Amari's free leveling is solid, but voice XP, multipliers, and announcements are donator-only. Kiai ships all three free and imports your levels in one command.
Amari is one of the oldest leveling-only bots still running, and its reputation is deserved. The free tier gives you per-server XP, role rewards, a blacklist, and leaderboards. No trial games, no crippled basics. That part is genuinely good.
So why would a server switch? Three reasons, and they compound: voice XP and multipliers sit behind Amari's donation, every setting is a Discord command, and premium sticks to a person instead of your server. Kiai flips all three, and imports your members' levels in one command.
The short version
| Amari free tier | Kiai free tier | |
|---|---|---|
| Message XP | Yes | Yes |
| Voice XP | Donator-only | Yes, every server |
| Role rewards | Yes | Yes |
| XP multipliers | Donator-only | Yes |
| Level-up announcements | Premium command set | Yes, templates and placeholders |
| Config | Discord commands, owner-only | Web dashboard |
| Premium model | One-time, attaches to a user | $1.99+/mo, attaches to the server |
Now the long version, because the table doesn't show why any of this matters in practice.
Why voice XP is the deciding feature for a lot of servers
Text leveling counts who types. Voice leveling counts who shows up. They are not the same people.
If your server runs events, game nights, study rooms, or just has the kind of culture where people hang out in calls, then voice time is the single biggest measure of real engagement. A text leaderboard will rank the memers. A voice-aware system rewards the people who keep the server feeling alive, and members notice the difference: "the people in calls get nothing?" is a complaint that quietly kills participation.
Amari puts voice XP behind its donation. Kiai puts it in the free tier of every server, and it verifies actual presence, so a parked, muted member isn't farming levels from an empty channel. Voice time converts to XP the same way messages do, multipliers and role rewards apply to it, and it shows up on rank cards.
What the donation actually buys you on Amari
Amari's premium is a one-time payment starting at $6.99, which sounds reasonable. Look at what it gates, though:
- Voice XP: enabling and tuning it is a donator feature.
- Multipliers: the
pmulticommand family, covering global, channel, and role multipliers, is also donator-only. The free multiplier command exists but is limited in what it can do for a server. - Announcement customization: the command set that lets you shape where and how level-up messages appear is premium.
These are not edge features. Voice XP, multipliers, and announcement behavior are the three knobs a server adjusts in its first month of taking leveling seriously. Amari charges for all three; Kiai includes all three free, because we think they're the product.
The other difference with Amari's model: premium attaches to a person. The donating user holds it, owner-only commands apply it, and the server's premium behavior follows that account. It works fine until the owner moves on or hands the server over.
Kiai's server premium runs $1.99 to $9.99 per month based on server size, belongs to the server, and pays for extras: custom rank cards, automatic leaderboards, prestige, unlimited temporary multipliers. The features listed above never leave the free tier.
Commands versus a dashboard
Amari is configured entirely through Discord commands, with the important ones restricted to server owners. For a one-time setup, that's workable. It stops being workable when:
- you want a second admin changing rewards without you there,
- a mod needs to fix a multiplier from a phone,
- or you're tuning the XP curve and don't want to memorize argument syntax.
Kiai's dashboard covers settings, rewards, multipliers, denylists, announcements, and the rest at kiai.app/dashboard. Anyone on the server's dashboard access list can use it, from any device.
Rank cards and leaderboards: how they compare
Amari's rank command and leaderboards (all-time and weekly) work, and members can restyle their card colors and backgrounds, with some tweaks premium-limited. Kiai's free tier covers rank lookups, leaderboards, timed windows, and per-channel views; custom card backgrounds and branding sit in premium, and a member can buy it individually for a one-time $4.99 if they just want their own card.
Switching from Amari without losing anything
The easiest switch Kiai supports. Run /import in your server, choose AmariBot, and Kiai pulls member levels, role rewards, and Amari's XP curve (the 20×level² + 35 formula) directly from Amari's API on the server side. No export files. No API keys from you. No dashboard spelunking on their site.
Your members keep their levels, and because the formula carries over, levels keep advancing on the same curve they've always used. Nobody regrinds anything.
One honest limitation: on very large servers, Amari's leaderboard API can limit how deep the historical import reaches. Run it and check your top pages on both leaderboards before you remove Amari.
The switch, step by step
- Add Kiai
- Run
/import, choose AmariBot from the bot list - Configure multipliers, rewards, and announcements in the dashboard
- Remove AmariBot when levels and roles are confirmed in place
Five minutes at most, with both bots running side by side while you compare. There's no leap of faith required.
Questions we get about leaving Amari
Will my members lose their levels if we switch? No. /import carries XP straight from Amari's API, and role rewards transfer with it.
Do we need to export anything first? No. The Amari import is fully server-side, unlike some bots' file-and-API-key flows.
Does voice XP really come free in Kiai? Yes, on every server. In Amari it's donator-only, which is the difference that most often starts this migration.
What about Amari's weekly leaderboard? Kiai's free tier includes timed leaderboard windows, which covers the same "who's most active this week?" use case.
Is Amari bad, then? No, and not necessarily worth leaving. If your engagement is mostly text, you don't care about voice XP, and you're happy configuring by command, Amari is cheap and honorable. This is a "different needs" comparison, not a "one bot is broken" one.
What if something doesn't transfer right? The team's in the Kiai support server, and import questions get answered there daily.
The bottom line
Amari is a respectable specialist that charges for what an engaged server eventually wants: voice XP, multipliers, configurable announcements. Kiai includes those free, attaches premium to the server instead of a person, gives you a real dashboard, and imports your entire Amari history in one command.