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How to set up a complete Discord economy system — credits, daily rewards, a server shop, gambling commands, and leaderboards. Step-by-step guide using Rally Bot's free economy plugin.
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Add Rally to your server →An economy system is one of the highest-retention features you can add to a Discord server. When members have a virtual currency to earn, a shop to spend it in, and a leaderboard showing where they stand, they have concrete, ongoing reasons to stay engaged — not just with content you post, but with the server as a system.
Rally Bot includes a complete, free economy plugin with no paywalled features. This guide walks through the full setup from installation through advanced integration with Rally Bot's leveling plugin, so your server has a dual-currency engagement loop from day one.
The psychology is straightforward: virtual currencies convert passive engagement into active participation with visible progress. A member who was going to chat anyway now has a reason to claim their daily reward. A member who was going to stick around has a reason to watch their balance accumulate. And a member who reaches the shop and buys an exclusive role has made an investment in your server that makes leaving feel like a loss.
Done well, economy systems compound engagement over time rather than burning out quickly. The key is configuration that feels rewarding without being exploitable, and a shop that has things worth buying.
No coding. No bot tokens. No hosting. Two minutes to install, another ten to configure.
Go to rally.casa/bot and click Add to Discord. Discord's standard OAuth2 authorization flow opens. Select your server from the dropdown, approve the requested permissions, and Rally Bot joins your server immediately.
Rally Bot requests permissions it needs across all its plugins. You enable and disable individual plugins from the dashboard — installing the bot does not activate everything at once.
One bot, 18 plugins
Rally Bot includes economy, leveling, moderation, AI chatbot, music, temporary voice channels, suggestions, starboard, and 10 more plugins — all free. You only enable what you want. Installing one bot instead of six means fewer permission headaches and a cleaner server.
Once the bot has joined, go to rally.casa and log in with Discord. You'll land on your dashboard, where you can see your server and begin configuration.
The economy system is now active. Members are immediately able to use economy commands. Default settings are functional out of the box, but the next steps configure it to suit your server's specific needs and culture.
Before moving on, take a moment to consider your server's economy goals. A small friend-group server (50 members) needs different configuration than a large public community (5,000 members). The former benefits from generous daily rewards and a social shop; the latter benefits from careful anti-farming protections and a shop with genuinely desirable items that take real time to afford.
The two most consequential configuration decisions in a Discord economy are the starting balance new members receive and the daily credit amount members can claim. Get these right and the economy feels natural; get them wrong and it either feels meaningless or gets farmed immediately.
Starting Balance
The starting balance is what new members have in their wallet on day one. Recommendations:
Daily Reward Amount
The daily reward is the primary way most members interact with the economy. Set it based on how long you want the average member to save for the most expensive shop item.
Example: If your most expensive shop item costs 5,000 credits and the daily reward is 200 credits, a dedicated member reaches it in 25 days of daily claiming. Is that the right time frame for your server? Adjust accordingly.
Configure these in the Economy plugin settings under Starting Balance and Daily Reward in the Rally dashboard.
XP Cooldown
If members also earn credits by chatting, set a per-message cooldown (default: 60 seconds). This prevents spam from being a viable farming strategy while still rewarding genuine conversation.
The shop is where the economy becomes real to members. Credits are abstract until there is something worth spending them on. A well-designed shop creates ongoing spending goals that sustain engagement for months.
What to Sell
The most effective shop items are role-based, because Discord roles are persistent, visible, and feel meaningful:
To add shop items in Rally Bot:
Rally Bot's economy plugin includes gambling commands — coin flip, dice roll, and slot machine variants — that let members wager credits for a chance to win more. These are optional but they add a social dimension to the economy that pure accumulation does not have.
Whether to enable gambling:
Enable it if your community has the culture for it. Gambling commands create natural social events — members gather around the slot machine, react to big wins and losses, and build shared stories. In the right community, it is one of the most engaging features in the economy.
Disable it or gate it behind a role if your server has a younger audience, a competitive economy (where credit balance is taken seriously), or a culture where gambling would create conflict.
Configuration:
In the Economy plugin settings under Gambling:
Dedicated gambling channel
Route all gambling commands to a single #casino or #gambling channel. This keeps economy activity contained, lets members who enjoy gambling participate without disrupting other channels, and lets members who prefer not to see it simply avoid that channel.
The leaderboard is one of the most powerful retention mechanics in any economy system. When members can see their rank relative to others, credit accumulation becomes a social activity — not just personal goal-chasing.
Setting up the leaderboard:
The leaderboard is automatically available via the /richest or /leaderboard economy command once the economy plugin is enabled. Members can check it any time to see the top earners.
