Discord vs Element

Discord (A new way to chat with your communities and friends. Discord is the easiest way to communicate over voice, video, and text.) and Element (Founded by the creators of Matrix, we build digitally sovereign, secure and interoperable real-time communication solutions for large organisations.) both appear on the Smoower Developer Ecosystem Index.

Discord (rank #103) holds a narrow lead over Element (rank #189) on the overall Smoower ecosystem score (55 vs 50). The gap of 5 points reflects composite signals across code, docs, community and reach.

On code quality (the state of repositories, tests, releases and polish), Element is ahead of Discord. On education (docs, guides and learning material for developers), Discord is clearly ahead of Element. On community (issue response, PR reviews and discussion health), Element is slightly ahead of Discord. On reach (how visible the ecosystem is beyond its own repos), Element is slightly ahead of Discord. On momentum (release cadence and how fast the ecosystem moves), Discord is ahead of Element.

Discord carries 28,570 GitHub stars across 327 public repos, with 36 repositories active in the last 90 days and 41 external contributors on record. Element shows 34,608 stars across 137 public repos, 33 active in the last 90 days and 97 external contributors.

Discord is the stronger read for anyone weighting education. Element looks better where code quality is the deciding factor. The table below breaks the scores down pillar by pillar; the linked profiles cover the underlying repos, docs and community signals in full.