Hobby or Job? Breaking Down the Top Paid Streamers on Twitch
| Updated: February 19, 2025In recent years, Twitch has become a lucrative platform for content creators, with earnings varying significantly based on audience size, engagement, and monetization strategies. With thousands of subscribers, these streamers can earn five and six-figure revenues every month from combined revenue streams.
Competition among major content platforms, notably Twitch, YouTube, and TikTok has intensified, with many creators shifting to new platforms as constantly added new features give them more opportunities to reach out to new audiences and generate more revenues. With TikTok facing regulatory challenges and many creators returning to Twitch, praising its community engagement, the platform has cemented its dominant position in the live-streaming industry. But how much are Twitch’s most prominent streamers making on the platform? The team at Sportingpedia aggregated streaming data from several Twitch trackers to get a sense of the monthly revenue creators generate on the platform.
We looked into the most followed streamers and those who have the most paid subscribers. Since Twitch does not publicly provide subscription-related statistics, we relied on online trackers, including TwitchTracker and Twitchstats, which gather data using Twitch’s public API, as well as chatbots and scraping tools. The statistics we gathered outline creators’ current subscriber counts, including the number of paid subscriptions, those that came through Twitch Prime or were gifted (more on that below), as well as the distribution among Tier 1, Tier 2, and Tier 3 subscriptions.
As of February 2025, the most-watched Twitch account is Fextralife, a gaming community and gaming news source, which used to stream various games, gathering an all-time view count of 2.147 billion. The most viewed individual account, however, is Ninja, whose channel has 572 million views. The American streamer, named Tyler Blevins, is also the most followed person on Twitch with 19.2 million followers.
More recently, 23-year-old American streamer and YouTuber Kai Cenat recorded 252,003 concurrent peak viewers during the week ending February 2. On average, he had 175,498 viewers throughout the week. According to our calculations, he is the Twitch streamer who earned the most from subscriptions on the platform in 2024.
Currently, Kai Cenat, who is popular for his comedy streams and celebrity guests, holds the record for the most subscriptions, exceeding 119,000 subscribers as of mid-February. Based on subscription figures for 2024, his revenues range between $4.4 million to $6.2 million; this is what he has earned from paid subscriptions after Twitch takes its share (typically 50% of the revenues but it can be as low as 30% for certain top creators).
How Does Twitch Pay Creators?
Viewers can subscribe to their favorite streamers, allowing them to show support, gain an icon next to their name in the chat, and avoid ads if the streamer offers this as a subscriber benefit. Various other perks exist for those who decide to subscribe, based on the platform’s subscription structure. Tier 1 subscriptions cost $4.99 per month, Tier 2 subscriptions are $9.99/month, and Tier 3 costs $24.99/month. Viewers can also subscribe via Amazon Prime (Prime users get one free Twitch sub per month), or they can gift it to someone in the chat who is currently watching.
Interestingly, Twitch then takes 30% to 50% of the fees and gives the rest to the streamer. This is significantly higher compared to other streaming platforms such as Kick and YouTube. According to the current monetization policy at Kick, creators keep 95% of the subscription revenue and may also get a share from ads (since the platform is still new, it does not have a formal ad revenue program in place). YouTube pays creators 55% of the ad revenue along with various other payments for YouTube Shorts, Premium, and Memberships. TikTok has even more revenue models and creator earnings are generated in several different ways; there is no need to get into much more detail here.
In addition to subscriptions, Twitch streamers have multiple other ways to generate revenue, one of which is the Bits and Cheers, Twitch’s built-in donation system. It allows viewers to purchase “Bits” (the platform’s virtual currency) and donate them or “Cheer” creators during live streams.
Top Earning Twitch Streamers for 2024
The Twitch streamers with the highest number of subscribers play a variety of games, including Grand Theft Auto V, NBA 2K23, Fortnite, and World of Warcraft. Some don’t stream any gameplay at all, however, and instead engage in chatting with viewers, comedy, media content or political commentary. Interestingly, more than half of the top subscribed streamers are based in the United States, while the rest are from Europe.
Kai Cenat
Kai Cenat is a 23-year-old American influencer and streamer, who focuses on comedy and has gained immense popularity over the years. In 2022, he won Streamer of the Year Award at the 12th Streamy Awards, beating other popular names such as HasanAbi, IShowSpeed, and Pokimane. He has had a couple of record-breaking, month-long streams, known as “subathons” during which multiple guests such as Snoop Dogg, Lizzo and Nicki Minaj have appeared and at the end of the second one, the creator had 728,535 subscribers, more than anyone on the platform at the time or ever since.
