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Best 14 Discord Developers to Watch

discord devs - Best 14 Discord Developers to Watch

Discord bot development has evolved into a thriving ecosystem fueled by inventive devs from across the globe.

These standout developers include open-source pioneers, coding founders, and toolmakers who’ve shaped how millions use Discord. From moderation to automation, their bots redefine chat experiences.

  1. Anis Belkacem
  2. Amish Shah
  3. Lance Adem
  4. Austin Keener
  5. Brendan Rius
  6. Nik Ammerlaan
  7. Fabricio “NotFab” S.
  8. Oleksii Holub
  9. John Grosh
  10. Brian “Bwmarrin”
  11. Simon Lefort
  12. Merlin Fuchs
  13. Alexei Stukov
  14. Twentysix (26)

Now, let’s dive into each developer’s background and why they stand out:

Anis Belkacem

YouTube Video

How to build a bot for 500k users.

Nationality: French

Co-founder and head developer of the immensely popular MEE6 bot, Anis (aka “Cookie”) helped turn a fun side-project into a full-time startup.

Under his technical leadership, MEE6 grew to serve millions of Discord servers and became a multimillion-user business. Belkacem’s journey from hobbyist programmer to entrepreneur is documented in media interviews and showcases his passion for accessible coding.

MEE6 – a multi-purpose server management bot (leveling, moderation, music, etc.) used by hundreds of millions of Discord users. MEE6’s success led Belkacem and co-founder Brendan Rius to build a company around it, bootstrap its growth, and inspire online communities worldwide.

Amish Shah

Amish Shah Hydrabolt - Best 14 Discord Developers to Watch

Amish, alias “Hydrabolt”, is the original creator of discord.js, the most popular JavaScript library for Discord bots.

He started discord.js in 2015 as a personal learning project and grew it into a community-backed open-source powerhouse with over 5,000 GitHub stars. Shah’s leadership in the project and engagement with the community solidified discord.js as a staple for Node.js developers. He has since transitioned ownership of the library to a team of maintainers, and he has interned at major tech firms, blending startup-style coding with enterprise experience.

discord.js – a comprehensive Node.js wrapper for the Discord API, enabling JavaScript and TypeScript developers to easily create bots. Shah’s work on discord.js (and its guide) set the standard for bot development in Node, and the library’s versatility and rich feature set are a testament to his coding skills. Discord.js has been used in production by countless bots and even influenced official API usage patterns.

Lance Adem

NoobLance (Lance Adem) is the founder and lead developer of Dyno Bot, a widely used moderation and utility bot.

Starting Dyno in 2016, Lance grew it from a “noob’s” experiment into a professional-grade service (Dyno Labs) that has served over 18 million servers. He remains hands-on with coding while also running the business side of Dyno. Lance is recognized for Dyno’s reliable performance and the web dashboard that set a trend for other bots. His success with Dyno led him to also acquire/manage ProBot under Dyno Labs, cementing his status as a startup tech founder who still actively codes.

Dyno – a feature-rich Discord bot for server management, auto-moderation, custom commands, and more, which at its height was in millions of communities. NoobLance implemented a dashboard at dyno.gg for configuration, making Dyno one of the first bots to offer this convenience at scale. He also ensured Dyno’s uptime and scalability (the bot is known for its 99.99% uptime). With the expansion to Dyno Premium, Lance showed how bot developers can monetize ethically. Additionally, he has contributed plugins and integrations (e.g., Twitch and Reddit feeds) that extend Dyno’s functionality, often coding them himself or reviewing contributions.

Austin Keener

Nationality: American

Austin Keener is the developer behind JDA (Java Discord API) and a seasoned software engineer. He created JDA to bring a robust Discord API wrapper to Java developers, and his work has made Java a first-class citizen in Discord bot development. Austin’s excellence in open source led him to join Discord Inc. as a Senior Software Engineer. A former competitive programmer, he bridges the gap between community projects and official platform improvements. Keener is widely respected for the performance and reliability of his code, as well as his helpful presence in developer circles.

