Discord Audit Log Explained: See Who Banned, Kicked, or Deleted Something
To check the Discord audit log, open Server Settings and click Audit Log in the left sidebar. Every entry shows who performed an action (like a ban or channel deletion), what they did, and the exact time. Use the filter dropdowns to narrow by action type or by a specific moderator.
When a channel suddenly vanishes, a member gets banned, or a role disappears, the audit log is the first place to look. It is Discord's built-in record of administrative actions, and it answers the one question every server owner asks in a panic: who did this? This guide walks through exactly how to read it, filter it, and work around its biggest limitation, the 90-day cutoff.
What the Discord audit log records
The audit log tracks moderation and configuration changes made by people and bots with the right permissions. It is not a chat log, it does not store deleted messages, and it does not record who said what. It records actions.
Here is what shows up in it:
- Member actions: bans, unbans, kicks, timeouts, nickname changes, and role assignments.
- Channel actions: channels created, deleted, or updated (including permission overwrite changes).
- Role actions: roles created, deleted, or edited, including permission changes.
- Server settings: name, icon, region, and other server-level edits.
- Invite actions: invites created or deleted.
- Webhook and integration actions: webhooks added or removed, bots authorized.
- Bulk actions: message purges (you see that someone deleted X messages in a channel, but not the message content).
The key thing to understand: the audit log is the system record, generated automatically by Discord. Nobody can quietly turn it off, and a moderator cannot delete individual entries to cover their tracks. That makes it the source of truth when something goes wrong.
How to open the audit log
You need the View Audit Log permission, which is included in Administrator and can be granted to any role on its own. The steps below cover desktop, browser, and mobile.
Step 1: Open Server Settings
On desktop or browser, click your server name at the top-left of the channel list, then choose Server Settings from the dropdown.
On mobile (iOS and Android), tap your server name at the top, then tap the three-dot menu (or the gear icon) and select Settings.
Step 2: Find the Audit Log section
On desktop, scroll the left sidebar to the Moderation group and click Audit Log. The full list loads on the right, newest entry first.
On mobile, scroll down inside Settings to Audit Log and tap it. The mobile view is more compact but shows the same entries.
Step 3: Scan the entries
Each row tells you the actor, the action, and a timestamp. Tap or click an entry to expand it and see the specific changes, for example which permissions on a role were altered, or the exact reason text a moderator typed when issuing a ban.
That is the entire flow. There is no setup, no toggle to enable, nothing to configure. The audit log is always on.
Reading entries: who did what, and when
A single audit log entry has three parts you care about.
The actor. The username and avatar on the left tell you who performed the action. This can be a person or a bot. If a moderation bot issued a ban on a moderator's command, the bot is usually shown as the actor, which is one reason a dedicated mod-log channel (more on that below) is often clearer.
The action. The middle of the row describes what happened in plain language, such as "banned Username," "deleted channel #general," or "updated role Moderator." Click to expand and you get the specifics: a channel deletion shows the channel name and type; a role edit shows a before-and-after of the changed permissions.
The timestamp. Hover over (desktop) or tap (mobile) the relative time like "3 hours ago" to see the exact date and time. This matters when you are reconstructing a sequence of events, for instance figuring out whether the channel deletion came before or after a compromised account started handing out roles.
One detail that trips people up: if a member was banned, the audit log shows the ban event, but if you want the reason, it only appears if the moderator (or bot) supplied one at the time. Discord does not invent a reason. This is why consistent moderation habits matter, and why our full guide to moderating a Discord server recommends always attaching a reason to every action.
Filtering by action type and by user
Scrolling a busy server's audit log by hand is painful. Discord gives you two filters at the top of the Audit Log screen.
Filter by user. The first dropdown lets you pick a specific person or bot. Select a moderator and you see only the actions they took. This is how you check whether one account is responsible for a string of bans or channel changes, which is exactly what you do first when you suspect an account has been compromised.
Filter by action type. The second dropdown narrows to a single category, such as "Member Ban Add," "Channel Delete," or "Role Update." If you specifically want to answer "who deleted a channel," choose the channel-delete action type and the list collapses to just those events. Combine both filters, one user plus one action type, to pinpoint, say, every ban issued by a single moderator.
On mobile the filters live behind a filter icon at the top of the Audit Log screen, but they work the same way.
A practical workflow for the "who banned or deleted a channel" question:
- Open the audit log.
- Set the action-type filter to Channel Delete (or Member Ban Add for a ban).
- Read the actor on the matching entry.
- If you need the wider picture, switch the filter to that user and review everything else they did around the same time.
The 90-day limit and why it matters
Here is the catch that surprises most server owners: Discord only keeps audit log entries for 90 days. After that, older entries roll off and are gone permanently. There is no archive, no export button, and no way to recover an entry once it ages out.
