Arcane earned its reputation honestly. If your server is built around leveling, Arcane gives you one of the most generous free systems on Discord - clean level-up role rewards, configurable XP, and, crucially, voice XP on the free tier. Plenty of leveling bots quietly lock voice XP behind a subscription, so the fact that Arcane does not is a real point in its favor.
So let us be fair up front: if leveling is the only thing you want, Arcane is a perfectly good choice. The problem is that leveling is one piece of a server, not the whole thing. Run Arcane and you will still find yourself reaching for a second bot for tickets, a third for economy, a fourth for music, a fifth for giveaways. The dashboard sprawl and permission tangle creep right back in.
This guide makes the case for Rally Bot as the best Arcane alternative: the same free voice XP and role rewards people love about Arcane, plus the entire rest of the stack in a single free bot.
The honest Arcane scorecard
Arcane's free leveling with voice XP is strong, and its welcomer and counters are handy. Arcane Premium runs about $7 a month per server (roughly $75 a year). The catch is scope: Arcane has no economy, tickets, music, polls, suggestions, or starboard at any tier, so a growing server outgrows it and starts stacking bots again.
What Arcane actually covers
Arcane excels at leveling with free voice XP and level-up role rewards, plus a clean web dashboard and basic utilities like welcomer messages, server counters, and moderation commands. The standout is that voice XP remains free on the base tier - many competing bots lock it behind a subscription. Arcane also handles reaction roles, autoroles, custom commands, and YouTube creator alerts. However, the toolkit stops there. Arcane has no economy system, no ticket support, no music player, no giveaways, no polls, no starboard, no suggestions feature, and no reminders. For a small, leveling-focused server where you genuinely don't need those features, Arcane's free tier works well. But most communities grow into needing at least one of those missing pieces, which forces you to install additional bots and manage multiple dashboards and permission sets all over again.
- Leveling - the headline feature, and a good one. Message and voice XP, level-up role rewards, leaderboards. Voice XP is free, which is the standout.
- Welcomer - join messages with welcome images. The custom background is a premium perk.
- Counters - member, bot, and boost counter channels.
- Reaction roles and autoroles - present, but limited on the free tier.
- Moderation - basic warn, kick, mute, and ban commands layered on top of Discord's own built-in AutoMod (which is native to Discord and free regardless of which bot you run). It is functional rather than a deep moderation suite.
- Custom commands - a small free allowance.
- Creator alerts - YouTube upload notifications only. No Twitch, no X.
That is a focused toolkit. What it does, it does cleanly. But notice everything that is not on the list: no economy, no tickets, no music, no giveaways, no polls, no suggestions, no starboard, no reminders. Those are exactly the features that send Arcane servers off to install more bots.
Rally Bot - the Arcane alternative that does the rest too
Rally Bot was built as a complete server-management and community platform from day one. No feature gating, no premium tier, configured entirely from one clean web dashboard. It keeps the part of Arcane you actually rely on and folds in everything Arcane sends you elsewhere for:
- Leveling - XP for both messages and voice activity, level-up role rewards, and leaderboards. The free voice XP that draws people to Arcane is here too.
- Moderation and automod - spam, link, and word filters, tiered moderator roles, warnings, timeouts, kicks, bans, and full audit logging.
- Economy - currency, a shop, daily rewards, and games, with leaderboards.
- Reaction and auto roles - self-serve role panels (buttons, dropdowns, reactions) and automatic roles on join, with no free-tier caps.
- Welcome and goodbye - customizable join and leave messages.
- Tickets - support panels with categories, staff claim, and transcripts.
- Giveaways - one-click button entry, multiple winners, requirements, and automatic draws.
- Creator notifications - go-live and new-upload alerts for both Twitch and YouTube, with custom messages and role pings.
- Music, polls, starboard, suggestions, temporary voice channels, and server stats - and more.
