How much do Twitch streamers make? Money from subs, sponsors, donations & more

Most streamers have the goal of making Twitch their full-time job, which include getting paid for streaming. But how do streamers make money, and how much do they make?

Earning money is a major perk of being a Twitch streamer. Having an income allows you to easily invest back in your setup and stream quality to provide better production value to your viewers, potentially bringing in even more money.

While it’s a lot of work to build a community and even more work to make them want to subscribe to you monthly — you can quickly achieve the goals needed to start making money on the platform.

Here’s everything you need to know about how Twitch streamers make money, and how much they make.

How do Twitch streamers make money?

To start making money on Twitch, you have to hit the goals provided by the platform to become ‘Affiliate’ and then ‘Partner.’ Here are the requirements for each level of monetization:

Affiliate: 

• 500 total minutes
• Seven unique days
• Three concurrent viewers
• 50 followers

Partner: 

• 25 total hours
• 12 unique days
• 75 concurrent viewers

The goals on both levels are the minimum requirements to achieve them, so you can surpass all of the options without any worry.

As an Affiliate or Partner, you can earn money with Twitch Bits and subscriptions, with the added perk of ad revenue for Partners.

Here are some alternative ways to make money while streaming:

• Off-site donations – StreamLabs offers a monthly recurring option on their donation page.
• Sponsorships – Businesses look for influential creators and pay them to promote the company.
• Other platforms – creators have the option to diversify their content and offer unique content on websites like Fanhouse or Patreon.

How much do streamers make?

Twitch streamers’ earnings depend on how many viewers they have per stream, how many subs, and how many donate. Subscriptions cost the viewer $4.99 USD, however, the streamer only gets half of that.

Here are a few examples of how much you could potentially make with subs:

• 100 subs – $250
• 500 subs – $1,250
• 1000 subs – $2,500

Streamers can receive donations in the form of Bits as well, with 1 bit = 1 cent. Here are a couple of examples of how much you can earn if you receive donations in bits:

• 100 bits – $1.00
• 500 bits – $5.00
• 1000 bits – $10.00

Who are the richest streamers on Twitch?

With the help of a recent Twitch streamer revenue leak, we have a rough idea of how much the platform’s top streamers have earned between September 2019 and October 2021.

However, these numbers have changed a lot in the past few years, and some streamers have also moved to different platforms.

Here are the current 10 of the platform’s richest creators, based on the 2021 leak:

1. Critical Role – $9,626,712.16
2. xQc – $8,454,427.17
3. Summit1g – $5,847,541.17
4. Tfue – $5,295,582.44
5. NICKMERCS – $5,096,642.12
6. Ludwig – $3,290,777.55
7. TimTheTatman – $3,290,133.32
8. Altoar – $3,053,839.94
9. Auronplay – $3,053,341.54
10. Lirik – $2,984,653.70

The 10 richest streamers on the platform are dominated by male creators, with Pokimane and Amouranth trailing behind in 39 and 48 respectively. This puts Twitch’s two top female streamers millions of dollars behind the top male streamers.

If you’re looking for bonus money doing something you love, Twitch can absolutely provide that. However, getting to the financial level of someone like xQc can take years to achieve.