Moderation, automod, tickets, leveling, welcome messages, role menus and custom commands, free on any server. Upgrade from £3.99/month for anti-raid, captcha verification, stream alerts, giveaways and everything else - one price, no per-feature upsells.
Overview
Most Discord servers end up running three or four bots to cover the basics: one for moderation, one for leveling, one for tickets, one for reaction roles. Each has its own prefix, its own premium tier and its own way of breaking. Custos replaces that stack with a single Discord bot that handles moderation and server management end to end, configured with the slash commands your moderators already know.
It was built by Glitch Servers, a UK hosting provider, to run our own community - so it is opinionated about the things that matter when a server gets busy: raids get stopped in the first few seconds, new members prove they are human before they can post, moderator actions are logged with a case number, and support requests land in tickets rather than DMs. Everything runs on infrastructure we own in the UK.
The essentials are free on any server. When your community grows and you need raid protection, captcha verification, stream alerts or giveaways, one flat monthly price unlocks every feature - and Pro and Agency plans cover several servers on one subscription. If you are looking for a MEE6, Dyno or Carl-bot alternative, or you simply want fewer bots in your member list, Custos is designed for you.
Modules
Each module switches on or off per server with /module enable and /module disable. Modules marked Paid are included on every paid plan; everything else is free.
Ban, temp ban, unban, kick, timeout, warn, purge, slowmode and channel lock - each with a reason, an optional silent flag and a numbered case in /infractions so your team can see a member's full history.
Block invites and links, cap message rate, caps percentage and mass mentions, and maintain a banned-word list. Choose delete, warn or timeout as the action, and exempt trusted roles and channels.
Detects the same content hitting several channels at once, deletes every copy and times out, kicks or bans the sender. A minimum-account-age gate handles the fresh-alt wave before it can post.
Members click a Verify panel, read a distorted image code and pick the matching answer from a dropdown with decoys. Configurable attempts and lockout keep automated joins out without annoying real people.
A panel with one button per category (billing, appeals, reports - whatever you define), private channels per ticket, support roles, a max-open-per-user limit. Paid plans add transcripts posted to a channel of your choice.
XP for activity with rate limits, /rank cards and a /leaderboard, level-up announcements, reward roles that stack or replace, and ignored channels so bot-spam rooms don't count.
Welcome and leave messages in a channel or by DM, plain or embedded, with {user} {server} {count} placeholders. Autoroles on join, with a separate toggle for bots.
Self-serve roles without reactions: button menus for up to five roles or dropdowns for up to 25, in single or multi-select mode. Members pick pronouns, games and notification roles themselves.
Every action lands in your mod-log with a case ID, and licensing notices go there first rather than in public. Add !faq-style custom commands with embeds and placeholders in one line.
Build rules, info and announcement embeds in Discord with a live preview: title, colour, images, author and fields. Post them anywhere, edit later and refresh the posted copy with /embed update. Imports Discohook JSON.
Go-live announcements for Twitch and Kick streamers, button-entry giveaways with automatic winner draws, and scheduled messages that post once or on a repeat in your timezone.
A starboard for your best messages, live member and booster counters as channel names, join-to-create temporary voice channels, and sticky messages that stay at the bottom of a channel.
Compare
The popular free bots are good at what they do. The difference is in what you pay for, how many servers a subscription covers, and where the bot actually runs.
| What matters | Custos | Typical free bot + premium |
|---|---|---|
| Moderation, automod, tickets, leveling, welcome, role menus, custom commands | Free on any server | Core is free; ticket panels, higher limits and cosmetics are often premium add-ons |
| Anti-raid, captcha verification, stream alerts, giveaways, scheduled messages | Every feature on every paid plan, from £3.99/mo | Often split across premium tiers or sold per feature |
| Pricing model | One flat monthly price in GBP | Per-server premium, frequently priced in USD with "limited-time" discounts |
| Multiple servers | 1, 3 or 10 servers on one subscription | Usually one premium subscription per server |
| Permissions requested on invite | Granular - never Administrator | Varies; several ask for Administrator by default |
| Hosting | Glitch Servers' own UK infrastructure, DDoS protected | Shared multi-tenant cloud, location unspecified |
| Data protection | UK-registered company, UK GDPR | Depends on operator |
| Support | Ticket to the people who wrote the bot | Community Discord and help centre |
| Branding on the free plan | A small "Powered by Custos" line on welcome messages and posted embeds; removed on paid plans | Varies |
| Music playback | Not included (by design) | Sometimes |
MEE6, Dyno and Carl-bot are trademarks of their respective owners. "Typical free bot + premium" describes the common pattern across the major bots as of September 2026 and is not a claim about any single product; check each bot's own pricing page for current terms.
Getting Started
No hosting to configure and nothing to install. Add the bot, run a few commands, and upgrade later if you need the paid features.
Invite the bot and pick a server where you have Manage Server. It asks for a granular permission set - never Administrator - and DMs the person who invited it rather than posting in public. The free plan starts straight away.
/setup modlog to pick where cases go, /automod status to review the defaults, then /welcome, /ticket setup and /leveling to taste. /help lists every command.
Pick Starter, Pro or Agency in the client area, then run /link CODE in your server with the activation code from your Custos service page. Anti-raid, /verify setup and the other paid features unlock instantly, and all your settings carry over.
Pricing
The free plan covers the essentials on any server. Paid plans unlock every feature and differ only by how many servers you can activate and how high your limits go. No setup fees, no contracts.
Prices in GBP, billed monthly. If a paid plan lapses the server drops back to the Free plan: paid features pause, nothing is deleted, and paying again restores everything.
Commands
A sample of the command set. Permissions are mapped to Discord's own - Ban Members, Moderate Members, Manage Server - and owners can remap them per role or channel in Server Settings → Integrations.
/ban user [reason] [duration] [delete_days] [silent]Permanent or temp ban with optional message clean-up/timeout add user duration [reason]Mute via Discord timeout, e.g. 10m, 2h, up to 28d/warn user reasonDMs the member, increments their warning count/infractions list | case | remove | clearFull case history per member/purge amount [user] [contains]Bulk delete up to 100 messages with filters/automod raid min_account_age:7d young_action:kickCross-channel raid threshold and new-account gate (paid)/verify setup role:@Verified channel:#welcomePosts the captcha panel and grants the role on success (paid)/ticket category-add label emoji support_roleAdds a button to the ticket panel/rolemenu create · /rolemenu addButton or dropdown self-role menus/leveling role level:10 role:@RegularReward roles, stacking or replacing/welcome message · /welcome embed · /welcome testWelcome and leave messages with placeholders/custom add name response [embed]Custom commands, also triggered with !name/embed create · /embed send · /embed updateBuild embeds with a live preview, post them and refresh posted copies/link CODEUpgrade this server to your paid planUnder the hood
Custos does not run on a free-tier container that gets throttled when the operator's bill comes due. It runs on Glitch Servers' own hardware in the UK, on our network AS212868, behind the same always-on DDoS protection that fronts our VPS and game server customers. The bot is sharded, its entitlement checks are cached in Redis so commands never wait on a database, and a scheduler handles temp-ban expiry and plan changes so nothing depends on a webhook arriving.
Because we are a hosting company rather than a bot studio, uptime is the product. You can watch it on our status page alongside everything else we run.
Prefer to run your own bot? We also offer always-on Discord bot hosting on UK VPS plans with Node.js and Python ready to go.
FAQ
Add Custos to your server free
Moderation, automod, tickets and leveling at no cost. Upgrade to anti-raid, captcha verification and everything else from £3.99/mo when you need it.