People use four different words for this, and only one of them is the official name. One of the four refers to a feature that no longer exists.
The short answer
| Term | What it means | Still exists? |
|---|---|---|
| Server tag | The official name. A 4-character label and badge you wear on your profile. | Yes |
| Guild tag | Same thing. "Guild" is the developer word for a server. | Yes |
| Clan tag | Same thing. Borrowed from gaming. | Yes |
| Discord tag | Ambiguous. Usually means the old Username#1234. |
No |
If you landed here from a search, you almost certainly want the server tag. The first three rows are one feature with three names.
Server tag
This is what Discord calls it in the app and in its own documentation.
A server tag is a 4-character label paired with a small badge. It appears next to your name everywhere on Discord: in chat, in member lists, in your DM list, and on your profile.
The mechanics:
- The server owner unlocks it by spending 3 Server Boosts.
- It runs up to 4 characters, alphanumeric plus some special characters, with no spaces or emoji.
- Tags aren't unique. Two unrelated servers can both use
MOTH, and the badge and colour are what tell them apart. - Members opt in. Anyone in the server can wear it, and nobody can be made to.
- You wear one at a time, even if five of your servers offer one.
- Clicking someone's tag opens that server's profile, with a join button on it.
Guild tag
Internally, and throughout Discord's API, a server has always been called a guild. Bot developers write guild.id, not server.id. The word leaked out of the docs and into everyday use.
So "guild tag" means "server tag". If you see a site advertising guild tags, it's indexing the same feature. There's no separate guild tag system to go looking for.
Clan tag
In Counter-Strike, Call of Duty and a hundred other games, a clan tag is the short prefix squad members wear in front of their name: [MOTH] player. Discord's feature does the same job, so gamers reached for the word they already had.
It's the same feature under a borrowed name. There's no "clan" section in Discord's settings, so look for Server Tag.
Discord tag, the dead one
This is the term that causes the real confusion, because it used to mean something specific and now means nothing.
Until 2023, every Discord account looked like username#1234. That four-digit number was called a discriminator, and the whole string was your Discord Tag. It was how you added friends.
Discord announced the removal in May 2023 and replaced it with unique @usernames. By March 2024 the migration was finished, and accounts that never picked a username had one assigned automatically. The #1234 is gone and it isn't coming back.
So a search for "why did my discord tag disappear" can mean two unrelated things. If your #1234 vanished, that was the 2023 username change, and it's permanent. If the badge next to your name vanished, that's a server tag, and it usually means the server ran out of boosts. We wrote up every cause here.
Username, display name, nickname
Three more fields get mixed into this:
- Your username is your unique
@handle. One per account, lowercase, globally unique, and it's what people use to add you. - Your display name is the version shown above your username. It isn't unique and can have capitals and spaces.
- A server nickname overrides your display name inside one server only.
None of these are tags. A server tag sits next to all of them and is the only one that carries a badge.
Which one do you want?
If you want the badge next to your name, that's a server tag, and you need to be in a server that has one unlocked. Browse every live tag in the directory and pick one.
If you want to give your own server a tag, you need three boosts. Here's how that works.