Anti-raid

How to stop alt accounts on Discord

By ESN Systems, makers of ESN Guardian. Updated November 3, 2026.

Banned users come back on new accounts, and raids run on throwaway ones. No bot can spot every alt, but you can make them expensive and catch the patterns they leave. Here is how.

Guardian is on every server at no cost. Setup takes about five minutes.

Add Guardian to Discord Grade your server first

Why alt accounts are a problem

An alt is a second (or tenth) Discord account run by the same person. Most alts are harmless, but servers run into them in three ways:

Ban evasion. Someone you banned joins back on a fresh account an hour later.
Raids and bot farms. Dozens of throwaway accounts join together to spam or ping everyone.
Gaming your server. Fake votes, extra giveaway entries, fake invites and inflated reports.

An important honest point first: no bot can see a member's IP address or device from Discord. Discord doesn't share them with bots. Anything that claims to detect alts with certainty is guessing. What works is stacking signals so an alt costs more effort than it's worth, and catching the patterns throwaway accounts leave behind.

Start with Discord's own settings

Discord's Verification Levels decide what an account needs before it can talk in your server. The higher levels require a verified email, an account older than five minutes, membership for ten minutes, and at the highest level a verified phone number. Phone verification is the single biggest cost for an alt-maker, because phone numbers are harder to get in bulk than email addresses. Discord's How to Protect Your Server from Raids 101 article covers this and its other built-in raid settings.

Pick the highest level your community will put up with. A gaming server that gets raided weekly can live with phone verification; a small study group probably doesn't need it.

Signals that point to an alt

Account age. A brand-new account joining right after a ban is the oldest sign there is.
Look-alike profiles. No avatar, a default or random-looking name, and several joining within seconds of each other.
Same join pattern. A wave of new accounts arriving through the same invite.
Behaviour. A new account that heads straight for the channel where the banned user used to argue.

None of these prove anything on their own. Together, they are enough to hold an account for staff to look at.

Guardian scores new accounts, holds risky ones for staff, and keeps returning raiders out.

Add ESN Guardian

How ESN Guardian handles alts

Alt scoring at the gate. Guardian's verification gate (/gate) and captcha (/captcha) score each new account on signals like age and profile, and can hold high-scoring accounts back. /guardian altscore shows the score for one member.
Age tiers with staff approval. Established accounts tap once to verify; brand-new accounts also need a staff member to approve them.
Look-alike waves. /alts and /botfarm find groups of similar accounts, such as matching names or missing avatars, that joined together.
Returning raiders. Accounts that come back after a raid are held for staff for 30 days instead of being let straight in.
Web verification. The optional web check (/webverify) has members sign in with Discord on a web page and flags VPN, Tor and datacenter connections, which alt farms lean on.
Raid response. When a wave does get through, anti-raid locks or quarantines it, raises the verification level during the raid and puts it back after, with an all-clear summary.

Guardian is still making a judgment, not reading a fingerprint. That is why new holds go to staff rather than straight to bans, and why /casework undo exists for the times it's wrong.

Set it up in five minutes

Set Discord's verification level to Medium or higher (Server Settings → Safety Setup).
Add Guardian, move its role up, and run /guardian setup.
Turn on a gate with /gate or /captcha and choose how strict the age tiers are.
Add web verification with /webverify enable if ban evasion is a regular problem.
Check your grade at Grade your server to see what else is weak.

Sources: Discord's Verification Levels and How to Protect Your Server from Raids 101. Checked November 3, 2026.

Questions

Can a Discord bot detect alt accounts?

Not with certainty. Discord doesn't share IP addresses or devices with bots. Bots like ESN Guardian score accounts on signals such as account age, profile and join patterns, and hold risky ones for staff.

What is the best way to stop ban evasion on Discord?

Combine a high Discord verification level (phone verification makes alts expensive), a verification gate with age tiers, and holds for returning accounts. Guardian's web verification also flags VPN, Tor and datacenter connections.

Will alt detection block real new members?

It can hold them, which is why Guardian sends brand-new accounts to staff for approval instead of banning them. Established accounts verify with one tap.

Does ESN Guardian's alt protection cost anything?

Every Guardian protection is included on every server. Premium only changes the bot's name, avatar, banner and bio.

Running your own Discord bot? ESN Hosting runs Discord bots 24/7, from $0.50/mo →