The best Discord leveling bot in 2026: Lurkr, Arcane, AmariBot and MEE6 compared

The best Discord leveling bot for most servers in October 2026 is Lurkr: message leveling, 50 role rewards, custom XP curves, multipliers and a working MEE6 import are all free. Pick Arcane if you want leveling inside an all-in-one bot and will pay $7 a month for voice XP, or AmariBot if voice XP is the point and you want it without a subscription. MEE6 is no longer a free option for this job: its own Premium page marks "XP and Levels" as unavailable on the free plan. The table below compares what each bot gives you for free, what is paywalled, how XP is calculated, and how hard it is to leave.

Leveling bots compared (checked October 2026)

Every row comes from the bot's own documentation or pricing page. Where a bot does not document something, the table says so rather than guessing.

Sources: Lurkr premium perks, Lurkr leveling speed, Arcane premium, Arcane XP options, AmariBot premium, MEE6 Premium and the MEE6 wiki.

Lurkr: the free default

Lurkr's stated position on its premium perks page is that it does not want "a bot whose core features and functionalities are locked behind a paywall", and the limits back that up. A free server gets 50 role rewards (3 per level), 5 leveling multipliers, 30 whitelisted or blacklisted channels, 5 no-leveling roles and a 100-member leaderboard. Paying through Patreon raises those to 100 role rewards, 25 multipliers and a 500-member leaderboard; it does not unlock any feature that free servers lack.

The 2025 and 2026 changelogs added most of what used to need a paid bot. Since July 2025 admins can change the one-minute cooldown and switch between random and fixed XP gain. Since March 2026 the XP curve is configurable: the default is 50n² − 100n + 150, with presets that copy Amari's quadratic curve or MEE6's cubic one, or a custom polynomial. Multipliers come in three types (global, channel, role) and multiply together, so a 2x channel and a 1.5x role give 3x.

Setup takes three commands:

1. /config toggle option:Leveling System turns leveling on. It is off by default.
2. /config set option:Leveling Channels adds channels. They are a blacklist unless you press Switch to whitelist in the confirmation message.
3. /importxp pulls levels and, optionally, role rewards from MEE6. Only the server owner or an Administrator can run it, and only once an hour.

The gap is voice. Lurkr's setup guide lists messages, replies and slash or context-menu commands as the activities that earn XP, and says nothing about voice channels. If your server lives in voice, look at Arcane or Amari.

See the Lurkr listing for its live status.

Arcane: leveling inside an all-in-one bot

Arcane is a general-purpose bot (moderation, welcomer, logging, counters, custom commands) with a leveling plugin that is better documented than most dedicated level bots. Its docs say it runs in more than 3.1 million servers.

On the free plan you get message XP and reaction XP, three curve options with a multiplier, 15 role rewards (one per level), one role booster, one channel booster and weekly leaderboards. The default curve is linear: level 10 needs (10 × 100) + 75 = 1,075 XP, and a multiplier of 2 doubles every requirement. Message XP defaults to a one-minute cooldown, reaction XP to five minutes, and a "per word" mode pays for words of three or more characters instead of per message.

Premium costs $7 a month or $75 a year per server and adds voice XP, custom XP amounts, unlimited role rewards (three per level), monthly leaderboards and hourly instead of daily updates to the first-place role. Voice XP only counts members who are unmuted and undeafened, can require a minimum number of people in the channel, and reduces XP after several hours in one session unless you turn the anti-AFK setting off. Voice XP also needs the separate Premium bot in your server.

Two behaviours to know before you configure rewards. Arcane assigns role rewards only when a member levels up, runs /level or rejoins, and "will never mass assign role rewards", so adding a reward later does not backfill existing members. And it will not assign any role that has Administrator or Manage Server, whatever level you attach it to.

Arcane's docs do not describe an import from MEE6, and Lurkr's import guide says it cannot read Arcane leaderboards without credentials it refuses to ask for. Treat Arcane XP as staying in Arcane. See the Arcane listing.

AmariBot: free voice XP, simple setup

AmariBot sells itself as "No bloat. Just levels". Its premium comparison table lists voice channel XP as free, which makes it the cheapest way to reward voice activity. Message XP, role rewards, a channel and role blacklist and a weekly leaderboard are also free.

Custom cooldowns, XP multipliers and customising voice XP require a donation. Amari's premium page says payments are one-time rather than a subscription, and that refunds "are issued in very rare cases". Its FAQ gives the default rate as 1 EXP per message with an 8-second cooldown, so Amari level numbers are not comparable with MEE6 or Lurkr ones.

The bigger caveat is portability. Lurkr's import guide says "Amari's API has been taken down, so importing from Amari is currently not available." If you might switch bots later, that matters more than any feature. See the AmariBot listing.

MEE6: what changed and what it costs now

MEE6 is still the bot most people have heard of, but in October 2026 leveling is a paid feature. The plans comparison on MEE6's Premium page shows a cross for "XP and Levels" in the Free column, and its troubleshooting article states: "You will need MEE6 Premium to be able to use the Levels plugin." The setup guide also still flags role rewards on their own: "This option can only work in servers with Premium features."

