What Is the Unofficial Discord User API Documentation and What Does It Cover?
The Unofficial Discord User API Documentation at docs.discord.food is a community-maintained reference for the user side of Discord's API — the endpoints the official client and developer portal rely on, authenticated with user and bearer tokens. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by Discord, and it is not the place to look for bot development guidance. If you want to build a bot, use Discord's official documentation instead. If you want to understand how the client itself talks to Discord, this is the reference for you.
What "user API" means here
Discord exposes an open API serving requests for users, bots, and OAuth2 integrations. This documentation narrows its focus to how non-bot users interact with that API. In practice that means:
- User and bearer authentication tokens are the primary credential types documented.
- Bot endpoints may appear, but how bots interact with the API is explicitly out of scope.
- The material reflects how the official client and developer portal use the API, not a supported public contract.
The distinction matters because the two surfaces have different guarantees. Bot endpoints are officially supported and documented by Discord. User-side endpoints are not officially supported, which is exactly why a community project exists to map them.
The risk you need to weigh first
Automating user accounts is against the platform Terms of Service. The documentation states this plainly: doing so unsafely might get you banned. That is not a footnote — it is the single most important condition for deciding whether this reference is useful to you.
Two separate risks stack here:
- Policy risk. Automation of user accounts violates the ToS regardless of how carefully you implement it.
- Accuracy risk. Much of the documentation is based on reverse engineering and educated guesses. The maintainers state that inaccuracies may be present, even though they try not to publish information without basis.
If your goal requires a stable, supported, non-breaking endpoint, this is the wrong resource. The documentation itself points you to Discord's official documentation for that.
What the documentation covers
| Area | Covered here | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| User-side API endpoints | Yes | The core focus |
| User and bearer token auth | Yes | Primary authentication model |
| Bot endpoints | Occasionally | Not the focus; no support guarantee |
| Billing, payments, subscriptions | Yes | Listed as resource pages |
| Premium referrals | Yes | Listed as a resource page |
| Bot interaction patterns | No | Use official docs |
The presence of billing, payment, subscription, and premium referral resource pages tells you the scope extends into account and monetization surfaces of the user API, not just messaging or profile calls.
How to use it responsibly
The documentation is hosted on GitHub, and the project depends on community contributions. If you have knowledge of the Discord API, the maintainers ask you to consider contributing; corrections and improvements are explicitly welcomed, with a CONTRIBUTING.md describing the process.
A practical workflow:
- Check the official docs first if your target is a bot-accessible endpoint. The unofficial docs direct bug reports for bot-accessible API parts to the official documentation issue tracker.
- Treat every page as reverse-engineered until you verify behavior against the live client. Expect drift.
- Contribute corrections through GitHub when you find inaccuracies — that is how the reference stays useful.
Who this is for
This documentation suits developers who want to understand or replicate how the official Discord client communicates with the API, and who accept both the ToS risk and the accuracy caveats. It does not suit anyone building a bot, anyone needing a stability guarantee, or anyone unwilling to verify reverse-engineered details themselves. The project's own framing is simple: go make cool stuff — but go in knowing what you are working with.