Departures Checked 2026-11-03.
ARMADA
A free, AGPL-licensed, end-to-end-encrypted Discord-style chat app built on the Nostr protocol, where your identity is a key you own and communities live across independent relays.
- Open source
- Yes
- Hosting
- Cloud or self-hostDecentralized
- Encryption
- E2EE everything
- Voice
- Yes
- Threads
- Yes
- Phone apps
- Android
- Members pay
- Nothing
- Status
- Beta
Before you move a community here
Open beta ahead of v1.0 with near-daily 0.x releases; the repo was created in June 2026. Discord import uses a bridge bot and brings channels, up to 99 roles, custom emoji and up to 10,000 messages per channel (servers of 100 members or fewer), with live bridging; members must re-join via invite and bridged channels are not E2EE. Community messages and DMs are E2EE (relays see ciphertext); voice runs over self-hostable LiveKit with client-side encryption. Release assets cover Windows, Linux and Android; macOS is claimed in the README but no macOS build was found in releases, and iOS is web-only with a native app in progress.
Everything we checked
Where your members can run it
- ✓Windows
- ?macOS
- ✓Linux
- ✗iPhone
- ✓Android
- ✓In a browser
What it does
- ✓Text channels
- ✓Voice channels
- ✓Video calls
- ✓Screen share
- ✓Threads
- ✓Roles and permissions
- ✓Bots or an API
- ✓Custom emoji
- ✓One account, many communities
- ?Export your data
Who holds the data
- ✓Open source (AGPL-3.0)
- ✓Official cloud service
- ✓You can host it yourself
- Encryption: Every message and call is end-to-end encrypted.
- ✓No ads
- Architecture: decentralized
Who makes it
- Statusbeta
- Founded2026
- TeamSoapbox Technology LLC, a small open-source company funded by grants and donations including OpenSats
- Newest release we found2026-09
- Incidents on recordNo breach or outage found. Hacker News commenters (Sep 2026) called the code 'vibe-coded'; an Oct 2026 AlternativeTo review alleges client-side bans and default relays without published terms (unverified).
Cost
- Members payNothing
- PricingFree; no paid tier or ads; Soapbox is funded by grants and donations
Moving your server over
- ✓Imports a Discord server
- ✓Bridges with Discord while you run both
Side by side
Sources
- https://soapbox.pub/blog/armada-open-source-encrypted-discord-alternative
- https://soapbox.pub/blog/migrate-discord-server-to-armada
- https://soapbox.pub/blog/how-to-self-host-armada
- https://gitlab.com/soapbox-pub/armada
- https://gitlab.com/soapbox-pub/armada/-/raw/main/CHANGELOG.md
- https://alternativeto.net/software/armada/about/
I build Probed, one of the destinations here. It gets the same facts as the rest.