Discord vs Tox (qTox)

Discord is a communication platform organized around servers and channels, hugely popular with gaming and online communities but increasingly used by all kinds of groups. It combines text, voice, and video with rich bots and integrations.

Tox is an open, peer-to-peer messaging protocol built to let people communicate without anyone else listening in, and without relying on centralized servers that could be compromised or monitored. Official and community clients built on the protocol - including qTox for desktop, Toxic for Linux terminals, and aTox for Android - provide encrypted instant messaging, voice and video calls, screen sharing, and file transfers with no artificial size limits. Tox is completely free and comes with no advertising, ever, and is developed openly by its user community rather than a company. Its distributed network architecture means there is no central point of failure or control, and both the protocol and its libraries are free and open source.

• Great for communities
• Excellent voice quality
• Rich bot ecosystem
• Free and generous

• Fully decentralized protocol with no central servers to compromise or shut down
• Completely free with no ads and no paid tier, ever
• Unlimited file transfer size compared to many mainstream messengers
• Open source protocol and clients allow independent security review

• Can be overwhelming to moderate
• Not built for formal business
• Nitro upsells

• Smaller ecosystem and user base than mainstream apps makes finding contacts harder
• Peer-to-peer connections can be less reliable behind restrictive NATs/firewalls without relays
• Client polish varies since Tox itself is a protocol implemented by separate community-maintained apps