Rally Bot strengths
- Free voice XP and level-up role rewards, the same draw as Arcane
- Economy, tickets, music, giveaways, polls, starboard, and creator alerts that Arcane simply does not have
- One clean web dashboard for the whole bot, no slash-command syntax to memorize
- Installing it lists your server on Rally's activity-ranked discovery platform
Honest limitations
- No direct Arcane data import - members start fresh on levels
- Newer than Arcane, so less name recognition (the broader feature set more than makes up for it)
Why it is free, and why it stays free
Rally earns through server discovery - boosts and featured placements - not by charging for bot features. There is no business reason to ever paywall voice XP or pull music, which is exactly what happens on bots whose revenue depends on a subscription. With Rally, the whole suite stays free because the money comes from somewhere else entirely.
Add Rally Bot to your server - free, no credit card, no locked features.
Rally Bot vs Arcane
| Feature | Arcane | Rally Bot (Free) |
|---|---|---|
| Leveling / XP | ✅ (incl. voice) | ✅ (incl. voice) |
| Level-up role rewards | ✅ | ✅ |
| Leaderboard | ✅ | ✅ |
| Voice XP on free tier | ✅ | ✅ |
| Reaction / auto roles | Limited on free | ✅ |
| Welcome messages | ✅ (custom image on premium) | ✅ |
| Moderation + automod | Basic warn/kick/mute/ban | ✅ Full |
| Audit logging | Basic | ✅ |
| Custom commands | Small free allowance | ✅ |
| Server counters / stats | ✅ | ✅ |
| Creator notifications | YouTube uploads only | ✅ Twitch + YouTube |
| Economy | ❌ | ✅ |
| Tickets | ❌ | ✅ |
| Music | ❌ | ✅ |
| Giveaways | ❌ | ✅ |
| Polls | ❌ | ✅ |
| Starboard | ❌ | ✅ |
| Suggestions | ❌ | ✅ |
| Temp voice | ❌ | ✅ |
| Server discovery listing | ❌ | ✅ (on Rally) |
| Web dashboard | ✅ | ✅ |
| Price | Free + premium (~$7/mo) | Free |
The pattern is not "Arcane is bad." It is that Arcane is narrow. It does leveling and a few utilities well, and stops there. Rally Bot keeps the leveling - voice XP and all - and covers the rest of the server in the same dashboard.
When Arcane is enough, and when it is not
Be honest with yourself about scope. If your server is small, leveling-focused, and you genuinely do not want economy, tickets, music, or giveaways, Arcane's free tier will serve you well and you can stop reading here.
But most servers do not stay that simple. The moment you want a support ticket system, a currency and shop to drive engagement, music in voice channels, a giveaway for a milestone, or go-live alerts when your streamers go on Twitch, Arcane runs out of road and you are back to stacking bots. Each one adds another dashboard, another set of permissions, and another thing that can break. Rally Bot exists to make that unnecessary.
If leveling specifically is your priority, our best Discord leveling bot guide breaks down voice XP, role rewards, and leaderboards in depth. If you are also weighing other classic bots, the MEE6 alternative guide and the broader best Discord bots in 2026 guide compare them side by side.
How to switch from Arcane to Rally Bot
Step 1: Add Rally Bot to your server - you will need Manage Server permission. Add Rally Bot here.
Step 2: Set up Leveling from the Rally dashboard. Turn on voice XP, set your XP rates, and add level-up role rewards at the thresholds you want. This mirrors what Arcane was doing.
Step 3: Recreate your welcomer and reaction roles. Rally's role panels are uncapped on the free tier, so you can add as many as you like.
Step 4: Turn on the features Arcane never had - economy, tickets, giveaways, music, creator notifications, and the rest - as your community grows into them.
Step 5: Remove Arcane once Rally Bot is handling leveling. There is no need to run both beyond a short testing window.
Communication tip: announce the change as an upgrade. Members will not notice the bot swap behind the scenes - they will notice the new economy, the ticket system, and the music suddenly appearing.
The bottom line
Arcane's free voice XP is a legitimately good reason to like it, and we are not going to pretend otherwise. But a leveling bot is a leveling bot. Rally Bot gives you that same free leveling with voice XP and role rewards, then keeps going: moderation, economy, tickets, giveaways, music, creator alerts, and more, all from one dashboard, all free - and it lists your server on a discovery platform ranked by real activity so new members can actually find you.
Add Rally Bot to your Discord server - free forever, no subscriptions, no locked features. Then browse active gaming communities, anime servers, and music communities on Rally to see what a well-run server looks like.