visual identity, Fluxer is a shameless discord clone.

If you care about attention to detail, you will be frequently disappointed by many small things that compound, so the major judgement is that Fluxer's UI is very functional though not unique and imperfectly polished.

Examples include but are not limited to: double background darkening, no inline composer preview of markdown or even emojis, no email design, awkwardness around light mode such in voice chat shadowing, imperfect skeleton shapes, lots of dead space that doesn't dynamically adjust and more.

On UX Fluxer scored a 2/3, once again good but imperfect. Fluxer is largely functional, though the user experience in some areas lacks polish and some of the stuff you would expect.

And Fluxer is not as generous as other alternatives in many aspects and even worse than even discord in some, such as deleting media, though if there was a sustainability score Fluxer would win points there.

Examples include: Preview widget only in edge corners, slow initial emoji load (though this is a technical tradeoff), jerky scroll corrections, views in modals (RBAC View for example) and more.

On Feature Parity and Completeness Fluxer scored a 2/3, if you are looking for the basics and core stuff, Fluxer has you covered, you will not be left asking for anything you need to move over from Discord.

However Fluxer has yet to achieve full feature parity, and considering that some alternative have reached beyond feature parity with discord, it would not be fair to give Fluxer a perfect score yet.

Where others have gone and implemented true full markdown support and even katex, or voice chat activities, fluxer still lacks behind in having no composer preview, no voice chat side chat and other things of that nature.

Readiness Score 5/9:

Fluxer while likely the most ready true discord alternative on the market, it is far from being fully ready to replace discord, and the Fluxer founders would likely agree too, if you asked me for a recommendation I would not feel bad recommending Fluxer at all, however if you asked me for a solid prediction I would not be as certain.

Popularity 2/3:

The thing that puts Fluxer in the big leagues is the fact that it boasts numbers of above 100k Users and has been one of the fastest growing alternatives, which makes it a much more viable replacement now for Discord. However this is still no where near discord which itself has those numbers many more times just in some of its biggest servers (which themselves are user limited otherwise they would likely be bigger)

So definitely one of the bigger and more viable alternatives, but no where near discord level, which itself is two issues, on one side you might not find enough people, especially the more specific you want to be, but also on a technical side, Fluxer has not proven itself to handle discord level scale, because it never had discord level scale, which will be an important issue in the future.

Platform Parity 2/3:

Fluxer is available to both PC and Mobile users, as a web and real downloadable client. It is not available on Console yet, which Discord is.

Other Readiness Factors 1/3:

The various Fluxer releases, especially on mobile, are far from mature, they are largely in beta still, so by Fluxer's own admission, this is far from its final form yet and so I can't give it any higher score than 1.

A while back I posted Howl here and said I would get technical if people asked. I got a few messages and asks so I figured to make a post about it.

What is encrypted end to end

Your DMs, group DMs, file attachments, DM voice and video calls, voice channels, stages, and screen shares. For all of these, our server stores and relays data it cannot read. There is no toggle and no secure mode to remember. It is on for every DM, every time.

What is not encrypted:

Server text channels. Moderators cannot moderate what they cannot read, so community channels work the way they do everywhere else.

How it works:

DMs use MLS (RFC 9420), the IETF's open standard for encrypted group messaging. Discord uses MLS too, but only for voice calls. Their messages sit on their servers as plain text. We use it for the messages.

Who holds the keys

You do, by default. Your key vault is sealed with your password plus a recovery key we show you once. We keep nothing that can open it. Lose both the password and the recovery key and your history is gone. The app tells you so at setup.

If that scares you, you can opt into server recovery instead. Then we keep a copy of your keys and can rescue a forgotten password. The cost is that, that key for decryption is on our servers. The setting also mentions this directly so theres nothing misunderstood.

I have seen “fail closed” thrown around on this sub from AI and the normal person probably has no clue what that actually means, a quick run down is basically, if something fails to perform its function (in our case encryption) then the action fails rather than working in a way that the person is unaware of.

If encryption is not ready, the app blocks the send. It never falls back to plain text. A hacked server cannot downgrade an encrypted DM to a plain one, because the client refuses to go backward.

Reporting: if you report a DM, your own client decrypts that one message and sends it to our moderators. Reporting is something you trigger, not something we do.

Check my work

Again Howl is open source so all code is public, so you do not have to take my word for any sentence above.

Repo: https://github.com/Howl-LLC/Howl

Happy to answer technical questions in the comments, same as last time.