How to maximize leaderboard engagement:
Leaderboards only show active members
Rally Bot's economy leaderboard automatically excludes members who have left the server. You will never see a ghost account holding the top spot — the leaderboard always reflects who is actually in your community right now.
Rally Bot's economy and leveling plugins are designed to work together. When both are enabled, you have a dual-currency engagement loop that is significantly more powerful than either system alone:
Configuring integration:
In the Leveling plugin settings, you can configure Level-Up Credit Rewards — each time a member levels up, they receive a credit bonus. This creates a feedback loop: conversation earns XP and credits simultaneously, leveling up gives a bonus credit injection, and credits get spent on shop items that create visible status.
Example configuration:
| Level Milestone | Credit Bonus |
|---|---|
| Level 5 | 500 credits |
| Level 10 | 1,000 credits |
| Level 25 | 3,000 credits |
| Level 50 | 10,000 credits |
The milestones do not need to be equal — you can make high-level milestones particularly significant to reward long-term members distinctly.
The engagement loop this creates:
New member joins → claims daily reward → chats and earns XP → levels up → receives bonus credits → buys a role in the shop → has visible status that other members see → stays engaged to protect and grow that status
This loop is self-sustaining. Members who have invested time and credits are significantly less likely to leave than members who have not engaged with the economy at all.
A perfectly configured economy system fails if members do not know it exists. Announce it with context:
We have added an economy system! Claim your daily
/dailycredits, chat to earn more, and check the/shopto spend them on exclusive roles. Use/balanceto see your current credits and/richestto see the leaderboard. Everyone starts equal — your balance reflects your participation.
This single message gives members:
Post it in your main announcements channel, pin it in a dedicated #economy-info channel, and reference it in your server welcome message.
For public servers with more than 1,000 members, additional configuration protects the economy from exploitation:
Account age requirement: Only members whose Discord accounts are at least 7 days old can claim daily rewards. This prevents rapid-fire throwaway accounts from farming the economy.
Server tenure: Require members to have been in the server for at least 24–48 hours before accessing economy commands. This eliminates join-farm-leave cycles.
Channel restrictions: Restrict economy commands (especially gambling) to specific channels. This keeps general chat clean and makes economy activity visible and containable.
Audit logging: Enable Rally Bot's economy transaction logging so you can review unusual activity. A member with an inexplicably large balance with no corresponding activity history is worth investigating.
Members cannot claim their daily reward. Verify the Economy plugin is enabled and the member does not already have an active claim cooldown (daily rewards have a 24-hour cooldown per user). Check that the member is not excluded by account age or server tenure requirements.
Shop items are not being granted after purchase. Verify Rally Bot has Manage Roles permission and that its role is positioned above the roles it is assigning in your server's role hierarchy. Discord requires the granting role to outrank the granted role.
The leaderboard shows incorrect balances. The leaderboard refreshes periodically. If a recent transaction is not reflected, wait a few minutes and check again. If balances are consistently wrong, check the Economy plugin logs in the Rally dashboard for error states.
Members are farming credits through spam. Ensure the message XP cooldown is configured (default: 60 seconds between credit-earning messages). If spam persists, increase the cooldown or add a minimum message length requirement.
A Discord economy system is one of the most effective long-term engagement tools available — not because virtual credits are inherently valuable, but because they give members a visible, accumulating record of their investment in your community. Members who have earned 20,000 credits and bought two exclusive roles are invested in a way that passive members never become.
Rally Bot's economy plugin is free, comprehensive, and designed to work alongside leveling, moderation, and the rest of the bot's features from day one.
Add Rally Bot to your server — takes two minutes, and the economy setup above takes another ten. Your members' engagement will compound from there.
Balance inflation is hard to fix after the fact
Set conservative daily reward amounts initially. It is much easier to increase rewards later (members will be happy) than to reduce them (members who have been planning purchases will be frustrated). Start at the low end and increase based on how the economy feels after two weeks.
Limited stock creates genuine scarcity
Setting a stock limit (e.g., only 10 copies available) on a desirable role makes it a genuine status symbol. Members who own it have something others may not be able to get. This scarcity mechanic significantly increases perceived value and drives both spending and engagement.
Price Anchoring
Design your shop with a range of price points:
Without this spread, either the shop gets depleted immediately (everything too cheap) or nobody buys anything (everything too expensive).
Enable leveling alongside economy from day one
The two systems are more powerful together than either alone. If you are setting up economy, enable the leveling plugin at the same time. The dual-currency loop is one of the most effective engagement mechanics you can deploy in a Discord server.
