Discord leveling bot pricing compared side by side: Kiai, MEE6, Amari, Lurkr, LevelUp, Tatsu, CakeyBot, and Polaris V3, using each vendor's published numbers.
Discord leveling bots price themselves in wildly different ways: free forever, one-time donations, per-member subscriptions that boost XP, and monthly server plans that scale. This post lines them up side by side, using each vendor's own published pricing, and ends with the math we'd actually run before paying for any of them.
How each bot charges
Free with paid extras (Kiai, LevelUp, Lurkr). Core leveling is free; premium tiers add features or raise limits. The philosophies differ: LevelUp is free outright, Lurkr sells $1-5/month limit raises, Kiai sells $1.99+/month feature tiers (custom rank cards, automatic leaderboards, prestige) while keeping the leveling core uncapped.
One-time donation (Amari). Amari's premium is a single payment from $6.99 that unlocks voice XP, multipliers, and announcement customization. Unusually, it attaches to the donating user, with owner commands applying it to the server.
Per-server subscription (MEE6, CakeyBot, Tatsu, Polaris V3). Monthly plans, often tiered by server size or features, with free tiers of varying generosity.
Per-member subscriptions (Tatsu). Tatsu is the outlier: members themselves can subscribe for personal earn-rate boosts up to +100%, which changes what a leaderboard measures.
The published numbers
| Bot | Free tier essentials | Paid | What premium buys |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kiai | Message+voice XP, role rewards, multipliers, announcements, denylists, streaks, drops, rewards incl. UnbelievaBoat, dashboard | $1.99-9.99/mo/server, scales with size; $4.99 one-time per member | Rank card styling, auto leaderboards, prestige, unlimited temp multipliers |
| LevelUp | Nearly everything, free | None | Nothing to buy |
| Lurkr | All features, limited counts | $1/mo (Max), $5/mo (Ultimate) | Higher limits: 10 roles per level, 25 multipliers, bigger leaderboards |
| Amari | XP, role rewards, blacklists, leaderboards | One-time from $6.99 | Voice XP, multipliers, announcement customization; attaches to user |
| MEE6 | Message XP, leaderboard | Per-server subscription, tiered | Voice XP, role rewards, and most of the leveling feature set |
| Tatsu | Economy, 10 activity roles, XP | $4.99-8.99/mo/server (+15-25% XP), $4.99-39.99/mo/user | Activity role slots, server-wide and personal XP boosts |
| CakeyBot | Message+voice XP, 10 role rewards, 5 multipliers, drops, decay | $4.99/mo/server, $9.99 custom bot | 20 rewards, 10 multipliers, banner images, pinned leaderboards, vanity URLs |
| Polaris V3 | Full suite free tier | $2.99-4.99/mo | Higher automation limits, retention, role sync |
Two caveats: all of these come from the vendors' own pages and pricing moves, so verify anything you're about to spend money on; and feature lists grow, which is the polite way of saying check the changelogs.
The three pricing traps
Reading subscription pages is about spotting the structure, not comparing monthly figures. Three things to look for:
1. What the free tier is missing. Compare the free tiers on the features you'll actually use. "Free leveling" that excludes voice XP, role rewards, or multipliers (MEE6) is a different free product from Kiai's or LevelUp's, and you'll discover the difference the week after you commit.
2. Who premium belongs to. Amari's donation follows the person. Tatsu's user subscriptions follow the person, with earn bonuses. Kiai's server premium belongs to the server regardless of who pays. If your server owner rotates, ownership matters more than price.
3. What paid XP boosts do to your leaderboard. Tatsu's Supporter subscriptions raise paid members' earn rates up to +100%, and Cakey Personal adds +50%. Nothing is wrong with wanting that revenue model, but a leaderboard with paid earn rates measures wallets alongside participation. Kiai deliberately doesn't sell members personal XP boosts for exactly this reason.
The math to run before subscribing
- Estimate what you'll use in 12 months, at plan tiers. A $1.99/mo plan is $24/year; a "one-time $6.99" that gates features you need is cheaper only if it covers what you need.
- Price per server, not per feature. If you run three communities, per-server pricing triples; check whether "bulk" tiers exist before adding subscriptions threefold (CakeyBot's lifetime and bulk quotes exist for this reason).
- Value the free tier's ceiling, not its existence. Lurkr's free tier is all-features-but-capped; MEE6's is core-but-not-what-you-want. Those are different offers at the same $0.
- Ask what premium removes from the free tier. Bots evolve. The changelog is where "free" quietly becomes "trial" or vice versa, and it's public for every bot listed here.
Note from the vendor
We make Kiai, so weight this how you like: our strong opinion is that the leveling core (message and voice XP, role rewards, multipliers, announcements) should be free everywhere, that premium belongs to the server rather than a person, and that paid personal XP boosts hurt leaderboards. Every other bot in this list makes at least one different choice, and several of those choices are defensible: LevelUp's nothing-to-buy is the cleanest deal in the space if you can live without a dashboard, and Lurkr's $1/month limit raises are essentially philanthropy.
The market is healthy because the pricing models actually differ. Pick by what your server needs more of in a year: configuration headroom, feature depth, or zero dollars.
Quick answers
Is there a completely free good leveling bot? Yes, LevelUp, with the tradeoffs covered in its comparison.
What's the cheapest option for voice XP? Free, from Kiai and LevelUp. Most other models put voice behind premium: MEE6 subscription, Amari donation.
Do any of these lock in my data? Exports exist for CakeyBot and Kiai; imports exist broadly across the ecosystem, so most of these bots accept levels from each other (details per bot). Check your specific bot before assuming.
What's the actual best value for a large server? For large servers the per-server or scaling plans matter most: Kiai's scaling caps at $9.99, while flat-priced per-server plans (MEE6-style) cost the same regardless of size. Big servers should also care about which features the free tier excludes, because that's where the subscription shows up.