Twitch is clearly the live-streaming platform of choice for gamers. Top Twitch streamers can make a full-time living on the platform, and many have built massive fanbases. Favorite streamers can make money in a variety of ways, but one of the most popular methods is via subscribers to their channels.
The advantage of subscriptions to a Twitch streamer is that it is a recurring form of income. A fan of a channel can opt to subscribe to it if the steamer is a Twitch Affiliate or Partner.
The main reason you would subscribe to a streamer’s channel is to show a sign of support. You are effectively agreeing to make them a regular monthly donation. This is different from following somebody, where no money changes hand. You can also use the tool below to check a Twitch Streamer's Sub Count.
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What do Subscribers Receive in Return?
While most people subscribe to a channel to give support to a favorite streamer, they do receive some perks in return. The most common ones are:
- Emotes – these are emoticons unique to each Twitch channel, which a subscriber can use in any channel chatroom. Although Twitch Affiliates can only create one emote, Twitch Partners can design substantially more.
- Subscriber badges – when a subscriber chats in a chatroom, a special subscriber badge will appear beside their name. Although there is a standard subscriber badge, streamers can customize them if they choose.
- Special Alerts – Special alerts display to everybody watching a stream every time a subscriber resubscribes, publicizing the subscriber’s username, and length of subscription to date. Subscribers can also send customized messages to the streamer.
- Exclusive Chatroom – some streamers create sub-only chatrooms for their subscribers, particularly useful for big channels where comments can quickly vanish off the screen because of the number of viewers present
- Exclusive Competitions – some streamers hold subscriber-only competitions, with premium prizes, compared to what they offer their general viewers.
- Ad-free Viewing – many channels reward their subscribers with ad-free viewing
Twitch Subscription Tiers
Twitch initially introduced subscriptions at $4.99 per month, keeping half and paying the other half to the streamers. Twitch has made arrangements with some of the more popular broadcasters, however, and some in this list keep 60 to 100% of their subscriptions.
In Mid-2017, Twitch extended their subscription system. Although the bulk of people still pay the $4.99 sub, they now have the option of opting for $9.99 (Level 2) or $24.99 (Level 3). Streamers usually list the perks for each subscription tier on their channel page.
People can choose to pay their subscriptions monthly, or in three or six-month blocks.
How Many Subscribers Does Your Favorite Streamer Have?
Twitch doesn’t make subscriber numbers as public as they do follower numbers. You won’t find a channel’s subscriber numbers, merely by looking on their channel page.
However, we do offer a tool that allows you to discover the number of subscribers your favorite streamers have. Just enter a streamer’s username into the box below to find out how many subscribers they have.
Top Twitch Theme Providers
So who are the Twitch streamers with the most streamers? We recently checked out the most popular Twitch streamers, in terms of subscribers. Note that these numbers constantly change so the exact subscriber numbers will be different by the time you read this.
We have focused on individual streamers in this list, ignoring corporate and game company streaming accounts.
Top 10 Twitch Streamers by Subscriber Count:
1. Ninja
Source: twitch.tv
Twitch Stream: twitch.tv/ninja
Ninja is an American Twitch streamer and Internet personality. His real name is Richard Tyler Blevins.
He heads the league tables for both most Twitch subscribers and most Twitch followers.
Ninja has played video games professionally since 2009, initially playing Halo 3 for various eSports teams. He began streaming in 2011, playing H1Z1. He joined Luminosity Gaming in 2017.
When he began streaming Fortnite his viewer numbers soared. In April 2018, during the event Ninja Vegas 2018, Ninja set a Twitch record, with 667,000 live viewers.
In June 2018, Ninja announced a partnership with Red Bull eSports, and challenged his fans to play him at a special Fortnite event called the "Red Bull Rise Till Dawn" in Chicago.
He became the first eSports player to feature on the cover of ESPN The Magazine in September 2018.
In August 2019, Ninja left Twitch to broadcast exclusively on Microsoft's Mixer. Although he took many of his followers with him to Mixer, Twitch left his old channel in a dormant state, and most of his followers continued to follow his inactive account.
However, in July 2020, Microsoft unexpectedly shut down Mixer. This left Ninja, and his fellow Twitch exiles, in the lurch. As he no longer had an exclusive contract with Mixer, Ninja has subsequently played elsewhere, initially on YouTube Gaming. However, in September 2020, he signed an exclusive multi-year agreement to return to Twitch. He is now streaming on the platform again and has now built up his following to 18.2 million followers.
