# Red-DiscordBot: self-hosted, modular, named after Transistor

> Red is a self-hosted, fully modular Discord bot in Python: music, moderation, trivia and stream alerts ship as toggleable modules, with a community index of third-party cogs. It is GPL v3, built on discord.py, and its default branch is V3/develop.

**Cog-Creators/Red-DiscordBot** — A multi-function Discord bot

- Repository: https://github.com/Cog-Creators/Red-DiscordBot
- Website: https://docs.discord.red
- Stars: 5,713 · Forks: 2,520
- Language: Python
- License: GPL-3.0
- Published: 2026-09-22 · Updated: 2026-09-22 · Language: en
- Canonical page: https://hysenlabs.com/projects/cog-creators-red-discordbot

## A bot you host, controlled from inside Discord

Red's overview leads with two constraints that define the product. It is fully modular, every feature and command can be enabled or disabled, and it is self-hosted, you run and maintain your own instance rather than inviting someone else's. The pitch is breadth: the same bot can be an admin bot, a music bot, a trivia bot or, in the README's words, a new best friend, all together. The other promise is accessibility: apart from installing and updating, every part of the bot is controlled from within Discord, and the documentation says plainly that you do not need to know anything about coding. A small cultural detail rounds it out: Red is named after the protagonist of Transistor, the game by Supergiant Games, with artwork by Sinlaire. The counter-model is the invited, hosted bot, which trades this flexibility for zero maintenance.

## Default cogs from hackban to the slot machine

What ships in the box covers the workhorse jobs of a server bot. Moderation includes kick, ban, softban and hackban, a mod-log, a filter and chat cleanup. Trivia arrives with lists included and a path to add your own. Music plays from YouTube, SoundCloud and local files, with playlists and queues. Stream alerts watch Twitch, YouTube and Picarto. An economy exists as a bank with a slot machine and user credits. Custom commands, Imgur and gif search, and admin automation in the form of self-role assignment, cross-server announcements and mod-mail reports fill the corners, with command permissions customizable per command. None of it is mandatory, which is the point: the same default set can be trimmed down to a pure moderation bot or left fully loaded.

## Third-party cogs, installed from Discord itself

The extension unit is the cog, and Red's differentiating trick is that third-party cogs install directly from Discord, without a shell. The community's examples give the flavor: Cleverbot integration so the bot talks back, ban synchronization across servers, welcome messages, a casino, reaction roles, slow mode and AniList lookups. A dedicated index at index.discord.red lists what is available, and when the cog you want does not exist, a cog creation guide in the documentation walks through building your own. This is the ecosystem's flywheel: the bot stays small, the community produces the long tail, and the index is the discovery layer between them. For a server admin, the practical skill is evaluating cogs before loading them, since anything loaded runs with the bot's access.

## Install guides per platform, support in one channel

The README's installation section does not paste commands, it points at platform guides: Windows, macOS and most major Linux distributions each get a documented path under docs.discord.red's install_guides, and the package is published on PyPI as Red-DiscordBot, providing the redbot and redbot-setup entry points visible in pyproject.toml. That split, guides first and commands second, matches the audience stated in the overview: people who do not write code but can follow a step-by-step document. When a guide is not enough, the documented escalation is the official Discord server's #support channel at discord.gg/red, which keeps troubleshooting inside the same tool the bot lives in. The maintenance obligation of self-hosting starts here, at install time, and every later update repeats it.

## Python 3.8.1 to under 3.12, with a vendored MIT island

The supported interpreter band is narrow and explicit: classifiers list Python 3.8 through 3.11, and setup.py computes python_requires as >=3.8.1 plus a cap below 3.12, relaxed only for the project's own tox runs on newer interpreters. The foundation is discord.py, Rapptz's library, and one dependency is carried inside the tree rather than installed: the vendored discord.ext.menus package, MIT licensed, with its license preserved as redbot/vendored/discord-ext-menus.LICENSE inside the otherwise GPL v3 project. That vendoring is the pragmatic compromise mature projects reach when an upstream package goes quiet, and the black configuration honors it by force-excluding redbot/vendored from reformatting so the vendored code stays as shipped. The AsyncIO framework classifier confirms the concurrency model underneath.

## requirements/ as a directory, not a list

Packaging here is organized unusually but legibly. Dependencies live in a requirements/ directory, base.txt for the core and one extra-*.txt file per optional feature, which setup.py globs into extras at build time; a dev extra is the union of all of them, and the all extra is assembled from the postgres set. pyproject.toml declares version, requires-python, dependencies and optional-dependencies as dynamic, because the truth lives in those files and in redbot.VersionInfo rather than in static metadata. A quieter detail matters to cog authors: the project registers a pytest11 entry point, redbot.pytest, meaning Red ships as a pytest plugin so third-party cog test suites get async Discord fixtures for free, with asyncio_mode set to auto in the tool configuration. Black formatting runs at line-length 99, targeted at py38.

## Crowdin, cherry-picking and patch bursts

Operations around the code are their own story. Translations flow through Crowdin, with a crowdin.yml configuration and Makefile targets that generate pot files via redgettext with command docstrings, then upload and download through the crowdin CLI; make.bat and make.ps1 give Windows the same entry points. A .cherry_picker.toml configures commit backporting, the machinery behind the release pattern visible in the tags: 3.5.22 landed 2025-09-04, then 3.5.23 and 3.5.24 arrived on 2026-03-04 and 2026-03-06, two days apart, the burst shape of fixes being picked onto a stable branch. Development itself runs on the V3/develop default branch, with the last push on 2026-09-07, SECURITY.md for vulnerability reports, CHANGES.rst for history, and Patreon supporting the Red Devs.

## Conclusion

Run Red if you want one self-hosted bot that can be an admin bot, a music bot and a trivia bot at once, and you accept operating your own instance. Choose an invited, hosted bot if you never want to maintain a Python process. Verify first that your interpreter falls in the supported range, Python 3.8.1 up to but not including 3.12, and read the install guide for your platform before wiring up the bot token.

## FAQ

### What is a red Discord bot?

Red, or Red-DiscordBot, is a free, self-hosted Discord bot for music, moderation, trivia and stream alerts, published under GPL v3 by the Cog-Creators community. All of its features are modules that can be enabled or disabled, and you host your own instance.

### How do you install Red Discord bot?

Follow the platform install guides under docs.discord.red for Windows, macOS and most major Linux distributions. If problems remain, the #support channel of the official Discord server at discord.gg/red is the documented place to ask.

### How do you use red Discord bot?

Aside from installing and updating, every part of the bot can be controlled from within Discord, and no coding knowledge is required. Third-party plugins, called cogs, can be found at index.discord.red and installed directly from Discord.

## Sources

- [Cog-Creators/Red-DiscordBot on GitHub](https://github.com/Cog-Creators/Red-DiscordBot)
- [License: GPL-3.0](https://github.com/Cog-Creators/Red-DiscordBot/blob/V3/develop/LICENSE)
- [Project website](https://docs.discord.red)
- [README](https://github.com/Cog-Creators/Red-DiscordBot/blob/V3/develop/README.md)
- [Releases](https://github.com/Cog-Creators/Red-DiscordBot/releases)

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Hysen Labs editorial analysis, written from the project's own repository and release notes. Cite the canonical page: https://hysenlabs.com/projects/cog-creators-red-discordbot