Currently, Kai Cenat has 23.8 million YouTube subscribers and is the fourth most followed streamer on Twitch. We estimated that he made at least $4.4 million from his subscribers on Twitch in 2024, the most out of all 25 streamers we researched.
Jynxzi
Nicholas Stewart, better known as Jynxzi, is a 23-year-old American streamer who became famous for his Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege videos. He was the “Best Breakthrough Gamer” and “Best Streamer” at the 2024 Streamer Awards. In 2020 he began his YouTube channel, making gameplay highlights and more, reaching 4 million subscribers. In 2023 he was the highest-paid streamer, having an estimated monthly income of $120,000-$190,000 according to EsportsBets. As of February 2025, Jynxzi is followed by roughly 6.9 million Twitch users and has more than 80,000 subscribers. His estimated revenues from subscriptions alone were between $3.6 million and $5 million in 2024.
Caseoh_
Caseoh_, or Case Dylan Baker, is a 26-year-old American streamer, gamer, YouTube and TikTok creator, famous for his variety streams. Allowing his viewers to decide what game he should play, he has gained a loyal following and at the 2024 Streamer Awards, he won the “Best Variety Streamer”. He began streaming in September 2022 and has more than 7 million subscribers on YouTube. In 2024, Caseoh_ earned between $2 million and $2.85 million from Twitch subscriptions alone, according to our calculations.
HasanAbi
Hasan Piker, also known as HasanAbi, is a 33-year-old Turkish-American streamer who does political commentary, along with gaming streams. The former co-host of left-wing podcast Leftovers began streaming in 2018 and has appeared on the web show The Young Turks. Piker’s fundraising streams have reached more than $1,200,000 in donations, while on YouTube, he has 1.5 million subscribers. He won the “Best Just Chatting Streamer” in the 2023 Streamer Awards. His 2024 earnings from Twitch subscriptions are estimated at around $1.8 – 2.5 million.
Tumblurr
Tumblurr, whose real name is Gianmarco Tocco, is a 28-year-old Italian streamer who is famous for his Just Chatting and Grand Theft Auto streams. He has more than 1.8 million followers on Twitch, along with roughly 42,000 subscribers. We estimate that he has earned between $1.3 million and $1.8 million in 2024.
Gaming Streamers, Creators or Entrepreneurs?
Streaming can be a lucrative job but streamers tend to fade from the spotlight very quickly as new names gain recognition. So, most well-known streamers employ additional strategies to generate revenue and ensure long-term financial stability beyond Twitch and streaming platforms. Some invest in higher education and pursue a new career once their streaming activities no longer provide sufficient income.
Others maximize their earnings through various means, such as creating content for other platforms like YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok. In fact, some of Twitch’s top creators are even more popular on other apps where they not only post short and long-form videos and stream live but also sign lucrative sponsorships with brands. In recent years, retail brands have started leveraging Twitch creators, directly tapping into existing communities (gaming or not) and loyal following. Additionally, the fame enables popular streamers to sell merchandise of their own. Along with the many sponsorship deals, Ninja has an online store which sells his own clothing brand, Team Ninja.
The platform also encourages streamers to participate in competitions. eSports tournament Twitch Rivals allows streamers and former professional players to earn money in a mix of casual and competitive gaming. In January 2025, Twitch Rivals hosted the Marvel Rivals event with a prize pool of $200,000. Twelve 6-player teams participated in total and the event included a group stage and single elimination stage, while the prize for the first place was $21,000.
Methodology
For this report, we gathered information from Twitch, as well as from tracking websites TwitchTracker and Twitch Stats, which collect subscription-related and other data using bots, the platform’s API, and other tools. Most statistics provided are rough estimates, as obtaining exact figures for the number of subscribers and the income generated from bits and cheers by most streamers is challenging (the platform does not show subscriptions). We then estimated their yearly earnings from the monthly fee paid by their subscribers based on the number of subscribers every month in 2024.
We calculated the potential revenue of each streamer by looking at the Tier 1 ($4.99), Tier 2 ($9.99), and Tier 3 ($24.99) subscriptions. Revenue from subs via Prime ($4.99) was taken into account, while for those subscriptions that were categorized as “undefined”, we assigned the Tier 1 fee. We took out Twitch’s share since Twitch keeps 30%-50% of the revenues (most creators are paid 50%).