Yes, BattleBot is completely free to use. There is no credit card, no trial period, and no hidden fees. Free covers everything the bot does: both tournament formats, every bracket size from 4 to 32 players, the AI tournament assistant, the private match threads, and the live web bracket viewer. There is currently no paid tier: every server gets the same full-featured bot from the moment it is added. BattleBot is built and paid for by Gangbusters Ltd, the studio behind the multiplayer game BattleTabs, as a way to help Discord communities run tournaments for the games they already play.
Use the ADD TO DISCORD button on this site, choose your server, and approve the permissions Discord shows you — BattleBot asks only for what running a tournament needs, such as posting messages, creating threads, and adding reactions. Adding any bot to a Discord server requires the Manage Server permission, so ask a server admin if you do not have it. There is nothing to configure afterwards; the commands appear straight away.
Run the /tournaments_create command in your server. A setup wizard walks you through it: choose the game, enter a name and player count, pick a format, then press Create and open registration.
The whole flow, step by step: how to run a tournament on Discord.
Players tap the Sign Up button on the registration message BattleBot posts in your channel, so there is no command to learn. They can also ask the assistant to enter them by typing /ask request: sign me up.
Tournaments currently support 4 to 32 players, and the size has to be a power of two: 4, 8, 16, or 32. That constraint comes from the bracket itself — each single-elimination round halves the field, so a power of two is what fills every slot without byes. You choose the size when you create the tournament, and registration closes on its own once that many players have signed up. If a tournament does not fill, an admin can force-start it and BattleBot builds the bracket from whoever has registered rather than waiting on the last slot. Larger brackets are on the roadmap; until then, communities bigger than 32 players usually run several tournaments instead of one huge one.
BattleBot supports single elimination, where one loss knocks a player out, and first-to-X, a best-of series where the first player to hit the win threshold takes the match. You pick between the two in the setup wizard when you create the tournament. Single elimination is the quicker of the two and the one most Discord events use: a 16-player bracket is four rounds, and every match is decisive. First-to-X suits games where one match is too swingy to settle anything — set the threshold to two or three wins and the bracket only advances when a player gets there, at the cost of a longer event. Double elimination and round robin are on the roadmap, which means they are not built yet.
Yes. Manual result reporting works for any game at all, including games with no API and games played away from a screen. The winner taps a button in the match thread, the other player confirms, and the bracket advances — BattleBot never needs to see the game itself, so chess, fighting games, shooters, board games and sports all work the same way. For supported games such as BattleTabs, matches are created and results are tracked automatically, so nobody has to report anything. Everything else is identical either way: the same bracket, the same private match threads, the same AI assistant and the same shareable web bracket viewer.
Yes. Every tournament gets a live page in the web bracket viewer at battlebot.battletabs.io/tournaments, and that link can be shared with anyone, including people who are not in your Discord server. The page shows the whole bracket round by round, with both players and the score of every match, and it updates as results are confirmed. Nobody needs an account, a login or a Discord invite to read it, which makes it the link to put in a stream description, a community announcement or a post somewhere else entirely. The same viewer also carries a public list of the tournaments running right now and the champions of recently finished ones.
Browse the live viewer: battlebot.battletabs.io/tournaments.
Players tap a button in their private Discord match thread to report the winner. The other player confirms, and the bracket advances automatically; a disputed result is handed to an admin to settle. BattleBot opens one of those threads for every match in the round, so the two players have somewhere to arrange a time and report the outcome without cluttering the main channel. The slash command /report_result, given the match ID, does the same job if the thread has scrolled away. For games BattleBot is integrated with, such as BattleTabs, none of this is needed — the result is tracked as soon as the match ends and the winner advances on their own.
Any member can use /ask to check tournament status, find their next match, look up who is still in the bracket, and sign themselves up or withdraw. Admins get management on top of that: starting a tournament, restarting a match, setting a winner, disqualifying a player, or sending a match reminder.
More on what it can answer: the AI tournament assistant.
Server ambassadors, super users, and the person who created the tournament. Creators can only manage the tournaments they made themselves, and BattleBot re-checks that on every admin action. Discord restricts the admin command to server administrators by default; if your organisers are not admins, grant it to their role under Server Settings, Integrations. The same rules apply when someone asks the assistant instead of typing a command — it only offers the management tools to people who already have them, and re-checks the tournament before it runs anything. Everybody else keeps the read-only half of the bot: checking status, finding their next match, or signing themselves up, none of which needs a permission at all.
The full list: BattleBot command reference.
An admin awards the match to the player who did turn up, either with the finish_match_with_winner admin command or by asking the assistant to disqualify the no-show. The bracket advances immediately, so one absent player does not stall the round. Nothing forfeits on a timer: BattleBot never decides on its own that someone has waited long enough, which is why most organisers state a deadline up front — play your match within 24 hours, or the win goes to your opponent. Before awarding the match, an admin can ask the assistant to send a match reminder, which pings both players by name and is usually enough to turn up someone who simply lost track of the round.
Yes. International communities run tournaments with BattleBot in many languages, because players talk to each other in whatever language their server uses. The bot's own messages and command names are currently English only.
Kick the bot from your Discord server the way you would remove any member; that revokes its access immediately and its commands stop working. Data already collected is handled according to the privacy policy.
Details: privacy policy.
BattleBot is made by Gangbusters Ltd, the studio behind the multiplayer game BattleTabs at battletabs.com. It is free to use, and support runs through the community Discord server. It began as the tournament tooling for BattleTabs' own Discord community, which is why BattleTabs matches are created and scored automatically, and it grew into a general Discord tournament bot once it was clear that the bracket, the match threads and the result reporting did not care what the game was. Any game can be run through it today. Development continues alongside BattleTabs; double elimination, round robin and larger brackets are on the roadmap but are not built yet.
Ask the bot itself — type /ask request: what can you do? in any server that has BattleBot installed and it will list everything it can help with. If the question is about the bot rather than a tournament, the community Discord linked in the footer is the fastest place to get a human answer.
Every slash command, who can run it, and a worked example for each.
Planning, setup, match day and problem-solving, start to finish.
Manage a whole tournament in plain English with /ask.