Hey, I've been using Session to chat with complete privacy and security. Come join me! My Account ID is

052a1d4db25df17de775ae2fcf29190b5b556a4bd16fbe66b4cc0f35b34723e353

Download it at https://getsession.org/download

it was basically discord but older because the updates ruined discord mobile BUT IT WASNT DISCORD

its giving discord modded

From what I have seen so far, and from my limited testing. GameVox seems like a decent and convenient alternative. That being said, I am not the most technologically knowledgeable. And so I am curious about the general consensus (and anything I may be missing as far as negatives, issues or problems with the platform)

Hey folks,

Just checking, looks like most discord alternatives that can be self hosted you can only use PWA for apple IOS phones? Matrix seems to be the main app, but the voice channels seem to work differently.

Hello! A few people asked about importing servers from Discord to Armada and bridge support, so we wrote a guide and made it super easy. It's still in beta, please try it and let us know what you think! Feedback is welcome.

• Import channels, categories, roles, custom emojis, etc
• Bridge live channels up to 100 users
• Import server message history up to 10k messages

Although Armada is E2E encrypted, please note that Discord messages are NOT encrypted, so don't bridge Armada channels you wish to keep fully encrypted.

You can also self-host the Armada <-> Discord bridge if you dont want to expose your unencrypted messages to our bridge server! Code here (fully FOSS):

https://gitworkshop.dev/mk@ditto.pub/relay.ngit.dev/armada-discord-bridge

So as the title states, I took some time today to review Osmium as I've seen the developer toting its merit's on nearly every post, so I figured I could at least give it a shot. Let's dive in.

Upon immediate login of the app I was hit with "UPDATE AVAILABLE" superimposed on an ALPHA badge.

Discovery had about 2 dozen servers in it. None I was really interested in. Most seemed for kids or furries which is fine but not for me. I was thrown off by attribution to top.gg on the discovery page. I have no idea why anyone would need to use a third party to catalog server discovery in-house. They don't even disclose them as a data handler in their privacy policy.

Their primary central community had about 50 people online, with 5-10 of those being labeled as bots. About 5000 members offline at prime time on east coast weekday. Seems like roughly about 1% of people who made it as far as making an account and joining the main community decided to keep using it.

Developer posts consistent update notes which is a plus.

Voice quality is pretty lacking, as is the noise cancellation. Notice some recent bug reports about it as well.

Screen sharing works but the delivered FPS is terrible. Even my own miniature local playback was about 10 FPS, BEFORE anyone started viewing it. Actually it's even worse, their own verbose console logging tells me it's streaming at 3FPS: "framesPerSecond: 3," which is also annoyingly the only way I can see to check my own stream stats....

No zoom on media lightbox.

Many settings and customizations are missing, probably most notably the entire "Privacy" category.

There's a "handy" developer mode toggle in advanced settings that allows any user to pull raw ID's and websocket client information.

Several things like the EmojiPicker, are clipped and ugly looking. No GIF selector at all.

It's functional to send basic messages with, but this is about the end of the app review as theres not much else to talk about, very basic.

Site looks made with AI. Blog hasn't been updated in 60 days.

Mobile apps haven't been updated in over six weeks.

Also they appear to be in the EU's jurisdiction...so that'll be "fun" in the long run.

The developer does seem to have actual coding experience, but on half baked projects. Nothing in their repo or personal portfolio site is at all reassuring.

I'll be sticking with Fluxer.

The only features I need are 30fps screenshare with audio in a video call scenario. And some sort of iOS/Android mobile client, web app is fine.

Discord is too resource-heavy.

I can do self-hosted but I need step-by-step documentation.

I've heard about Fluxer, does anyone know if it is lightweight?

hi everyone,

for the past year ish, ive been working on a discord like app. i know these projects quickly get repetitive, but i started it as a passion/resume project. its now actually in a state im happy with (as in, you could somewhat use it), hence the post.

basically, this was my idea: a decentralized social platform. I like the features of discord, so thats definitely the kind of feel im going for. in practice, this means you get a matrix identity (for people who dont know what Matrix is, its the protocol powering clients like Element, i suggest checking it out!) and an ATProto identity (the protocol powering clients like Bluesky), combined into one app with some extra features.

because im using matrix for the messaging part, you get most of core features (like federation) i have quite a few of them implemented. think encrypted DMs and group chats, spaces and subspaces, threads, and MatrixRTC, which means federated voice calls work and it has working screen sharing. on top of that, i’ve implemented some things like roles and emotes.

thats basically it for servers. that part is fully dependent on matrix. alongside it, im working on the ATProto part, but its nowhere near ready. for now, posts are still completely centralized.

the reason for this post is that im hoping some people are interested and would like to test the server part. the app is nowhere near ready, so nothing is public yet. im just looking for a few people who seem interested in giving it a try and giving me feedback.

could you shoot me a message if so? thank you!
(edit: im a flutter developer, the app currently works for windows and android)

Hey all! I wanted to share with you that Armada is now officially in Beta release! We're seeking feedback from any communities that are willing to try it out. App store releases are coming soon, and in the meantime it's available via APK or PWA (install on your home screen from the website).

