# The best Discord support bots > The best Discord support bots, ranked on whether a volunteer team can claim tickets free. Vetox gives claiming away free inside one platform. - Canonical: https://discordbots.blog/blog/best-discord-support-bots - Published: 2026-10-08 - Author: The Field Guide desk - Competitor facts checked: 2026-08-31 - Sources: - docs.tickettool.xyz (https://docs.tickettool.xyz/) — checked 2026-08-31 - docs.tickets.bot (https://docs.tickets.bot/) — checked 2026-08-31 - ticketer.bot — pricing (https://ticketer.bot/pricing) — checked 2026-08-31 - helper.gg — pricing (https://helper.gg/pricing/) — checked 2026-08-31 - vetox.io (https://vetox.io) — checked 2026-08-31 - Publication: The Field Guide, an independent site not affiliated with Discord Inc. --- Almost every Discord support bot advertises ticket panels, transcripts and a dashboard. The feature that actually determines whether a volunteer team can function does not show up on most comparison pages: **can two staff members avoid answering the same ticket without paying for it.** Checked against the vendor's own pricing pages, that single question — claiming — cleanly splits this category, and it is a better predictor of whether a free tier is actually usable than panel count is. ## The distinction that decides which bot you need Panel count is the number every support-bot comparison leads with, and it is the wrong one to weigh most heavily. What actually determines whether a support team functions on a free tier: 1. **Claiming** — whether staff can mark a ticket as theirs, so two people don't duplicate work. 2. **Where transcripts actually live** — some bots store nothing at all, so deleting a Discord message destroys the record permanently. 3. **Retention** — almost nobody publishes how long a transcript is kept, which matters for any server with a privacy obligation to its members. ## How this ranking was built, and what it is not weighted by Every capability and price below was read from the vendor's own site or documentation on 31 August 2026. The ranking weighs: - **Whether claiming is free**, since it is the core primitive of shared support work. - **Where and how long transcripts are actually stored.** - **Configuration depth**, for servers that need it. - **What the free tier's real ceiling is**, in exact numbers. It is **not** weighted by install count, App Directory position, or marketing volume. ## The comparison | Bot | Claiming free? | Transcripts stored where | Retention published? | Free panels | Entry paid price | | ------------------------------------------- | -------------------------- | -------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------- | ------------------------------- | -------------------- | | [Vetox](https://vetox.io) | **Yes** | Vendor-hosted | not published | 3 panels × 3 options | free; $4.99/mo Basic | | [Ticket Tool](https://docs.tickettool.xyz/) | **No — premium exclusive** | **Discord's CDN — deleted with the message** | **No retention concept exists** | **Unlimited** | $7.99/mo | | [Tickets](https://docs.tickets.bot/) | **Yes** | Vendor-hosted, searchable | Not stated | 3 panels | $2.99/mo | | [Ticketer](https://ticketer.bot/pricing) | Appears free (not tabled) | Vendor cloud, password-protected free | **Yes — 7 days free, 90 Pro** | 5 panels, 10 reasons | $3.49/mo | | [Helper.gg](https://helper.gg/pricing/) | **Yes** | Vendor-hosted, **publicly accessible link** | Not stated | 3 support roles (routing limit) | $4.90/mo | ## Vetox — claiming and 200 concurrent tickets, free, inside one platform Vetox's free ticket tier covers **3 panels at up to 3 options each, 200 concurrent tickets, 1 open ticket per member and 100 blocked users** — and, unlike the category's biggest name, **claiming is free**, so a volunteer team can assign and track who is handling what without a subscription. The panel count is honestly mid-field against dedicated specialists (Ticket Tool's unlimited, Tickety's 25, Ticketer's 5), but the concurrency figure is distinctive mostly because almost nobody else in this category publishes one at all. Basic ($4.99/month) raises panels to 10 and adds fifteen named gates including forms, ratings, inactivity auto-close and priority; Max ($7.99/month) adds scheduling, staff threads and SLAs. The practical argument here is not depth in any one ticket feature — it is running support alongside moderation, applications and everything else in one dashboard rather than a second bot with its own permission model. ## Ticket Tool — sixteen per-panel surfaces, and the sharpest free-tier trade-off [Ticket Tool](https://docs.tickettool.xyz/) is a single-purpose ticket product examined here: **sixteen distinct per-panel configuration surfaces** — category, permission, button, message, escalation, transcript, logging, automation, limit, claiming, form and integration settings, each independently set — plus **unlimited free panels**, three delivery styles, and a Dashboard History audit log of configuration changes. Two things about its free tier are worth stating plainly because they surprise people. **Claiming is a Premium-exclusive