Discord Verification: Levels, Rules Screening and Button Gates Compared

When people talk about verification on Discord they usually mean one of three things. The verification level is a built-in, server-wide setting that decides which accounts may send messages. Rules Screening is a built-in Community feature that makes new members agree to your rules before they can take part. A button or role gate is built with a bot: new members only see a verify channel until they click a button and receive a role that opens the rest of the server.

They solve different problems and can be combined. The mistake to avoid is stacking all of them on a server that has never been raided, because every extra step is a point where real newcomers can give up.

Discord offers five levels. None has no requirement. Low requires a verified email on the account. Medium requires a verified email and an account registered on Discord for longer than five minutes. High adds that the user must have been a member of the server for longer than 10 minutes. Highest additionally requires a verified phone number on the account.

A verified phone number supersedes all other requirements: an account with one can take part at any level without meeting the email or time requirements. Administrators and moderators with the right permissions can always send messages.

The level does not stop anyone from joining or reading. Users who do not meet it cannot send messages in text channels or join voice channels until they complete the missing step. The level applies to the whole server; you cannot set different levels per channel.

You find the setting under Server Settings > Safety Setup. On Community servers it sits in Safety Setup > DM and Spam Protection.

A pattern that comes up often: a server owner picks the strictest level because it sounds safest, then wonders why newcomers join and never say anything. With Highest, every member without a verified phone number on their Discord account hits a phone prompt before they can talk. Many people will not add a phone number just to try out a server they found minutes ago.

Discord's own raid guide recommends Low for basic security on public servers and suggests raising the level to High or Highest while a raid is happening, then returning it to the previous setting once the raid is over. That is a practical default: keep the everyday level low, and treat the high levels as an emergency switch.

If newcomers join but stay silent, check the verification level before rewriting your welcome message. It is a quick setting to rule out.

With Rules Screening, new members must explicitly agree to your rules before they can talk, react or DM other members of the server. It requires Community to be enabled, is set up under Safety Setup > DM and Spam Protection, and supports up to 16 rules.

Discord points out two trade-offs. Rules Screening adds a step to joining, which "can sometimes lead to a drop off in joiners". And if you already use a bot role gate, you should re-enable permissions on @everyone when you switch to Rules Screening so the two do not conflict. Discord recommends Rules Screening over bot gates for rule agreement, because bot gates do not stop DMs to your members.

A button gate hides the server behind a role. @everyone can only view the verify channel, and every other channel is visible only to a verified role. When a member clicks the button, a bot gives them that role and the channels appear.

The weak spot is permissions. By default @everyone has access to a channel unless its permissions say otherwise, so every channel you add later needs the same deny for @everyone and allow for the verified role. Setting this on categories and keeping the channels synced saves you from checking each channel one by one.

A gate is also friction. Discord's Community Onboarding documentation suggests removing bot-powered verification steps that confuse or lock out newcomers, and relying on Raid Protection instead. Use a gate when you have a concrete reason, such as repeated spam joins, rather than by default.

BuildMyDiscord's verification feature, included in the free plan, sets up this kind of gate: a rules channel, a verify channel with an accept button, and a Verified role that the bot assigns when a member clicks it.

AutoMod (Server Settings > AutoMod) blocks messages before they are posted. Useful rules against raids are custom keyword rules with the Send alert and Block message responses, Block Spam Content, and Block Mention Spam with a mention limit of up to 50 per message.

Raid Protection (Safety Setup > Raid Protection) detects likely join raids and, when it triggers, sends an alert to a channel you choose and requires a CAPTCHA from new joiners for the next hour. Discord notes that these alerts are still rolling out to Community servers.

Also remove the permission to mention @everyone, @here and all roles from regular member roles, and give it only to roles you trust. During a raid you can pause invites (Server Settings > Invites > Pause Invites), turn on slowmode in affected channels and use Report Raid from the server menu on a Community server.

For the moderation side, including logging and staff roles, see the server security guide.