Where your sub money actually goes: revenue splits explained

A viewer pays $5.99 for a Tier 1 sub. You do not get $5.99. Here is exactly what happens to that money on each platform, and which income streams are actually worth encouraging.

Twitch: the 50/50 default

The standard Twitch subscription split is 50/50. On a $4.99 Tier 1 sub, roughly $2.50 reaches your balance. That's the number that applies to essentially everyone reading this.

A better split exists, but it's a long way up: the Partner Plus programme pays 70/30 on net subscription revenue to Partners who sustain a qualifying number of recurring paid subs across three consecutive months, with a 60/40 tier below it. Twitch removed the $100,000 cap on the 70/30 rate in 2024 and lowered the thresholds. It's real, and it is not a consideration for a new channel — you need Partner status first, and hundreds of subs after that.

What Bits are actually worth

One Bit is one cent to you. A 100-Bit cheer puts $1.00 in your balance. The viewer paid more than that — Bits are typically sold at around $1.40 per 100, and that gap is Twitch's cut plus payment processing.

Which produces a genuinely useful piece of advice: if a viewer wants to support you and asks how, a direct tip is worth substantially more to you than the equivalent in Bits. A $5 tip through StreamElements or Streamlabs arrives as roughly $4.70 after payment processing, with no platform cut at all. A $5-ish Bits cheer nets you about $3.50. Bits are better for engagement — they're visible, they trigger alerts, they're part of chat culture. Tips are better for money.

Ads, and why they're the worst per-viewer earner

Ad revenue is paid per thousand impressions and the rate swings enormously with the season and where your viewers live — the same channel can earn several times more in December than in June, and viewers in high-value ad markets are worth many times more than viewers elsewhere. For a channel with a handful of viewers, ads generate very little while costing you the thing you have least of: people staying in the room. Run the minimum your channel needs.

How the other platforms compare

• YouTube — 70/30 in your favour on channel memberships and Super Chat/Super Stickers, which is markedly better than Twitch's default. Watch-page ad revenue is 55/45 in your favour. Mobile purchases are reduced by app-store fees before the split.
• Kick — advertises a 95/5 subscription split, by far the most generous on offer and its main pitch to creators. The trade-off is audience size and brand: a 95% share of a much smaller audience is often less money, and some sponsors are wary of the platform. Check kick.com for current terms.
• Twitch — the 50/50 default is the worst of the three, and Twitch's answer is that it has the largest and most sub-cultured audience. That's a real argument, not just spin — Twitch viewers subscribe at rates other platforms don't match.

The deductions nobody mentions

• Payment processing on tips — typically a few percent plus a fixed fee, which makes small tips proportionally expensive. A $1 tip can lose a third of itself to fees.
• Currency conversion if you're paid outside the platform's home currency.
• Wire transfer fees on some payout methods. Check which method your platform offers before you pick one.
• Tax. Streaming income is taxable in most countries from the first dollar, and platforms report it. Keep records from the start — reconstructing a year of it later is genuinely painful.
• The $50 threshold rolls over. You aren't losing the money, but a small channel can wait months to be paid, and payouts land weeks after the month ends on top of that.

For what all this adds up to in practice, see how much streamers actually make — and Affiliate requirements for the milestone that makes any of it withdrawable.