2. Tfue
Source: twitch.tv
Twitch Stream: twitch.tv/tfue
With the departure of Ninja and Shroud to Mixer, American streamer Turner Ellis Tenney (aka Tfue) took over the mantle as Twitch's most popular streamer. He is best known for playing Fortnite and is considered one of the best players in that game. He has won many Fortnite tournaments, including the SuperGames Charity Tournament. He joined FaZe Clan, a professional eSports organization, in 2018, although he became involved in legal action against them in 2019.
Tfue has had moments of controversy while streaming on Twitch. In 2018 Twitch banned him for 30 days after saying an alleged racial slur, although Twitch later reversed the ban after determining he didn't racially use the word. A year later, Tfue again said a racial slur while streaming, but Twitch did not ban him.
3. Shroud
Source: twitch.tv
Twitch Stream: twitch.tv/shroud
Shroud, aka Michael Grzesiek, is a Canadian streamer and former professional Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS: GO) player. He signed with Cloud 9 in August 2014, helping to lead Cloud 9 to 2nd place in ESL One Cologne 2017, and a first-place finish at ESL pro league season 4 in 2016. He left professional eSports in April 2018.
After transitioning to a full-time streamer, Shroud played a diverse set of games. On March 10, 2019, he reached 100,000 Twitch subscribers—and gained another 14,000 the next day. He continued to stream full-time on Twitch until October 2019.
On October 24, 2019, Shroud officially announced he would follow Ninja and move from Twitch to Mixer exclusively. However, Microsoft shuttered Mixer in June 2020. In August 2020, Shroud announced his return to Twitch, where he made his first return broadcast the next day. His initial stream back that day peaked at over 516,000 concurrent viewers.
4. Myth
Source: twitch.tv
Twitch Stream: twitch.tv/myth
Ali Kabbani is better known as Myth to the gaming world. He is an American Twitch streamer and professional Fortnite Battle Royale player. He is renowned on both Twitch, with 7.3 million followers, and YouTube with 4.6 million subscribers.
He started broadcasting on Twitch in 2016, mainly streaming Paragon, a third-person multiplayer online battle arena. His streams became more popular when he began streaming Fortnite Battle Royale in the latter half of 2017. His significant boost in popularity occurred in 2018 when his following increased from 200,000 in January to 3.2 million by June.
In March 2019, Kabbani was paid an undisclosed amount to stream Apex Legends.
Kabbani's streams include a variety of other popular streamers including, Pokimane and summit1g.
5. Rubius
Source: twitch.tv
Twitch Stream: twitch.tv/rubius
Rubén Doblas Gundersen often uses the pseudonyms El Rubius, Rubius Z, and elrubiusOMG in his gaming, but most people know him simply as Rubius on Twitch. He is probably best known as a Spanish-Norwegian YouTube personality whose channel primarily consists of gameplays and vlogs. His YouTube channel currently has over 8.7 billion views and 38.8 million subscribers.
While his 11.9 million Twitch followers may seem inconsequential in comparison, he still manages to take the position of Twitch's fifth most-followed channel.
In July 2020, Rubius posted a teaser tweet, hinting that he would be moving to Twitch. He did this in the same style that Ninja did when he first indicated he was moving from Twitch to Mixer. Clearly, Rubius is pulling in the crowds at Twitch now.
6. Pokimane
Source: twitch.tv
Twitch Stream: twitch.tv/pokimane
The most popular female streamer on this list is Imane Anys, better known by her online alias Pokimane. She is a Moroccan Canadian internet personality who has made her name on both Twitch and YouTube, like many successful streamers.
She attended McMaster University, studying chemical engineering, but dropped out later to pursue a full-time streaming career. She began her rise on Twitch in 2017, gaining her first 450,000 followers and entering Twitch's 100 most followed. That year the Shorty Awards named her the Best Twitch Streamer of the year.
She first made her name playing Fortnite but has since diversified her play. She also spends much time in Twitch's Just Chatting channels.
Twitch selected Pokimane as one of 15 ambassadors for the 2018 TwitchCon event.
7. inTheTatman
Source: twitch.tv
Twitch Stream: twitch.tv/timthetatman
As well as having the seventh-highest number of Twitch followers and the fourth most Twitch subscribers, TimTheTatman hosts the 11th most-watched Twitch channel over the last year.
"Tim" is Timothy John Betar, a 28-year-old from New York. He's been streaming since 2012. He calls his stream the #tatmanarmy – "one of the most bizarre communities on Twitch."
He streams various games, including Counter Strike: Global Offensive, Overwatch, Fortnite, and World of Warcraft.
