Shard
Discord age verification

Your group, with no age check.

Since September 2026 Discord places every account in an age group. Shard is a server of your own for your group of friends: it places nobody in an age group, 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.

What Discord asks, in its own words

Discord now places each account in an age group, adult or teen, from account signals such as how long the account has existed and the kinds of servers it is part of. It says it does not look at messages or calls to do so, and that more than 90% of people will not be asked to confirm their age.

An account it cannot place stays unconfirmed: content and settings meant for adults are closed until the person confirms being an adult, with a credit card, an app store's age range, Google Wallet, AgeKey, a video selfie or an ID scan. Messaging friends and joining voice calls stay open in every age group. The estimate does not run in the United Kingdom and Australia, where other rules apply.

Shard is a different thing: one server for people who know each other. It has no public servers to browse and nobody can write to you from outside your server, so it sorts nobody by age and asks nobody for proof.

Read at its source: Discord, 22 September 2026.

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.