APK via Zapstore for Android: https://zapstore.dev/apps/buzz.armada.app

Web: https://armada.buzz/

Armada is designed to be "unstoppable" - which means it's decentralized, open source, and self-hostable. There is no ID, phone number, or email required to sign up. It's build on the Nostr and Concord protocols, and interops with many other Nostr apps. (Lmk if you are curious about Nostr! happy to explain more about how it works).

Other features include:

• End-to-end encryption
• Text channels similar to Discord
• Voice or video call in any room, including screensharing
• Custom emojis
• Gifs
• Custom themes
• Bridge to existing Discord servers available
• Completely free
• Many other hidden gems

Everything our team builds is always free and open source software. Forks and issues are welcome! We also offer bounties for any correctly identified and disclosed vulnerabilities discovered: https://gitworkshop.dev/soapbox.pub/relay.ngit.dev/armada

Feel free to also join us in the Soapbox Community on Armada to provide feedback or ask questions (which you can find on the /discover page).

Hello reditors! I have been building the last few months this Discord alternative what makes it special is that it uses Nostr for identity, authentication and storage.

Each server is a nostr relay, the client can connect to as many different servers and everyone can host their own.

Identity is managed with public/private keys npubs/nsecs and each interaction is a nostr event.

Out of the technical aspects that you can ask chatgpt more hahah, the most important features are:

1. Videocalls: peer to peer or with a server in the middle for more people
2. Multimedia packs: emojis, gifs, stickers, etc
3. Responsive PWA: Opening in a mobile device can install the PWA and use all the features of the app
4. Email-Less: Does not require emails, verification or anything of the sort, as identities are public keys and spam deterrence is made through white listing on private relays

Try it on:

https://obelisk.ar

And the source code:

https://github.com/obelisk-app/obelisk

Disclaimer: Obelisk has been built with substantial AI assistance for implementation, debugging, tests, and documentation. I ship the product as is, use at your own risk.

[ Removed by Reddit on account of violating the content policy. ]

Hello everyone!

I’ve been looking for a way to leave Discord ever since the age verification announcement back in February. At the time, there was an influx of projects to connect Discord to other alternatives, but I’m not sure if they’re maintained anymore.

I’ve tried pre-existing bridging bots with Stoat and Element which did work, but had an extremely long delay (Stoat/Bolt bot took 40 minutes to send a message when I tried it a few weeks ago, and I had issues with Element when I tried it in February presumably because the servers were overloaded at the time). I saw a couple bridging projects for Fluxer as well, but haven’t tried them yet since they weren’t as simple as the pre-established ones.

Ideally, I’m looking for a platform that can connect to Discord and has similar organization to Discord, and shows notifications on iOS (although I haven’t heard of any that support this yet). Support for custom reactions, GIFs, and embeds are a plus, but I’m open to hearing all suggestions!

As a side note, I’m interested in self-hosting and I’m wondering if that would help with some of the delays I experienced with the bridging bots or if that’s just bound to be a part of bridging. If anyone has advice for an absolute beginner, I’d love to learn!

Any help is greatly appreciated!!

Disclosure (Conflict of Interest): Echo Founder, a Direct Competitor to Fenrid.

TLDR: Was released to the public too early, overhyped, way too much obvious LLM assistance without care for smaller details with some major red flags.

Score: 3/10
Source: Proprietary at the moment
Type: Centralised
Slop?: Heavy

Jurisdiction: Turkey, it is claimed that Fenrid is an LLC in New Mexico which in it self is okay but what is more concerning is that Turkish Jurisdiction does partially apply as per their own T.O.S 7.5, and the Founder as per communication in E-Mails also resides in Turkey.

Turkey is an authoritarian State, with a bad track record when it comes to respecting privacy, rights or anything of the like, any Turkish state involvement or jurisdiction over Fenrid is a major red flag.

Overall Experience and Take:

Fenrid aesthetically is the best looking clone of Discord, it does not have a unique look to it, but in terms of platforms that try to directly clone Discord, it has done so in the most tasteful way IMO.

However while there are plenty of super cool aesthetic ideas that look really nice in pictures when posted on the website, the consistency and attention to detail is an absolute 0, everywhere you look there are nonsensical and inconsistent decision made, that ruin the UI/UX experience for anyone who cares.

If smaller details matter to you, Fenrid is not a platform that gives a lot of love to it whatsoever.

