Shard
Apps like Discord

Like Discord, just for your group.

A server of your own for your group of friends: text channels, voice channels, cameras and screen sharing. It opens in the browser, with nothing to install, and a first name is all anyone is asked.

Free. One of you creates it. The others join with a link and a first name.

A Shard server called Night Shift: its channels on the left, a conversation with reactions and a picture in the middle, who is online on the right.
The same conversation on a phone.

Where Shard fits among apps like Discord

Put it on your list if you want a server for a group that already exists: people who know each other. One of you names it, and the others come in with a link and a first name. It has text channels, voice channels you walk into, cameras, and a shared screen with its sound.

Leave it off if you want an app from a store: Shard runs in the browser, on a desk and on a phone, and there are no apps in the stores yet. Leave it off too if you want to meet new people or run bots: there are no public servers to browse, no direct messages and no bots. Messages cannot be edited yet.

A voice channel in a call: a screen shared by one person above the faces of the four people in it.

Hop into a call

A voice channel is a room. Walk in and talk, turn a camera on, share your screen: everyone in it watches together.

An invitation as a messaging app shows it: the name of the server and how many are in.

One link brings them in

Send the invitation where your group already talks. It shows your server; they open it, type a first name, and they are in. Nothing to install.

The same conversation on a phone.

On a phone too

The same link opens the same server in a phone's browser.

It is yours

  • Its own address

    Your server lives at the name you give it, at an address of its own.

  • You run it

    Whoever creates it is its admin: you let people in, and you show them out.

  • Nothing asked

    No ID, no age check, no phone number, no ads. A first name gets your friends in.

Why now: Discord estimates the age of accounts from how they behave, and says fewer than one in ten is then asked to prove it, with a selfie, a card or an ID, to reach what is meant for adults. Discord, 22 September 2026.

Said plainly

  • It is free

    Creating a server, inviting your group and calling cost nothing. No card is asked.

  • Who hosts it

    The servers created here are hosted by Solar Beam Studio, in Finland, in the European Union.

  • What the host can read

    Your messages are kept where the server is hosted, so your group can read them back. They are not encrypted end to end: whoever hosts a server can open what is written in it.

Three steps

  1. 1Name your server.
  2. 2Send the link to your group.
  3. 3They type a first name.