For day-to-day incidents this is usually fine, you almost always check the log within hours of something going wrong. But it becomes a real problem in a few situations:
- A pattern of small abuses that only becomes obvious months later, when the early evidence has already expired.
- A dispute between staff members where someone wants to review actions from last quarter.
- Any community that needs an accountability trail for trust and safety, partnerships, or its own internal rules.
The 90-day window is a hard limit on Discord's side. You cannot extend it from within Discord. The only way to keep a longer record is to capture the events somewhere else as they happen, which is exactly what a logging bot does.
Audit log vs a dedicated mod-log channel
The native audit log and a bot-powered mod-log channel solve overlapping but different problems. They are not competitors so much as two layers.
The native audit log is the authoritative system record. It cannot be faked or wiped by a rogue moderator, it requires no setup, and it covers a broad set of administrative actions. Its weaknesses are the 90-day limit, the fact that bots often appear as the actor instead of the human who triggered the action, and that it is buried in Server Settings where only staff with the permission can see it.
A mod-log channel is a regular text channel where a logging bot posts a clean message every time something happens: "Moderator @Alex banned @User for spam at 14:32." It is readable at a glance, it lives in your server for as long as you keep the channel (not just 90 days), it can capture more context (the human behind a bot command, the message that triggered an auto-mod action), and you can give your whole staff team read access without handing out the View Audit Log permission.
The honest trade-off: a mod-log channel is only as complete as the bot writing it, and a determined admin could delete messages from it, whereas they cannot delete native audit log entries. That is why the best practice is to run both. Use the native log as the tamper-proof source of truth, and the mod-log channel as your readable, permanent, team-friendly record.
If you want to set one up, our walkthrough on how to set up a Discord mod-log channel covers the channel structure and permissions step by step.
Keeping a permanent record past 90 days
Since you cannot extend Discord's 90-day window, the fix is to mirror the events into your own server as they happen, where they stay indefinitely. A logging bot does this automatically.
PeakBot includes full logging as one of its 30+ free features, with no time limit and no trial period. It watches the same events the audit log tracks, bans, kicks, timeouts, channel and role changes, deletions, and posts them to a mod-log channel you choose. Because those messages live in a normal channel, they are not subject to the 90-day cap. You keep a searchable history for as long as you keep the channel.
PeakBot also pairs logging with the other tools you actually need around it:
- Context-aware AI moderation that reads message intent and adapts per channel, instead of matching a fixed keyword blocklist, so the actions it logs are smarter to begin with.
- Anti-raid and anti-nuke protection that catches mass-ban or mass-delete attacks from a compromised admin account, which is precisely the scenario where audit logs become urgent.
- A ticket system, XP and leveling, welcome flows, giveaways, and an analytics dashboard, all free.
PeakBot replaces MEE6, Carl-bot, Dyno, and TidyCord with one bot, and it currently powers 500+ Discord communities. To be fair to the alternatives: Carl-bot has long been a favorite for granular logging and reaction roles, Dyno is dependable and cheap at $4.99/month for its premium tier, and MEE6 has the most name recognition. PeakBot's edge is that the logging, the AI moderation, and the anti-nuke protection are all free in one place, where rivals split them across paid tiers (MEE6 premium is $11.95/month, Carl-bot premium $7.99/month).
For a complete approach to staffing, rules, and tooling, the ultimate guide to Discord server moderation in 2026 ties the audit log into a broader moderation system.
Frequently asked questions
How do I see who deleted a channel in Discord?
Open Server Settings, click Audit Log, then set the action-type filter to "Channel Delete." The matching entry shows the username (or bot) that deleted the channel and the exact timestamp. If the channel was deleted more than 90 days ago, the entry will no longer exist in the native log.
Can a moderator delete or hide their own audit log entries?
No. The native audit log is generated automatically by Discord and individual entries cannot be removed or edited by any user, including the server owner. This is what makes it a reliable source of truth. The only way entries leave the log is by aging past the 90-day limit.
Does the audit log show deleted messages or chat content?
No. The audit log records administrative actions, not chat. It will show that someone bulk-deleted messages in a channel, but not the text of those messages. To preserve message content or capture more context, you need a logging bot writing to a mod-log channel.
Do I need a specific permission to view the audit log?
Yes. You need the "View Audit Log" permission, which is included in the Administrator permission but can also be granted to a role on its own. Members without it will not see the Audit Log option in Server Settings.
How can I keep audit records longer than 90 days?
Discord cannot extend the 90-day window, so the solution is to mirror events into a mod-log channel with a logging bot as they happen. Those messages stay in your server for as long as you keep the channel. PeakBot's free full logging does this automatically, giving you a permanent, searchable history.