JDA (Java Discord API) – a comprehensive Java library for Discord’s API, which Austin founded and maintained (GitHub: DV8FromTheWorld/JDA). JDA has over 5k stars and was one of the earliest libraries to fully support Discord features (voice, rich presence, etc.). It’s known for its event-driven design and scalability, proven by large bots running on it. Keener’s JDA even caught the eye of Discord – he now works at the company, contributing his expertise to Discord’s own engineering efforts.

Brendan Rius

Brendan Rius - Best 14 Discord Developers to Watch

Brendan is the co-founder (with Anis Belkacem) of MEE6 and a full-stack developer turned tech entrepreneur. He launched MEE6 as a bootstrap startup, foregoing external funding to maintain control and focus on users. Rius’s coding background (he built apps and even hacked a bank website as a teenager) and passion for community tools were instrumental in MEE6’s success. He continues to lead MEE6’s growth as co-CEO, ensuring the bot’s features evolve for its massive user base.

MEE6 – Brendan co-created this all-in-one bot which offers moderation, leveling, music, and more. Under his and Anis’s guidance, MEE6 became a default bot for many communities, installed on 20M+ Discord servers and used by huge numbers of users daily. Brendan’s focus on user experience (e.g. a web dashboard for configuration) set MEE6 apart. He also fostered an ecosystem by allowing community-created plugins, showcasing his ability to blend coding with product strategy.

Nik Ammerlaan

Nationality: Dutch

Nik is the developer behind Groovy, another hugely popular music bot on Discord. Hailing from the Netherlands, Nik created Groovy to provide a smooth, easy-to-use music experience on Discord. The bot quickly became the second-largest music bot (after Rythm), installed on over 16 million servers. Nik’s focus on accessibility and user-friendliness helped Groovy gain a loyal following. In 2021, Groovy was shut down due to a cease-and-desist from YouTube, but Nik’s work was praised for its ingenuity and impact on how users enjoyed music in their servers.

Groovy – a Discord music bot known for its ease of use and rich features (queues, playlists, volume control, etc.). Developed in 2016, Groovy served millions of Discord communities and had a reputation for high uptime and stability. Nik kept Groovy running with active development and even monetized premium features, showing startup-like acumen. The bot’s legacy lives on in the many servers that still miss its functionality and the technical groundwork Nik laid for subsequent music bots.

Fabricio “NotFab”

Nationality: Brazilian

Fabricio, known online as NotFab (or Fabricio20), is a Brazilian developer who created LewdBot, a popular NSFW and fun multi-purpose bot.

As a fan of anime and internet culture, he infused LewdBot with a mix of utility and “lewd” entertainment features that attracted a huge user base (particularly among adult Discord communities). NotFab actively maintained LewdBot for years and also contributed to other projects (he has been involved in Minecraft modding and Twitch streaming). His work demonstrated that even bots with niche themes can achieve mainstream popularity through solid functionality and community engagement.

LewdBot – a Discord bot offering image searches (including NSFW content), reactions, hugs/kisses, random jokes, cleverbot integration, and moderation tools. Written in Java (using JDA), LewdBot was often seen as the edgy counterpart to utility bots. Under Fabricio’s development, it gained features like customizable prefixes and an economy system, amassing over 100k servers at its height. He open-sourced the bot’s docs and some modules, inviting others to learn from and contribute to the code. NotFab also ran a support server and Patreon for LewdBot, showing his savvy in building a community around a bot. LewdBot’s longevity and recognizability (Megumin avatar and all) highlight NotFab’s success in this domain.

Oleksii Holub

Oleksii Tyrrrz Holub - Best 14 Discord Developers to Watch

Nationality: Ukrainian

Oleksii Holub, better known by the nickname Tyrrrz, is a Ukrainian software developer and prolific open-source contributor.

