Best Time to Stream on Twitch: How to Find Yours

Two factors decide it

1. When your viewers are free. Students, office workers and night owls are online at different times.
2. How much competition you have. A big audience in the evening means big channels too. A smaller slot with fewer streams can put you higher in the category list.

Step-by-step way to find your slot

Step 1: define your audience. Which country and timezone do most of your viewers live in? Check the Twitch dashboard for viewer location.

Step 2: pick three candidate slots. For example, weekday 7 pm, weekday 11 am and Saturday afternoon in your audience's timezone.

Step 3: test each slot for three weeks. Stream the same type of content, with the same title style, at each slot on the same days each week.

Step 4: compare. Average viewers, chat messages per hour and new followers per stream. Keep the slot with the best numbers. If you are unsure how to read them, see what counts as a viewer on Twitch.

Step 5: lock the schedule. Announce it, keep it for at least a month and only then adjust.

Tips

• Stream at the same time each day you are live. Regular viewers will plan around you.
• Do not flip between slots every week, or you never get a clean comparison.
• Consider off-peak times if your category is crowded in the evening.
• Weekend streams often have more viewers and more competition.

What about time zones?

If your audience is international, choose a slot where two big zones overlap, for example late evening in Europe and afternoon in the United States.

Want to try a livelier counter at your chosen time? See Twitch viewer plans or start a free 1-hour test.

Related guides

• How to grow a small Twitch channel: 12 practical steps: Twelve habits that build a returning audience.
• Why your Twitch stream has 0 viewers: What usually keeps a new stream empty and what to fix first.
• What counts as a viewer on Twitch: Live count, average, peak and unique viewers explained.

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