How to Monetize a Discord Bot in 2026 (Within the Rules)

How to monetize a Discord bot

You can monetize a Discord bot by selling subscriptions and one-time purchases through Discord’s Premium Apps, taking payments or donations on Patreon, Ko-fi or your own website, letting members earn your bot currency on an offerwall that advertisers pay for, and selling sponsorships outside the bot’s messages. Vote rewards on bot lists such as top.gg do not pay you directly, but they grow the bot that the other methods earn from. Discord’s Developer Policy shapes every one of these, so the rules come first.

For the code of an earn command, see How to add an offerwall to a Discord bot, and if you run a community rather than a bot, read How to monetize a Discord server. Every Discord and top.gg rule below was checked on October 22, 2026.

Discord bot monetization methods compared

Most bots that earn steadily combine one way to get paid by fans with one way to earn from members who never pay.

Discord Premium Apps: app subscriptions and one-time purchases

Premium Apps is Discord’s own way to sell features of a bot or Activity. Members pay through Discord’s built-in checkout, and your bot checks whether they have paid. According to Discord’s What Are Premium Apps? article, there are four types of SKU (product):

• User subscription: a member pays monthly for premium features in every server they share with your bot.
• Guild subscription: a server owner pays monthly for premium features for the whole server.
• Durable one-time purchase: a permanent unlock, such as lifetime access to a premium module.
• Consumable one-time purchase: something used up, such as a pack of bot currency or a temporary boost.

An app can publish up to 50 SKUs. Members find them through the Store button on your bot’s profile and App Directory page. Inside the bot, Discord’s app subscriptions documentation describes a premium-style button that opens the purchase for a SKU, and it says to treat entitlements, which arrive on every interaction, as the source of truth for who has access.

Who can use Premium Apps

Discord’s onboarding checklist requires that:

• The app is verified and owned by a developer team. Verification is also what lets a bot grow past 100 servers, and the team owner verifies their identity through Stripe.
• The team owner is at least 18, and every team member has a verified email and two-factor authentication.
• The app uses slash commands (or has the Message Content intent approved) and links to its own Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.
• The team owner is located in a supported locale. Discord’s How Do I Monetize My App? article lists the United States, the United Kingdom and the European Union member states, and says more regions may come later.

The Monetization Policy adds that the app must be in good standing, has not changed owner in the last 30 days, and may not be bought or sold without Discord’s approval.

What Discord takes

Schedule 1 of Discord’s Monetization Terms lists, for Premium Apps bought on desktop and in the browser, a 6% payment processing fee plus a platform fee: 15% on the Growth Tier, which applies until your team’s Premium Apps have collected $1,000,000 in total payments, then 30% on the Standard Tier. Transaction fees can apply on top, and the schedule notes that mobile transactions are not currently available. Payouts run through Stripe once the app has earned its first $100, after a compliance review, and then monthly in $25 increments.

What actually sells

Patreon, Ko-fi and your own website

Selling premium through Patreon or Ko-fi is still allowed. Discord’s FAQ in Premium Apps’ Required Support for Monetizing Apps says you may keep offering premium features through payment options outside Discord. The catch is the Monetization Requirements in the Discord Developer Policy, in force since October 7, 2024. In regions where Premium Apps is supported, any paid feature you sell elsewhere must also be offered through Premium Apps, at a final price on Discord no higher than your other options.

The same FAQ spells out the details:

• Donations and tips are not covered for now, because Premium Apps does not support them.
• An offering type Premium Apps cannot yet handle is not covered until it can. The FAQ uses annual plans as its example, since Premium Apps subscriptions renew monthly.
• Developers outside supported regions are exempt until their region is added, and so are people who cannot get a Stripe account for a valid reason, such as being under 18.

On the practical side, both platforms tie payments to Discord through roles in your own server. Patreon’s help article Setting up Discord for your members explains how its bot syncs your server roles with your Patreon tiers, and Ko-fi’s Discord rewards guide does the same for supporters and membership tiers, as long as you have Ko-fi’s Contributor status. Many bots read that supporter role in their support server to unlock premium; if you do, list Patreon or Ko-fi in your privacy policy.

