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How to stop Discord raids

By ESN Systems, makers of ESN Guardian. Updated November 2, 2026.

A raid is a flood of accounts joining your server at once, usually bots or alt accounts, to spam, post shock content or ping everyone. Raids are loud and upsetting, but they are also predictable. This guide covers what to change today, what to do in the middle of a raid, and how a raid shield handles it automatically.

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What a raid looks like

Most raids share the same signs: dozens of joins in a minute, accounts created in the last few days, similar or random-looking names, default avatars, and the same message pasted into every channel. Raiders usually come through a public invite link, often posted on a server list or shared by a hostile community.

Step 1: raise Discord's verification level

In Server Settings → Safety Setup, set a verification level. Low requires a verified email. Medium also requires the account to be registered on Discord for more than five minutes. High requires them to be a member of your server for more than ten minutes before they can talk. Highest requires a verified phone number. For most public servers, Medium or High stops a lot of cheap raid accounts with no work from you.

Step 2: add a verification gate

A verification gate keeps new members out of your channels until they press a button or pass a short check. Bot accounts that join and immediately spam get nowhere. With ESN Guardian, /config verification posts a verify panel, /captcha adds a short human check, and the gate can include a short quiz on your rules. Our Discord verification bot guide covers the options.

Step 3: turn on Discord's AutoMod

Discord's built-in AutoMod (Server Settings → AutoMod) can block mention spam and suspected spam content. Set a low mention limit: very few real members need to mention more than five people in one message. A moderation bot adds more, like link, invite and scam filters.

Step 4: control your invites

Raids come through invite links. Use invites that expire for public sharing, delete old permanent invites you no longer use, and keep track of which invite each wave comes through. Discord lets you pause invites in Safety Setup; it is the fastest way to close the door during a raid.

Step 5: use a raid shield

Steps 1 to 4 make raids harder. A raid shield reacts to the ones that still come. Guardian's raid shield learns your server's normal join rate, alerts when joins hit five times that, and spots waves of brand-new, look-alike or avatar-less accounts. When it does:

• Brand-new accounts in the burst (younger than 7 days) are removed. Older accounts are left alone.
• Your staff, owner and whitelisted users are never touched.
• The server is locked or the wave is quarantined, and Guardian unlocks once it calms down, so the raid cannot keep feeding in.
• Raiders who come back later are held for your staff for 30 days.
• Your log channel gets one summary, and /raid replay lets you look back at how the wave unfolded.

You can check the shield's state any time with /raid status and adjust it with /raid config. If a raid is already in your channels, /safemode lockdown locks the server down in one command.

During a raid: a checklist

1. Pause invites, or lock the server with /safemode lockdown.
2. Turn on slowmode in the channels being spammed.
3. Remove the raid accounts. Sorting the member list by join date makes them easy to find, and Guardian's raid summary in your log channel lists the wave.
4. Delete the spam. Guardian's /mod purge clears messages in bulk.
5. Work out which invite they used, delete it, and lift the lockdown once joins look normal again.

After a raid

Raids often come back the same night. Keep verification raised for a day, tell your members what happened in one calm announcement, and check your security grade with /audit report for any gaps the raid exposed. If the raid came with deleted channels or roles, that was a nuke, not just a raid; see how to protect a server from nukes.

Which bots handle raids

Swipe the table sideways to see every bot →

✓ = listed · 💎 = paid tier only · — = not listed on their public pages. Checked Nov 2, 2026. Wick: Wick docs and Wick Premium ⁴ (anti-raid and backups are listed as Premium). RaidProtect: raidprotect.bot and docs. Dyno: FAQ ² (points to its Automod module for anti-nuke/anti-raid) and Premium ³ (billed $49.99/year). NightWatch and Strafe have no public website or docs, so their columns come from their public Discord bot profiles, NightWatch's slash-command list and the log posts each bot made while it ran in our own server. Features change on every bot, so test on a spare server before you switch.

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