So you finally realized that too, Discord has not placed any advertisements, and the app itself is free to use for everyone. Then, the question might take place in your head too, how does Discord make money? As there is nothing pointing out such ways that we can think Discord is earning from there. That is what we will cover in this article, we’ll let you know all the ways that assist Discord in making money, and also put together how much money does it make. Let’s figure out.
This is how Discord makes money.
Even though it does not place ads, Discord has more than one way to earn money, on the top of that it earns from Nitro-subscription plans, where a user pays a minimum 4.99$ monthly to unlock some cool features. Moreover, a large part of the Discord audience is from the gaming area, so Discord also earns money by affiliating the paid games and gets a 10% per game-purchase commission from the developers.
For a popular app making a profit is not a big deal, without placing ads or force-to-pay for download is not necessary at all.
Let’s have a closer look at the ways that help Discord to generate net-profit.
● Subscription plan (Nitro)
Most of the revenue discord gets from subscriptions plans. They introduced this back in 2017. Before that, the discord revenue per year was not more than 10 million US dollars.
It is also true that discord claims never to promote advertisements inside their apps. They don’t want to manipulate their user’s experience with the app either, besides hardly anyone will use a chatting app where ads are everywhere, it would be so weird. With all this, the discord freemium package-plan is the only possible solution to take place, not only does it not mess up with the user’s attraction with the app but also does not force an individual to pay-to-use. It is what sounds interesting to me with freemium plans.
Discord has basically two types of NITRO plans, classic and premium. Both have a time-duration limit of minimum one month to a maximum one-year.
Discord charges per basic plan around 4.99$ per month, and per year around 50$ and the charges of premium plans are a bit higher than the basic plan that is approx 9.99$ per month to 99.99$ per year.
Discord earns money by user-subscription for sure if you look at the benefits that the user gets from subscription is also worthy.
Here is what a Discord user will get after buying a subscription plan.
- A user can customise, create its personal style emojis.
- A user can boost a Discord server saving up to 30%.
- The Upgrade plan will also increase the limit to upload files to 100MB where the free basic-plan has a limit of 6 MB.
- A user can opt for any personal profile along with an animated avatar and custom tags.
- A user will be to stream videos in a high-resolution up to 1080px, go live over Discord, and streaming links.
● Affiliate paid games
The second most profitable asset for Discord is affiliating paid games. However, Discord seems to copy the idea of steam like websites. However, Discord game stores are not as popular as steam. But who knows what will happen next?
Discord earns approx. 25 Million$ only by just affiliating paid games, we have mentioned this earlier that, most of its part is based on the community of gamers, so it makes sense here Discord can have the online store where the user can purchase online games.
If we talk about the commission that Discord gets per download, it’s for now, 10% percent. If a game price is 100$ and a user purchases it from Discord’s online store, then Discord takes its commission from the game developer, nothing to do with the user who purchased. Opposed to that, Discord, sometimes, turns down its commission for benefiting its users, by offering some discount on per game purchasing. Sounds like a good tactic to grow its online game store.
● Pay-per server boosting
If you have ever created your own Discord server, then you are probably well aware of the limits, yes limits for free-plan. In contrast, people who want to increase the limit of their Discord server can now pay to Discord.
A large amount of money Discord earns from this tactic too; however, not 100% profit goes to discord, simply discord has to pay also for maintaining servers that a user creates, on top of that, discord has to spend a lot of money on maintaining its own growing servers. Talking about Discord’s server’s handling budget might be out of the context, so let it close as of now.
That is what benefits you will get from boosting a server.
Level 1 Server boosting
- Unlock 50+ Emoji slots from 100 emoji slots.
- Mp3 songs or audio quality increase up to 128KBs
- Live streaming at 720FPS.
- Can use an animated Icon on your server’s profile.
- 100 MB maximum uploading limit is for all the servers
Level 2 server boosting
You’ll get everything from level one but in a high-quality.
- Unlock 50+ Emoji slots from 150 emoji slots.
- Mp3 songs or audio quality increase up to 328KBs.
- Live streaming at 1080P 60FPS.
- Can use an animated Icon on your server’s profile.
Level 3 Server boosting
You’ll get everything from level 2 but in the highest quality possible.
- Unlock 100+ Emoji slots from 150 emoji slots.
- Mp3 songs or audio quality increase up to 384KBs.
- Live streaming at 1080P 60FPS.
- Can use an animated Icon on your server’s profile.
How much money does discord make?
Discord earnings are drastically up drifting. You can see the graph below telling about Discords earnings per year.
| 2015 | Less than 1 million$ |
| 2016 | 5.7 million$ |
| 2017 | 10.1 Million$ |
| 2018 | 27 Million$ |
| 2019 | 7.6$ Million$ |
| 2020 | 120$ Million$ |
| 2021 | Expectations are around 200 Million$ |
The increase in Discord’s net profit is apparent, having said that discord is relying upon the gaming community, and if I’m not mistaken, you may also realise that gaming is leaping forward so strongly. Even mobile games are now coming up with the HD graphics, together with Multiplayer experience.
So that is to state here, Discord’s earnings in 2021 will cross 200$ no two ways about it.
What is the Discord app?
In case you are not sure why it is used for, here is a brief introduction of Discord.
Discord is a chatting app similar to Whatsapp, messenger, but it is more like a platform for building a community. Most gamers prefer this, as on discord they can make their own servers, and talk about their events, and giveaways for their fans.
Discord servers are quite advanced rooms, a bunch of users can group-talk, and they have integrated mp3 songs. Where you can call a song, and it starts playing in a matter of seconds. All the users in a server can enjoy the song as well chatting with the other members.
Despite only texting, making calls is also free through Discord, even though you can create as many servers as you wish entirely for free for group-calling.
Overall, it is a great way to bring a community together and talk about hot-trending preferences topics, and much more.
When was discord made?
The discord’s first publicly released in May 2015.
In the beginning, like as usual Discord did not get popular, people thought that it is too advanced for chatting while the similar chatting apps as WhatsApp was leaping forward.
As soon the gaming-interest has been increased among people, then they realised the sole aim of the Discord app, and the results are right up there, discord has now become the first choice of every Youtuber, gamer, dancing classes, etc. Eventualizing to fulfil all the needs for people to grow a community together.