Vote rewards on top.gg

top.gg lets a member vote for a bot every 12 hours, and its webhook docs describe a vote.create event that your server receives for each vote, with a weight of 2 during weekend double-vote periods, so you can reward the voter automatically.

top.gg’s Voting Guidelines say you may reward users for voting for your bot and may limit a minority of your commands to voters. You may not punish non-voters by restricting a large majority of features, reward votes for a different bot, or use automatic voting programs. The Discord Bot Guidelines suggest up to 3 to 5 vote-locked commands, and require vote reminders to tell members how to unsubscribe.

Good vote rewards cost you nothing to give: a few hundred coins, shorter cooldowns for 12 hours, or a cosmetic badge. Votes feed growth, not revenue; How to grow a Discord bot covers bot lists and the rest of the growth side.

An offerwall that pays your bot currency

Economy, game and rewards bots already have what an offerwall needs: a currency members care about. Members earn it by completing advertisers’ offers, such as trying an app or answering a survey; you earn per completed offer and pass part of it on as coins. What is an offerwall? explains the model.

Discord’s rules shape where the wall lives:

• Members earn on your website account, not their Discord ID. Developer Policy rule 17 says: “Do not disclose API Data to data brokers, advertising networks or services, or any other monetization-related service.” A Discord user ID your bot reads is API Data. So members sign up on your site, link Discord through OAuth2 (see Log in with Google or Discord), and the offerwall link carries your own account ID.
• Only members who ask see it. Rule 5 bans unsolicited DMs and rule 6 says bots must not target users with advertisements or marketing. An /earn command that replies privately with a link button is a member asking; a bot posting offers in channels or DMing everyone about them is not.
• Crediting happens on your server. The offerwall sends a signed postback when an offer completes and again if it is reversed. Your backend adds or removes coins, and the bot only reads the balance. What is a postback URL? covers how that works.
• Age is checked on your site. Discord’s minimum age is 13, but Sharklio requires end users to be at least 16, with parental permission under 18. Ask for a date of birth at sign-up and keep younger members away from the earn page.

Discord’s Monetization Requirements cover features members pay for and do not mention offerwalls, where the member pays nothing, so stay well inside the rules that clearly apply.

Keep earned coins out of chance games

Many economy bots have slots, blackjack or coin flips. The Monetization Policy lists “facilitation of gambling or gambling-adjacent activities”, including simulated casinos and their games, among content you may not monetize, and rule 8 of the Developer Policy bans illegal online gambling. If coins can be earned through offers or bought, keep them away from games of chance, or keep those games on a separate currency with no paid or earned source.

How to set your virtual currency exchange rate and Virtual economy design cover the trade-offs, and Stop multi-accounting and VPN abuse covers alt accounts farming coins.

Sponsorships and affiliate links

Brands pay for placements in front of big bots’ audiences. Rule 6 of the Developer Policy is the limit: messages from your app must be relevant to its function and “may not contain material unrelated to an Application’s function or information”. That rules out a sponsor line in every /help reply, a promoted embed under each command result, and sponsored DMs.

What stays open is everything outside the bot’s messages:

• A sponsor section on your bot’s website or documentation, clearly labeled.
• A sponsored announcement in your support server, posted by a person, in a channel members chose to follow, marked as sponsored.
• Affiliate links on your site for products your users ask about, such as hosting for self-hosted bots, with a disclosure. Affiliate disclosure rules covers what to say.

Do not sell a sponsor slot as a Premium Apps SKU either: the Monetization Policy bans monetizing content whose primary purpose is promoting third parties.

What Discord does not allow

Breaking these can get the bot removed, and rule 14 bars recreating a substantially similar app.

Rule 15 also limits you to using API Data, such as user IDs, server lists and message content, for your bot’s stated function.

A monetization plan by bot size

1. Early. Build the core feature, add a donation link, list the bot on top.gg with modest vote rewards, and study the best Discord bots.
2. Verified. In a supported region, set up a team and Premium Apps with one subscription and, for economy bots, one currency pack.
3. Active currency. Add website accounts with Discord linking and an /earn command; the Discord bot offerwall guide has the code.
4. Large audience. Sell sponsor placements on your website and support server.

How to get more Discord members covers your support server, and How to monetize a Telegram bot compares the same models on Telegram.

Frequently asked questions