Run discord.js, @discordjs/voice and discordx

discord.js, @discordjs/voice and discordx run on Bun without a shim. This guide lists what each one needs, which optional native packages Bun replaces, and how to ship the bot as one executable with bun build --compile. For a first bot with a slash command, start with Create a Discord bot.

What was checked

Each row below was run on Bun against a fake gateway, a fake voice server and a UDP socket on 127.0.0.1 (no Discord connection, no token). The packages are discord.js 14.27, @discordjs/voice 0.19, @discordjs/ws 1.2 and discordx 11.13.

zlib-sync and erlpack are built in

zlib-sync and erlpack are C++ addons written for V8 (Nan), which Bun cannot load. Bun resolves both names to built-in modules with the same API, so @discordjs/ws (and any library that asks for them) finds them without node-gyp:

import { WebSocketManager, CompressionMethod } from "@discordjs/ws";

const manager = new WebSocketManager({
  token: process.env.DISCORD_TOKEN!,
  intents: 1,
  rest,
  compression: CompressionMethod.ZlibStream,
});

• zlib-sync exports Inflate, which keeps its window between push() calls, and the Z_* constants. push(data, flush) sets result, err and msg as the npm package does. Inflate only, like the npm package.
• erlpack exports pack and unpack for Erlang External Term Format 131. The mapping of values is the same as the addon's: null and undefined become the nil atom, strings become binaries, objects become maps, and integers over 32 bits unpack as decimal strings.

You can drop both from package.json. If they stay installed, the built-in modules win.

discordx

discordx needs the decorator options in tsconfig.json:

{
  "compilerOptions": {
    "experimentalDecorators": true,
    "emitDecoratorMetadata": true
  }
}

Import reflect-metadata before the first decorated class. Import types that appear in decorated signatures with import type or the type modifier:

import "reflect-metadata";
import { Discord, Slash, On, type ArgsOf } from "discordx";

Bun cannot see across files whether ArgsOf is a type, so a plain import { ArgsOf } is kept in the output and fails with Export named 'ArgsOf' not found. TypeScript itself reports the same case as error TS1272 under isolatedModules.

Voice

@discordjs/voice picks its libraries from what is installed. These choices work on Bun:

Measured on one core, encoding a stereo 48 kHz 20 ms frame:

A bot that plays to a handful of channels is fine with opusscript. Beyond about ten simultaneous streams use @discordjs/opus.

@discordjs/opus publishes its prebuilt binaries per Node ABI, up to node-v127, and Bun reports ABI 147, so its install script finds no download and tries to compile. The binary is Node-API and does not depend on the ABI, so fetch the newest one and name the folder for Bun:

bun add @discordjs/opus --ignore-scripts
gh release download v0.10.0 -R discordjs/opus -p "opus-v0.10.0-node-v127-napi-v3-linux-x64-glibc-2.35.tar.gz"
mkdir -p node_modules/@discordjs/opus/prebuild
tar xzf opus-v0.10.0-node-v127-*.tar.gz -C node_modules/@discordjs/opus/prebuild
mv node_modules/@discordjs/opus/prebuild/node-v127-* node_modules/@discordjs/opus/prebuild/node-v$(bun -p "process.versions.modules")-napi-v3-linux-x64-glibc-2.35

Use the asset for your platform (win32-x64-unknown-unknown, darwin-arm64-unknown-unknown, linux-x64-musl-1.2.5, and so on) and the same suffix in the folder name.

Compile the bot

bun build --compile --minify bot.ts --outfile bot \
  --external ffmpeg-static --external @discordjs/opus --external node-opus

Put in --external every optional package that is not installed. prism-media and @discordjs/voice require them inside functions, and the bundler stops on a name it cannot resolve. zlib-sync and erlpack need no flag. Native addons that are installed (sodium-native, @snazzah/davey) are embedded in the executable and load from there.

Measured with the Windows x64 build of Bun 1.4.3-aphrody.3 on the bot used for the table above. Each run connects to a fake gateway, receives a message, sends a reply and exits, so the time includes the whole round trip. Median of 5 runs:

The executable is about 147 MB, nearly all of it the Bun runtime.

Test a bot without Discord

A bot can be tested end to end against a fake gateway made with Bun.serve. Point REST at it with rest: { api }, and return its WebSocket URL from GET /gateway/bot. For voice, the voice endpoint is always wss://<endpoint>?v=8, so serve it with tls and start the bot with NODE_TLS_REJECT_UNAUTHORIZED=0, then use node:dgram for the UDP side. Never point a test at the real gateway with a production token: Discord allows one connection per token.