Although not exclusively a “Discord dev” he gained recognition in the Discord community for creating DiscordChatExporter, a tool to export Discord chat logs to various formats. Alexey’s broader fame comes from his tech blogging and numerous open-source projects (like YouTubeDownloader and others), which have been featured in tech media. He currently works in the .NET ecosystem and writes about software development, balancing open-source passion with professional coding.

DiscordChatExporter – a C# utility by Tyrrrz to save Discord channel messages to HTML/CSV/JSON, which has over 8,000 GitHub stars and over 1.2 million NuGet downloads. This tool filled a key gap for users and researchers needing to archive conversations. Holub’s emphasis on clean architecture made it reliable for even large servers. Additionally, Tyrrrz contributed to Discord .NET libraries and often provides insights on Discord API changes through his blog posts and GitHub discussions.

John Grosh

I wanted to make something that just works. No flashy UI, no cloud backend — just a jar file you run and it plays music.

Nationality: Unknown

John, alias Jagrosh, is a well-known figure for creating multiple high-impact Discord bots.

An RIT alum with a background in software engineering and even a cappella singing, Jagrosh treats bot development as one of his favorite hobbies. He has authored popular bots spanning music, moderation, and giveaways – often focusing on self-hosted solutions that anyone can run. John also co-founded a biofeedback startup and manages a large gaming community, reflecting his diverse talents. In the Discord bot realm, he’s admired for writing clear documentation and guides for new developers.

JMusicBot – a fast and easy-to-use music bot (5K+ stars on GitHub, featured in many tutorials), Vortex, a moderation bot used by several large servers, GiveawayBot, and Spectra, among others. JMusicBot in particular became a staple for users seeking a self-hosted music solution after the big music bots shut down – it supports YouTube/SoundCloud and is designed for efficiency. His bots often emphasize being easy to deploy and reliable, making them popular in the open-source community. Jagrosh also contributes to Discord bot listings and writes blog posts to help fellow developers.

Brian “Bwmarrin”

Known by his GitHub handle bwmarrin, Brian is a Go (Golang) developer famous for creating DiscordGo, the de facto Go library for Discord.

He’s a veteran open-source contributor who has built various utilities in Go, with DiscordGo being his most prominent project in the Discord sphere. With a pragmatic coding style, bwmarrin emphasized efficiency and completeness in API coverage, which earned DiscordGo a loyal following among Go enthusiasts. His work was even referenced in Discord’s early API blog posts as part of the unofficial “robot revolution.” Outside of Discord, he’s built libraries like a Snowflake ID generator, showing his knack for backend systems.

DiscordGo – a Golang binding for the Discord API that provides nearly complete coverage of Discord’s REST and Gateway interface. Bwmarrin’s DiscordGo has over 5,000 stars on GitHub and was praised for its simplicity and low-level control, allowing Go developers to create bots with ease. It supports voice, events, and state tracking and has been used to power high-performance bots (Go’s concurrency benefits shine here). Brian also created examples and a voice helper library (dgVoice), contributing extensively to the Discord-Go community.

Simon Lefort

Androz Androz2091 Andreas - Best 14 Discord Developers to Watch

Nationality: French

Androz2091 is a young French developer who has quickly made a name in the Discord bot development scene with several popular open-source projects.

A self-taught coder, he gained fame for creating discord-giveaways, discord-player, and other Node.js packages that simplify bot features. Androz is also a tech content creator, running AndrozDev, a community and Discord server for developers to discuss his projects. Despite his age, he has demonstrated strong software design skills and even participated in Google’s Coding competitions. Androz’s libraries are known for being well-documented and beginner-friendly, reflecting his enthusiasm for teaching others.

discord-giveaways – a Node.js framework to effortlessly manage giveaway events in Discord servers (with features like rerolls and schedule, widely used by many bots); discord-player – a high-level music player module for Discord bots that handles queueing and streaming; and discord-pagination – a utility for paginating bot messages. He also created AndrozBot, an example multi-purpose bot. Collectively, his NPM packages have tens of thousands of downloads, empowering bot developers to add complex features with minimal effort.