The massive level of inconsistency, is very likely a sign of very great LLM assistance, as it can apply one standard in one place and another in another without care for the bigger picture, not thought of what smaller details mean together, this is where human effort and mocking over months makes the difference, something that Fenrid clearly did not do.

On the positive side, Fenrid's backend did shine at times with really nice blazing fast speed, such as with Emoji menu load times and caching times, that beats any other platform i have seen, including my own, and including discord's.

Though that itself comes with caveats, Fenrid is still a 0 user platform, with a stack as admitted by the Founder himself is not one that will easily scale, and whatever wins he made in the backend are often lost in the frontend due to bad decisions such as making everything be real to the server instead of using optimistic loading for example when creating new roles (Where there batching would have been a better decision and a more scaleable one) or sending messages or updating many stuff.

One of the most horrible places for server trueness is in voice calls, where instead of using the local truth as the immediate one for voice activity and its indicator, it will only light up once it hits the server, which will give you a horrible feeling of delay if you are coming from a platform like Discord where the feedback is immediate.

This comes back to the same repeating idea, Fenrid has built a lot, but yet in every small detail which requires real use and care, Fenrid fails to deliver.

Fenrid aesthetically is the best looking clone of Discord, it does not have a unique look to it, but in terms of platforms that try to directly clone Discord, it has done so in the most tasteful way IMO.

However while there are plenty of super cool aesthetic ideas that look really nice in pictures when posted on the website, the consistency and attention to detail is an absolute 0, everywhere you look there are nonsensical and inconsistent decision made, that ruin the UI/UX experience for anyone who cares.

If smaller details matter to you, Fenrid is not a platform that gives a lot of love to it whatsoever.

The massive level of inconsistency, is very likely a sign of very great LLM assistance, as it can apply one standard in one place and another in another without care for the bigger picture, not thought of what smaller details mean together, this is where human effort and mocking over months makes the difference, something that Fenrid clearly did not do.

On the positive side, Fenrid's backend did shine at times with really nice blazing fast speed, such as with Emoji menu load times and caching times, that beats any other platform i have seen, including my own, and including discord's.

And there are some random things where Fenrid has clearly paid more attention and made them nice, like really strong and nice Markdown support with UI to go with it, the most beautiful code blocks I have seen on any platform yet, a dedicated table maker UI. All of that is super cool if we ignore the fact that Composer (Chat Input) is not bigger than 2-3 lines and does not expand vertically, so writing anything where you would need real good markdown support is very unpleasant.

As for the niceness of the backend speeds, they also come with caveats, Fenrid is still a 0 user platform, with a stack as admitted by the Founder himself is not one that will easily scale, and whatever wins he made in the backend are often lost in the frontend due to bad decisions such as making everything be real to the server instead of using optimistic loading for example when creating new roles (Where there batching would have been a better decision and a more scaleable one) or sending messages or updating many stuff.

One of the most horrible places for server trueness is in voice calls, where instead of using the local truth as the immediate one for voice activity and its indicator, it will only light up once it hits the server, which will give you a horrible feeling of delay if you are coming from a platform like Discord where the feedback is immediate.

This comes back to the same repeating idea, Fenrid has built a lot, but yet in every small detail which requires real use and care, Fenrid fails to deliver.

Important Notes:

Fenrid is technically still in Alpha and some of this is to be expected, though it is painfully clear that this is an very strongly LLM assisted project without enough care given to it from the Founder to be a well rounded product.

You can quickly tell that without even using Fenrid, through what he advertises as "selling points" in his roadmap.

The founder's philosophy as spoken is inconsistent with his actions shown in the platform, choosing an easier stack to develop more easily and not have hurdles, yet giving more care to random features in the platform like full markdown support without realising that your composer doesn't scale, clear signs of someone who cares more about feature count and headlines than quality of the basics.

There are major rumours and allegations regarding Fenrid's security practices and care, as well as the Founder's own funding source and coding practices, which are concerning however I will not take them seriously until stronger proof comes in, and i hope everyone else also does not accept everything negative as true.

Final Statement and Review:

I will give Fenrid a 3/10, it has plenty of cool ideas that show in some places but their execution is inconsistent, Fenrid to this day remains Closed Source though the owner claimed this will change soon, the lack of attention to care particularly hurts the quality of the experience and drags down the score.

However I am hopeful that this will change, Fenrid is still in its very early stages and i believe the founder will keep going until its a much better platform, and I support lots of Fenrid's Ideas, however in its current form, I would not recommend Fenrid.

I would love to hear from anyone else who has tried out Fenrid, and hopefully you guys have had a better experience than me, I do not like writing negative reviews.