Discord vs Zulip Pricing (2026)
How do these two stack up on price? Here's what each one costs, what you get, and where the value sits.
Nitro Basic
- Nitro profile badge
- Custom and animated emojis
- Custom app icons
- Bigger file sharing
Nitro
Popular- Xbox Game Pass (Starter Edition)
- Monthly discounts at Logitech G
- Monthly discounts at SteelSeries
- Nitro profile badge
- Custom profiles and per-server profiles
- Personalized entrance sounds
- Display Name Styles
- Custom and animated emojis
- Custom stickers anywhere, plus 300+ Nitro exclusive stickers
- Custom app icons
- Custom Soundboard sounds anywhere
- 20+ app color themes
- Orbs Multiplier
- Monthly Orbs
- Bigger file sharing
- Custom video backgrounds
- Super Reactions
- HD streaming
- 2 Boosts + 30% off extra Boosts
- 3 Nitro friend passes
- Shop member pricing, and exclusive items
- Early Access
- Longer messages up to 4,000 characters
- Join up to 200 servers
Free
- 10,000 messages of search history
- File storage up to 5 GB total
- Complete team chat solution
- Hundreds of integrations
- Advanced roles and permissions
- Guest accounts
- Many organizations are eligible for a free Standard plan
Standard
- Unlimited search history
- File storage up to 5 GB per user
- Flexible permissions with custom groups
- Message retention policies
- Brand Zulip with your logo
- Priority commercial support
- Public access option
Plus
- All Standard plan features
- File storage up to 25 GB per user
- SSO with SAML (Okta, OneLogin, etc.)
- SCIM user and group sync
- Custom domain
- Limit user list access for guests
- Priority commercial support
Discord vs Zulip FAQ
- Which one is cheaper?
- Discord starts lower at $2/mo, compared to $8/mo for Zulip.
- Can I use either one for free?
- Zulip has a free plan. Discord doesn't — you'll need to pay from day one.
- How do they charge?
- Different approach here. Discord uses flat-rate pricing, while Zulip goes with per-seat. That changes the math depending on your team size and usage.
- Which one is a better deal?
- Depends on what you need. Discord: Discord is essentially unchallenged in its category — there's no direct apples-to-apples competitor at this price point for gaming/community chat. At $9.99 they're cheaper than Slack's paid tiers but targeting a completely different buyer, so they're the affordable premium in a space they largely own. Zulip: They're deliberately undercutting Slack (which runs $7.25–$12.50/seat) and positioning as the scrappy, async-first alternative for technical teams who find Slack too noisy and too expensive. This isn't a premium play — it's a value wedge targeting developer-heavy orgs and mission-driven organizations who are price-sensitive.
Still deciding? See the best Discord alternatives or the best Zulip alternatives, ranked with verified pricing.
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We'll monitor pricing changes for Discord and Zulip and let you know when something moves.