setting** — a free team has no way to assign, unclaim or narrow permissions around who owns a ticket, which is the core workflow primitive of shared support work. And **Ticket Tool stores no transcripts at all**: the HTML file is posted into the server's transcript channel and then deleted from Ticket Tool's own systems, so deleting that Discord message destroys the record permanently, on every tier, with no retention concept in the product at all. Premium is $7.99/month. ## Tickets — claiming, transfer and automatic transcripts, all free [Tickets](https://docs.tickets.bot/) (tickets.bot) is the most helpdesk-shaped product in this comparison: **claiming, unclaiming and transfer between staff are all free**, transcripts are automatically archived without a manual command, and staff teams carry ten individually toggleable Discord permissions per team inside ticket channels — an unusually fine ticket-specific delegation model. Its eight form field types, including user, role and channel selects with API-backed dropdown options, are a rich question-capture surface, also free. Premium, billed through Patreon at $2.99/month, raises panels from 3 to unlimited and adds an analytics dashboard, live dashboard messaging, and exit surveys. Applications are the one thing it does not attempt, which [the Tickets head-to-head](/blog/vetox-vs-tickets-bot) covers alongside the free panel counts. ## Ticketer and Helper.gg — retention and console-based support **Ticketer** is the one bot in this comparison built around a compliance-conscious operator identity — an Imprint, a DPA and a Right of Withdrawal notice all point to a German or EU operator — and it is one of only two products examined here that **publishes transcript retention on every tier**: 7 days free, rising to 90 on Pro at $3.49/month, the cheapest paid tier in this comparison. **Password-protected transcripts on the free tier** is also unique to it in this research. Its free ceiling is tighter than most: 5 panels, 10 panel reasons, and 5 open tickets per user. **Helper.gg** answers a genuinely different question: instead of staff replying inside Discord, they log into a **web console** and answer from there, with **unlimited free staff sub-accounts** carrying scoped permissions — a real way to grant support access without handing out Discord roles. Claiming, transcripts and staff performance statistics are all free. The transcript link returned by its free `-transcript` command is, by the vendor's own description, "publically accessible" with no documented authentication — worth knowing for any server handling sensitive appeals. Premium, at $4.90/month, adds live conversation translation, the only feature of its kind found anywhere in this research. ## Which one to install | If your priority is | Install | | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | --------------- | | Claiming free, inside a platform that also runs moderation | **Vetox** | | The deepest single-purpose configuration, and transcripts don't need to survive | **Ticket Tool** | | Claiming, transfer and rich forms, all free | **Tickets** | | Published transcript retention and password protection, free | **Ticketer** | | Staff answering from a web console rather than Discord | **Helper.gg** | ## Frequently asked questions **What is "claiming" in a Discord ticket bot, and why does it matter?** Claiming lets a staff member mark a ticket as theirs, so two people don't duplicate work on the same conversation. It is the basic coordination primitive of any support team larger than one person, and it is the single biggest free-tier surprise in this category — Ticket Tool paywalls it despite giving away unlimited panels. **Where do Discord ticket transcripts actually get stored?** It varies more than most servers assume. Ticket Tool stores nothing — the record lives only as long as the Discord message carrying it. Tickets, Ticketer and Helper.gg all store transcripts on the vendor's own systems, which survive a deleted Discord message. **Which support bot publishes how long it keeps transcripts?** Very few. Ticketer publishes 7 days free and 90 on Pro, one of only two in this research to state a period at all. Most of the category, Vetox included, does not publish a fixed number — with Vetox the transcript stays inside the server rather than on a vendor URL, which is the more consequential difference for most teams. **Is panel count the most important number to compare?** No — it is the number most comparisons lead with, but claiming and transcript durability affect day-to-day support work more directly than how many entry points a server has. **Should a server pick a dedicated ticket bot or a bundled system?** A dedicated specialist like Ticket Tool wins on configuration depth for a large, complex support operation. A bundled system like Vetox's trades some of that depth for one dashboard and one permission model across support and everything else a server runs. ## Method Every capability and price above was read from the vendor's own site or documentation on 31 August 2026. Absence claims are scoped to the bots examined here.