Slack and Discord do the same core job: channels, direct messages, voice, files, bots. One bills every seat, every month. The other costs a team nothing. Here is what that gap adds up to for a ten-person team, at list prices checked on September 29, 2026, and where the free option really falls short.
What each one costs in 2026
| Plan | Per user per month | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Discord server | $0 | Unlimited channels, voice, video and screen share. Nitro ($9.99 a month) is an optional personal upgrade, not a team plan |
| Slack Free | $0 | 90 days of visible history; messages and files older than one year are deleted. Huddles one-to-one only |
| Slack Pro | $8.75 billed monthly | Full history, group huddles, unlimited apps. Cheaper billed yearly (in the EU, €6.75 instead of €8.25) |
| Slack Business+ | $15 billed yearly, $18 monthly | SSO, data exports for all messages, more AI. Up from $12.50, announced June 2025 |
| Slack Enterprise+ | On request | For large companies with compliance teams |
Three years for a ten-person team
| Setup | 36 months |
|---|---|
| Discord server | $0 |
| Slack Free | $0, with everything older than a year deleted |
| Slack Pro, billed monthly | $3,150 |
| Slack Business+, billed yearly | $5,400 |
| Slack Business+, billed monthly | $6,480 |
Slack Free is a trial with a memory limit. After 90 days your team cannot see its own decisions, and after a year Slack deletes them. That is how a free chat turns into $3,150 to $6,480 of rent.
What the Slack money buys
- History. The main reason teams upgrade. Discord keeps channel history without a paid plan.
- A business product. Admin controls, SSO on Business+, exports of every message, a vendor that sells to companies.
- Integrations. Slack's app directory is where business tools ship their integrations first.
- Slack Connect. Shared channels with customers and partners, if they use Slack too.
For a ten-person team that mostly talks to itself, only the first point matters, and Discord already has it.
Where Discord really falls short
This comparison is not complete without the honest part:
- No business plan. Discord sells personal Nitro subscriptions, nothing for teams. Your company is a user under the same terms as a gaming community.
- No company controls. No SSO, no central admin for company accounts. People join with personal accounts.
- Perception. Some customers and hires will find a Discord invite odd. Internal chat is invisible to customers, but shared channels are not.
- Your data sits in someone else's cloud, exactly as it does with Slack.
If any of that is a deal-breaker, the answer is not automatically Slack Pro. Mattermost, Rocket.Chat and Zulip are open source and run on your own server: the chat history belongs to you, and there is no per-seat bill.
Why Slack costs what it costs
Salesforce paid about $27 billion for Slack in 2021, and Slack prices for companies that have procurement departments. Once two years of decisions live in one tool, leaving is painful, and the seat price can move: Business+ went from $12.50 to $15 in 2025. You are paying for the switching cost as much as for the software.
The full cost of a Slack seat, from app sprawl to the hours in huddles, is in Slack's Real Cost: The Seat Price Is Just the Start.
When Slack is worth paying for
- You run shared channels with customers who live in Slack
- You need SSO, audits or message exports for compliance
- Your team is past the point where personal accounts are acceptable
Everyone else: run Discord or a self-hosted open-source chat, and put the $3,150 to $6,480 somewhere that grows the business.
The SaaSKiller Take
Slack is not a bad product. It is priced for enterprises and sold to ten-person teams through a free plan that deletes your history. Over three years, ten seats cost $3,150 to $6,480. Use Discord if personal accounts are fine, host Mattermost or Rocket.Chat if they are not, and pay Slack only when customers or compliance make you.
Sources
List prices from the vendors' own pricing pages, checked September 29, 2026. Vendors change prices without notice; check before you buy.