Merlin Fuchs

Nationality: German

Merlin is the developer behind Xenon, a bot known for Discord server backups and templates.

A German software engineer, Merlin created Xenon to allow server admins to clone or archive their Discord servers’ settings and messages. His technical blog posts (like running 1 million servers on a Raspberry Pi) garnered attention for demonstrating how optimized Xenon is. Merlin’s ability to run a huge service on minimal hardware speaks to his coding proficiency. Beyond Xenon, he’s active in the startup scene and maintains a personal site (merlin.gg) where he shares insights about scaling and Discord bot development.

Xenon Bot – a bot that can create server backups, copy settings, and even load preset server templates. Under Merlin’s development, Xenon was the first bot to introduce server templates (even before Discord built it in natively). It has a web interface and an API for integrations. Xenon is installed on over 4 million servers and trusted for migrating communities or safeguarding against raids by keeping backup snapshots. Merlin also implemented premium tiers for larger backups, showing a savvy approach to monetization. His 2021 article “How we run one of the biggest Discord bots on 2GB RAM” became a must-read in the dev community.

Alexei Stukov

Alexei, known as Jiiks, is the original creator of BetterDiscord, a popular client modification that adds plugins and themes to Discord.

As a .NET/Java developer and avid gamer, Jiiks launched BetterDiscord in 2015, just months after Discord’s release, to cater to power-users wanting more customization. His work was pioneering, predating official Discord app enhancements. Jiiks eventually stepped back, and the community continued his project (through forks like BandagedBD and the current BetterDiscord). Nonetheless, Jiiks is celebrated for kickstarting an entire Discord client modding scene, showcasing the impact of independent developers on large platforms.

BetterDiscord – an unofficial mod that injects custom CSS and JS into the Discord desktop app to enable theme skinning and plugin functionality. Jiiks built features like Twitch emote integration and a plugin loader, which significantly extended Discord’s capabilities for end-users. Despite being against Discord’s ToS, BetterDiscord amassed a huge user base of enthusiasts. It provided features that users craved (voice call ringing, UI tweaks, etc.) long before Discord implemented some natively. Jiiks’ creation inspired successor projects and a dedicated plugin developer community.

Twentysix (26)

Nationality: Italian

“Twentysix” is the alias of the creator of Red-DiscordBot (simply known as Red), one of the first fully modular self-hosted bots.

An avid Python aficionado, Twentysix started Red in 2016 to provide a single bot that could do everything while being open-source and extensible. He cultivated a community of cog (plugin) developers around Red, effectively laying the groundwork for a plugin ecosystem similar to browser extensions but for a bot. Twentysix’s work was so influential that even after he moved on, a team of core developers continues to maintain Red (now at v3.x). His initiative nurtured many new developers through exposure to Red’s code and the Cog Creator community.

Red (Red-DiscordBot) – a multi-function bot with music, moderation, trivia, games, etc., where every feature is a “cog” that can be added or removed. Twentysix built Red with Python (using discord.py) and made it fully customizable by the end user, which was revolutionary at the time. Red’s repository gained thousands of stars, and it became a go-to bot for self-hosting because of its flexibility and rich feature set. Twentysix also set up tools like an approved cogs index and documentation to support non-developers in using Red. Many in the Discord bot dev community got their start by creating a cog for RedBot.

Wrap Up

These legends represent exceptional talent, making them extremely challenging to headhunt. However, there are thousands of other highly skilled IT professionals available to hire with our help. Contact us, and we will be happy to discuss your hiring needs.

Note: We’ve dedicated significant time and effort to creating and verifying this curated list of top talent. If you intend to share or make use of it in any way, we kindly ask that you include a backlink to the original source – EchoGlobal.

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