Current pricing on the Premium page, per server:

All plans are refundable for seven days and transferable to another server. What you get for that: 15 to 25 XP per message, at most once per minute, an XP rate slider, no-XP roles and channels, stacking or replacing role rewards, and a custom rank card background. MEE6's help centre says XP "can only be earned by chatting in text channels", so there is no voice XP at any price.

If your server already has years of MEE6 XP and the members care about it, paying for a month while you import into Lurkr is cheaper than resetting everyone.

Not ranked: Tatsu and ProBot

Tatsu says core features are free, including XP, leaderboards, rank cards and automatic level roles, but its headline features (a global economy, profiles and pets that follow members across servers) suit social servers more than ones that only want a server-specific ladder. ProBot documents separate text and voice levels, each from 0 to 100, with no-XP roles and channels; we could not confirm from ProBot's own pages which parts are free in October 2026, so it is left out of the table. Its status is on the ProBot listing.

How to pick in one minute

1. You have MEE6 XP to keep: Lurkr. Run /importxp before you remove MEE6.
2. You want free and text-only: Lurkr. Nothing else here gives 50 free role rewards and custom curves.
3. Your server lives in voice: AmariBot for free voice XP, or Arcane Premium if you want anti-AFK controls and minimum-member rules.
4. You want one bot for everything: Arcane free, upgrading only if voice XP becomes important.
5. You want members to carry a profile between servers: Tatsu.

If you are still deciding which bots a new server needs at all, start with the minimal bot setup and add leveling only once people are actually talking.

Designing an XP system that does not reward spam

Discord's own Moderator Academy lesson, Using XP Systems, names the main risk plainly: the bot cannot judge quality, and "granting privileges as a result of such conversations sends the wrong idea of what sort of activity is encouraged". These settings keep the numbers honest.

1. Keep a cooldown of at least 60 seconds. With MEE6's 15 to 25 XP once a minute, nobody can earn more than 1,500 XP an hour however fast they type; on Lurkr's default 15 to 40, the ceiling is 2,400. The cooldown, not the XP amount, is what makes spam pointless.
2. Turn XP off where messages are cheap. Bot-command, counting, memes and media-dump channels inflate XP without conversation; Discord's lesson says XP "should be disabled" in channels like bot channels. On Arcane also check the toggles for thread, forum, text-in-voice and slash-command XP. On Lurkr, XP from bot commands is a separate option in /config set.
3. Use a no-XP role. Give it to members who game the system, and to anyone who asks to stay off the leaderboard. It is quicker than resetting XP and easy to reverse.
4. Choose the curve for your timescale. On MEE6's curve, level 10 needs about 4,700 XP in total and level 50 about 269,000. At an average 20 XP per counted minute, that is roughly 235 minutes of active chat for level 10 and over 220 hours for level 50. If your top reward sits at level 50 on a cubic curve, almost nobody will see it; put early rewards at levels 5 and 10 and make later ones rarer.
5. Reward access, not power. Good rewards: a colour, a members-only channel, permission to post images or embed links once someone has proven they are not a spam account. Never attach moderation permissions to levels. Arcane refuses to hand out roles with Administrator or Manage Server; set the same rule for yourself on every bot.
6. Add XP by hand for work bots cannot see. The Discord lesson suggests rewarding artwork, stories and help that message counts miss. MEE6 has /give-xp, Lurkr has /xp add and Arcane has /xp.
7. Check the bot's role position. Every bot here needs Manage Roles and must sit above the reward roles in the role list, or rewards fail silently. Pair leveling with a sane AutoMod baseline; our AutoMod and permissions guide covers it.

When leveling hurts a community

Leveling is not free engagement. It changes what people do, and sometimes for the worse.

It walls out newcomers. Discord's lesson says permanent leaderboards' "biggest downside is that they are not very friendly towards new members". A member who joins today will never catch someone with three years of XP. Weekly or monthly leaderboards (Arcane has weekly free and monthly on Premium; Amari has weekly) or a cyclical reset fix this.

It rewards volume over substance. Forced, one-word chatter to hit the next level is hard to detect and drags the tone of general chat down. If your best members write long, thoughtful posts in forums, a per-message system undervalues exactly the people you want more of. Arcane's per-word mode helps; manual XP helps more.

It gates the wrong things. Locking basic channels or the ability to post links behind level 10 tells new members to farm messages before they can participate. Gate on low risk features only, and keep help and support channels open to everyone.

It clutters the server. Twenty level roles in the member list, and level-up messages in every channel, are noise. Send announcements to one channel or turn them off; MEE6, Lurkr and Arcane all support a dedicated channel.

It locks you in. XP is only portable if the next bot can read it. MEE6 data imports into Lurkr; Amari and Arcane data currently do not. Decide before your members have years of progress on the line.

For small servers, a leveling bot often adds more friction than it solves. Under a few dozen active members, a moderator who notices people does the same job better.

Try it: browse the leveling bots on Discordfinder, where monitored bots are pinged every 5 minutes and show their 30-day uptime, or compare them with the wider utility bots. Then see how active community servers use roles and rewards before you set yours.