How to Check a Discord Server's Member Count

There are two numbers to know. Members is everyone who joined the server and has not left, bots included. Online is how many of them are online, idle or on do not disturb right now. Every method below shows both.

See the count inside Discord

On desktop and in the browser

The quickest way works for any server you are in. Right-click the server icon, choose Invite People and copy the link. Send it in any chat and Discord turns it into a card with the server name, the number online and the number of members.

The member list on the right side of a channel is less useful than it looks. It shows online members grouped by role, and in big servers Discord leaves out the offline members completely, so you cannot add it up.

On your phone

Open the server and tap its name at the top of the channel list. The sheet that opens shows the online count and the member count under the name.

If you own the server

Server Settings, Members lists everyone, and Community servers get Server Insights with charts of joins and leaves once Discord unlocks it for a server of your size. Insights is the only place in Discord that shows history.

Check any server from an invite link

You do not have to join a server to see its size. Every invite link carries the member and online counts, which is how Discord fills the invite preview. Our counter reads the same numbers:

1. Open the Discord member count page.
2. Paste an invite: https://discord.gg/minecraft, discord.com/invite/minecraft or just minecraft.
3. Press Show count. Members and online refresh every 20 seconds, and a chart builds up while the page is open.

Vanity invites like discord.gg/minecraft stay the same. Normal invites expire after 7 days by default, so if you want a counter that keeps working, create an invite set to never expire. Expired invites, deleted servers and group DM invites come back as not found.

Members vs online

The member count grows slowly and hardly ever drops much. The online count moves all day and is the better pulse of how alive a server is. Anyone set to invisible counts as offline, so the real number of people around is a bit higher than online says.

Across these eight servers, between 4.0% and 26.3% of members were online. Midjourney has by far the most members (18,562,844) and the lowest share online, probably because many people joined to use its image bot and stayed members after they stopped.

Both numbers are approximate, and Discord says so itself. On big servers the member count tends to move in small jumps instead of ticking up with every join. If you own the server, the member list in Server Settings has the exact figure.

Show the count in a channel name with a bot

The "Members: 12,345" line at the top of many channel lists is a locked voice channel whose name a bot keeps renaming. Setting one up:

1. Create a voice channel and take away the Connect permission for @everyone, so it only works as a label.
2. Add a bot that renames it with the current count. Server stats bots from the Discord App Directory do this, or you write a small one yourself.
3. Update at most every 10 minutes. Discord allows two renames per channel every 10 minutes; faster updates just queue up.

A bot of your own is about fifteen lines with discord.js (version 14). It needs the Manage Channels permission. It asks Discord for the approximate count on every run, the same number the invite shows, so it needs no privileged intents:

const { Client, GatewayIntentBits } = require('discord.js');

const client = new Client({ intents: [GatewayIntentBits.Guilds] });
const GUILD_ID = 'your server id';
const CHANNEL_ID = 'your voice channel id';

async function update() {
  const guild = await client.guilds.fetch({ guild: GUILD_ID, force: true, withCounts: true });
  const channel = await client.channels.fetch(CHANNEL_ID);
  await channel.setName('Members: ' + guild.approximateMemberCount.toLocaleString('en-US'));
}

client.once('ready', () => {
  update().catch(console.error);
  setInterval(() => update().catch(console.error), 10 * 60 * 1000);
});
client.login(process.env.DISCORD_TOKEN);

Get the two IDs by turning on Developer Mode (User Settings, Advanced) and right-clicking the server and the channel. Keep the bot token out of your code, in an environment variable as above.

The bot has to run all the time, or the channel name stops updating. A spare PC works until it restarts. A small host is easier: Space-Node Discord bot hosting has a free plan with 64 MB of RAM, which is tight for Node.js, and a 512 MB plan for €0.50 a month that fits a bot like this with room to spare.

Disclosure: Livecounts.nl and Space-Node share an owner.

Track growth over time

Discord does not publish any history for a server, and neither do we yet. Three ways to get one:

• Keep our Discord member count page open. The chart there fills in for as long as the tab is open, which is enough to watch a launch or an event.
• Log it with the bot above. One extra line in update() writes the date and the count to a file every time it runs: require('fs').appendFileSync('members.csv', new Date().toISOString() + ',' + guild.approximateMemberCount + '\n');
• If you own a Community server that has Server Insights, use its growth charts.

A CSV with one line every 10 minutes opens in any spreadsheet, and after a week you can see which days and announcements brought people in.