Stoat is a free, open-source chat and community platform built as a privacy-first alternative to Discord. See features, pricing, and FAQs.
Stoat is a free, open-source chat and community platform designed for people who want the group-chat experience of Discord or Slack without a surveillance-based business model behind it. The project began life as Revolt in early 2021 and was rebranded to Stoat in October 2025 after the development team received a cease-and-desist letter over the Revolt trademark.
The platform is built and maintained by Revolt Platforms Ltd, a UK-registered company, alongside an active open-source community on GitHub. Because the code is public and licensed under AGPLv3, anyone can inspect it, self-host their own instance, or contribute new features rather than relying solely on the hosted stoat.chat service.
Stoat offers servers and channels for organizing communities, real-time text chat, voice chat, direct messaging, file and media sharing, and markdown formatting. It is built in Europe and designed around EU data protection principles, with a privacy policy short enough for users to actually read.
Because the backend is written in Rust and the project supports self-hosting, technical teams and privacy-focused communities can run their own independent Stoat servers instead of depending on the company's hosted infrastructure. Native and web clients are available across desktop and mobile, with iOS support in active development.
Stoat has no paid subscription plan for its core chat features. The entire platform is free to use, and ongoing development is funded through user donations rather than advertising or data monetization. Communities and organizations that prefer not to manage their own servers can use the hosted stoat.chat service at no cost, while technically inclined users can self-host the open-source codebase for complete control over their data.
Yes. Stoat is the rebranded name for the chat platform previously known as Revolt. The team renamed it in October 2025 after receiving a cease-and-desist letter regarding the Revolt trademark.
Yes, Stoat is entirely free. There is no paid subscription tier for core features, and development is funded through user donations.
Yes. Stoat is open source under the AGPLv3 license and can be self-hosted on your own infrastructure for full control over your data.
Stoat has native clients for Windows, macOS, Linux, and Android, plus a web client. An iOS app is in active development.
Stoat is developed by Revolt Platforms Ltd, a company registered in London, United Kingdom, together with an open-source community of contributors.
Stoat offers similar servers, channels, and voice chat functionality, but is open source, self-hostable, ad-free, and built around EU-style data privacy principles rather than a data-driven advertising model.
Yes, Stoat includes a voice chat system that was refreshed as part of the October 2025 rebrand.