Initially, he combined streaming with a 40 hour per week job. However, he dropped the traditional work in 2014, so he could concentrate full-time on Twitch streaming. A devoted Christian, TimTheTatman streams every day except Sunday.
On February 2, 2020, people saw TimTheTatman riding a tractor in an "NFL 100" ad during Super Bowl 54.
8. Summit1g
Source: twitch.tv
Twitch Stream: twitch.tv/summit1g
In the non-digital world, summit1g goes by the name of Jaryd Russell Lazar. He is an American Twitch streamer and retired competitive Counter Strike: Global Offensive player. He formerly played for professional eSports teams, A51 and Mythic.
He turned to Twitch streaming after retiring from eSports. He has streamed various games, such as Escape from Tarkov, Grand Theft Auto V, Sea of Thieves, Valorant, and DayZ.
He first gained attention for surpassing Tom "Syndicate" Cassell's follower numbers in 2017. For a while in 2018, he was the most-followed channel on the platform. In May 2020, summit1g signed a multi-year contract with Twitch regarding content and partnership support.
9. AuronPlay
Source: twitch.tv
Twitch Stream: twitch.tv/auronplay
Spanish-based Raúl Álvarez Genes broadcasts as AuronPlay on both Twitch and YouTube. He boasts 12.8 million followers on Twitch, in addition to his 25-million subscribers on YouTube.
Twitch unexpectedly banned him on September 25, 2020, for a mere 23 minutes. Although they have never explained why it was presumably because of a tweet he made: "streamer friends: do not watch wedding videos HAHAHAHA a boy has shown his a** to the man who was filming the wedding." Presumably, the initial suspension was made in error.
AuronPlay tends to commentate videos with other people and often combines social criticism, black humor, and cringe comedy.
The name "AuronPlay" is a composition of Auron (a Final Fantasy character) and Play (a random word that came to Álvarez's mind when selecting his username).
10. dakotaz
Source: twitch.tv
Twitch Stream: twitch.tv/dakotaz
dakotaz is the Twitch username for American streamer Brett Hoffman (not to be confused with the similarly named American death metal vocalist). He plays Fortnite: Battle Royale, although he now also streams other games, such as Among Us. He sometimes abbreviates his alias as "DK" and has also used "Dark" as an alias at times.
He began streaming on Twitch in 2012, initially playing Infestation: Survivor Stories (then called The War Z.) dakotaz's Twitch and YouTube channels grew considerably, however, once he changed to playing Fortnite.
He joined Team SoloMid (TSM) in January 2018 but only remained for a year.
One of dakotaz's quirks is that he doesn't like showing his face in his broadcasts. He first showed his face in 2018 after reaching one million subscribers.
More recently, in 2020, he raised $21,000 for the Australian Fire Relief charity and later renewed his sponsorship with Twitch, promising to show his face more often.
He has a twin brother who also streams Fortnite on Twitch under the name Drnkie.
Initially, Twitch introduced subscriptions at $4.99 per month (50% of this went to the streamers while Twitch kept 50%). In 2017, Twitch changed their subscription system to include an option of paying $9.99 (Level 2) or $24.00 (Level 3). People can choose to pay their subscriptions on a monthly basis, or every three months or twice a year. To find out the advantages of each subscription tier, you can refer to the channel page of the streamer (it is usually listed here). The most popular Twitch streamers can make money in different ways. The most popular way to make money is by means of getting subscribers to your channel. The advantage of subscriptions is that it is a recurring source of income. In fact, the top Twitch streamers are making a full-time living via the platform and many have huge fanbases. The following are some of the advantages that you could enjoy when you subscribe to a Twitch channel: access to unique emoticons, customized subscriber badges, the ability to send customized messages to the streamer, access to exclusive sub-only chatrooms, ad-free viewing and exclusive competitions. While it might not be a direct advantage to subscribers, by subscribing subscribers know that they are supporting their favorite streamers. Pokimane (Imane Anys) is the most popular female streamer on Twitch. She is a Moroccan-Canadian internet personality who dropped out of university to pursue a full-time streaming career. In 2017, she started to become popular on Twitch and the Shorty Awards named her as the Best Twitch Streamer of 2017. She made her name by playing Fortnite, but has since started playing other games too. In addition to Twitch, she has also made a name on YouTube. Turner Ellis Tenney (aka Tfue) is considered as one of the best Fortnite players. He is an American streamer who has won many Fortnite Tournaments that include the SuperGames Charity Tournament.Frequently Asked Questions
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