If you have never watched Twitch before you may be wondering if it is free to use? Perhaps your kids are watching Twitch and you are wondering if they are racking up some sort of bill that hasn’t arrived yet.
In this article, we are going to break down what is free on Twitch and what isn’t. Let’s jump in.
Is Twitch Free To Watch?
Yes, Twitch is a free to watch platform similar to Youtube. You do not need to pay any sort of subscription fee to use the service. There are options to support your favorite streamers through a subscription if you choose to do so. This starts at $4.99 per month and will get you some extra benefits in a streamers chat.
While lots of people do donate or subscribe to their favorite streamers, there is no obligation to at all. You do not even need an account on Twitch to watch the content. However, if you want to interact with chat you will need a Twitch account.
Some streamers will require you to be a subscriber if you want to talk in chat. They do this by putting their chats in “Subscriber Only” mode. If interaction is a big part of your enjoyment you may be incentivised to Subscribe to join the chat. It is usually large streamers with 10s of thousands of viewers who enable Sub Only mode.
Is Twitch Free To Stream On?
Yes, Twitch is free to stream on. Streamers do not have to pay any money to Twitch to start streaming. Anyone can set up an account and start streaming to platform.
Is Twitch Streaming Software Free?
Yes, you can use a platform such as OBS or Streamlabs to stream your gameplay to Twitch completely free. While Streamlabs does have a premium version of their software available it is not needed for most streamers.
You can get a pretty good stream setup without spending much money. We recommend checking out our budget streaming setup.
How Do Twitch Make Money?
Twitch make money in two main ways on their platform:
Revenue Share – When a creator receives a Subscription or Bits donation on Twitch, Twitch take 30 – 50% of the revenue.
Ad Revenue – Twitch also make money from ads played on their platform. These ads are played before and during streams. When an ad is shown on a stream, the streamer will also receive a cut of the revenue.
As you can see twitch makes their money through ads and taking a cut of streamer revenue.
Is Twitch Prime Free?
By linking your Twitch account to your Amazon Prime account you get one free subscription on Twitch per month. The streamer will still get paid his cut of approximately $2.50 from the free subscription.
While Twitch prime is free you are required to have an Amazon Prime account to access it. Amazon Prime currently costs $14.99.
A lot of people already use Amazon and have a Prime subscription so Twitch Prime is a nice bonus for users of Twitch.
How Much Does It Cost To Subscribe To Someone On Twitch?
It costs $4.99 to subscribe to a streamer on Twitch. You can use your Amazon Prime subscription once per month to subscribe to a streamer for free. When you subscribe to a streamer you will get extra features in their stream such as emotes, access to subscriber only chat and off Twitch features such as Discord access.
There are also other levels of Subscriptions on Twitch. As well as the standard Tier 1 $4.99 subscription their is Tier 2 & 3 subscriptions which come in at higher price points.
Tier 2 subscriptions are $9.99 and Tier 3 subscriptions are $24.99. These subscriptions usually come with some extra benefits such as a special badge beside your name and extra emotes. You can learn more about Twitch Subscriptions here.
The main reason to donate bigger amounts is simply just to support a content creator that you enjoy.
Is Twitch Safe For Kids?
Twitch is generally safe for kids however some streams may be marked as 18+ and have mature content. If you plan on letting your kids watch Twitch you should know who they are watching and whether or not that streamer is family friendly.
Lots of streamers out there are family friendly and purposefully don’t swear or talk about inappropriate topics as they know some of their audience is quite young.
Wrapping Up
Hopefully you are happy to find out that Twitch is a free to watch platform. There is the option to further support content creators if you want to but it is not mandatory. All streams are essentially available to everybody, free to watch. Enjoy watching Twitch without worrying about high prices!
Read More From Get On Stream:
