How to See Members of a Discord Server
The sidebar list looks like a roster, but in a large server it is only the people online right now. The full list exists, and only the server's staff can open it.
How to see members of a Discord server: on desktop, open any text channel and look at the panel on the right. If it is hidden, click the members icon, the silhouette of two people, in the bar at the top of the channel. On mobile, open a channel and swipe from the right edge, or tap the members icon at the top, to bring up the list. Members are grouped by role where the server has set that up, then by online and offline.
Two things limit what you see. The list only shows people who can view the channel you are in, so a private channel shows a smaller list than the general one. And once a server grows past about a thousand members, Discord stops showing offline members in the list at all. You see the online group and a total, not a roster.
That second limit is what makes Discord different. In a small server the sidebar reads like a full roster: everyone is there, online at the top and offline underneath. Past roughly a thousand members, Discord hides the offline section across every channel in the server, because loading all of them for every visitor is expensive. The list you scroll becomes the people online at that moment.
The complete list does still exist. It lives on the Members page inside Server Settings, which shows every member with their join date, account age, how they joined and their roles. But that page is only available to the server owner and to people with moderation-level permissions. A regular member, or a visitor thinking of joining, has no way to read the full roster of a large server.
So from outside, a Discord server is judged on two numbers, not a list. The invite preview shows how many people are online and how many members the server holds, and that is the whole picture a stranger gets before clicking join. That is the figure Discord online members change: the green online number on the invite and at the top of the member list. Compare that with a Telegram group, where any participant can usually scroll the full member list, and you can see why the two platforms are read so differently.
How to see all members of a Discord server
If you are a regular member, you see everyone the sidebar is willing to show you. In a server under about a thousand members, that is everyone who can see the channel, online and offline. Open the general or welcome channel, which most members can view, to get the widest list.
If you are staff, use the Members page. Open the server menu, go to Server Settings, and find Members under the user management section. Discord makes this page visible to the owner and to roles with permissions such as Administrator, Manage Server, Manage Roles, Manage Nicknames, Kick Members or Ban Members. It lists every member, not only those online, and you can search, filter by role, and sort by join date.
The Members page is also where cleaning up a server starts. How to kick inactive members from a Discord server covers the prune tool, which works on members who have been away for a set period.
What the Members page shows that the sidebar doesn't
For each member: when they joined the server, how old their Discord account is, how they joined, such as which invite link they used, and every role they hold. Account age next to join date is the quickest way for staff to spot a wave of brand-new accounts arriving together. Discord shows Unknown as the join method when it doesn't have enough information to say how someone joined.
How to see members in a Discord server on mobile
Open the server and tap into a text channel. Swipe from the right edge of the screen, or tap the members icon at the top of the channel, to open the channel's details with the member list. As on desktop, the list follows the channel: it shows the people who can see that channel, grouped by role and status.
Staff can open the full Members page on mobile too, from Server Settings. The layout is narrower, but the information and the permission rules are the same.
Why can't I see offline members on Discord?
Almost always because the server has passed about a thousand members. Discord hides offline members from the member list in servers of that size, in every channel, including small private channels where only a handful of people have access. There is no setting for server owners to turn the offline list back on; the size of the server decides it.
The other reason is invisible status. A member who sets their status to Invisible appears offline to everyone else. In a small server they sit in the offline group; in a large one they drop out of the visible list entirely.
If you are trying to confirm that a specific person is in a large server, type @ followed by their name in the message box: Discord's autocomplete suggests matching members of the server even when they are not in the visible list. You don't have to send the message. Staff can look them up directly on the Members page.
Can you hide members in a Discord server?
Not the whole list. Anyone who can view a channel can see the member list for that channel, within the limits above, and there is no switch that hides the list from members.
What you can control is who appears where. The member list for a channel only includes people who can view that channel, so a private channel restricted to a role shows only that role's members. That is the standard way to keep a staff area, or a paid area, out of sight of the rest of the server.
Individual members can hide themselves from the online group with Invisible status, and in a server over the thousand-member line that removes them from the visible list altogether.
How to sort members by role on Discord
Role grouping is set per role. Open Server Settings, go to Roles, choose a role, and turn on the option to display role members separately from online members. Members with that role then appear under a heading of their own in the member list, above the general online group.
The order of those headings follows the order of roles in the Roles list: drag a role higher and its group moves up. A member with several displayed roles appears under the highest one. Only online members are grouped this way; offline members, where they are shown, are listed together at the bottom.
This is the setting that makes a server's structure readable at a glance, with moderators, then contributors, then everyone else, and it is one of the first things worth setting up. What is a Discord server covers roles and channels from the beginning.
What a visitor actually sees before joining
Not the list. A person clicking your invite sees the server name, icon, a description if you wrote one, and two numbers: members online and members in total. That is the evidence they have for whether the server is alive.
The total answers whether people ever came. The online number answers whether anyone is here now, and it is the one that decides the click. A server with a large total and a tiny online figure reads as abandoned. That is why owners of new servers watch the online count more closely than the total, and it is the number Discord online members move, with Discord members covering the total.
This is also where Discord and Telegram part ways. In a Telegram group, participants can usually scroll the full member list, unless the admins of a group with a hundred or more members have turned on the option to hide it. Telegram channels never show subscribers to each other. Telegram group versus channel explains the difference, and who can see Telegram channels you joined covers the privacy side.
Questions people ask about Discord member lists
Why does my Discord member list only show online people?
Because the server has more than about a thousand members. Discord hides offline members from the list in servers that size, in every channel, and there is no setting to show them.
Who can see the Members page in server settings?
The server owner and roles with moderation-level permissions, such as Administrator, Manage Server, Manage Roles, Manage Nicknames, Kick Members or Ban Members.
Can I see who joined a Discord server recently?
Staff can, on the Members page, sorted by join date, with the invite used where known. Regular members cannot see join dates for other people.
Can members see who is in a private channel?
Only if they can view that channel. The member list for a channel includes only the people with access to it.
How do I appear offline in a Discord member list?
Set your status to Invisible. You appear offline to everyone, and in servers over the thousand-member line you disappear from the visible list.
Can you see how many members a Discord server has without joining?
Yes. The invite preview shows the total number of members and how many are online. It does not show who they are.
Keep reading
- Discord online members — The green online figure on the invite and atop the member list, the one a visitor reads first, is what Discord online members change.
- How to kick inactive members from a Discord server — The prune tool, which starts from the same Members page.
- Telegram group versus channel — The platform where the member list is usually open to everyone.