Free Tool

Stream Bitrate & OBS Settings Calculator

Pick your platform, resolution, frame rate and encoder — get a sourced bitrate range, audio/keyframe/rate-control settings, and a ready copy-paste block for OBS's Output settings.

Platform

Resolution

Frame rate

Encoder

Content type

High-motion (gaming)Fast camera pans, particle effects, lots of on-screen movement — needs more bitrate to avoid blocky compression artifacts.Low-motion (talking / IRL walk-and-talk)Mostly a face and a relatively static background — compresses cleanly at the lower end of the range.

Your upload speed in Mbps (optional)

Run a real speed test, not your plan's advertised number — we'll flag it if the recommended bitrate leaves too little headroom.

How platforms differ

The same resolution and frame rate can call for a different bitrate depending where you're streaming — some platforms publish a hard ceiling, others just give you a per-resolution range and let your upload speed be the real limit.

Twitch: Twitch's own broadcast guidance centers on 6000 kbps as the reliable ceiling — partner status doesn't raise it. Ingest servers sometimes tolerate up to ~8000 kbps, but stability isn't guaranteed above 6000. For 1080p60, most streamers get better results dropping to 900p60 or 720p60 rather than pushing past 6000.
YouTube: YouTube publishes per-resolution bitrate ranges rather than one flat cap, and comfortably supports the top of the 1080p60 range (and goes well beyond that at 1440p/4K, which this tool doesn't cover). The resolution/fps range above is the limiting factor here, not a platform ceiling.
Kick: Kick's help center documents support for up to 8000 kbps, with the explicit caveat that your bitrate shouldn't exceed your actual upload headroom. Kick doesn't publish a detailed resolution-by-resolution table the way YouTube does, so treat this as a platform-level ceiling rather than a per-resolution target.
Facebook: Facebook Live's published specs vary by resolution and by whether your account has HD (60fps) access enabled; 6000 kbps is a reliable ceiling for standard 1080p30 broadcasts, with up to ~9000 kbps documented for 1080p60 once HD access is on. Facebook doesn't publish as granular a table as YouTube, so treat the top end as an outer bound, not a target.

If you're chasing dropped frames rather than picking a starting bitrate, check whether it's actually a network problem or a rendering problem first — see our guide on fixing OBS dropped frames. If OBS is specifically warning about "Encoding overloaded," that's a different, CPU/GPU-side issue — see fixing OBS encoding overload. And if you're on an Apple Silicon Mac, hardware encoding works a little differently — see our OBS on Apple Silicon guide.

How we calculated this

The base video-bitrate ranges above come from official platform documentation, cross-checked as of 2026-07-24: YouTube's published Live Control Room encoder bitrate table, Twitch's own broadcast-bitrate guidance, Kick's help center OBS setup article, and Meta's Live Video specifications. Low-motion (talking/IRL) content is shown at the bottom of each range, high-motion (gaming) content at the top — that's a widely-used encoding heuristic, not a platform-specific rule. 900p is flagged separately in the tool: it isn't a row in any platform's official table (it's a Twitch-community convention for balancing quality against the 1080p60 bitrate cap), so that range is interpolated between the sourced 720p and 1080p figures rather than independently cited. Platform ceilings, upload-speed guidance, and encoder presets are general, widely-published OBS/streaming best practice, not exact guarantees — actual limits depend on your specific account tier, ingest server, and hardware.

Sources:

Frequently Asked Questions

What bitrate should I use for 1080p 60fps on Twitch?

6000 kbps — that's Twitch's own recommended ceiling regardless of partner status, and 1080p60 high-motion content would otherwise call for up to 9000 kbps. If your upload speed is under about 8 Mbps, drop to 900p60 or 720p60 instead of forcing 1080p60 at a capped bitrate — the resolution downgrade looks better than a starved 1080p stream.

What's the best OBS bitrate for YouTube Live?

For 1080p60, YouTube comfortably supports up to 9000 kbps for high-motion content (4500 kbps is enough for talking-head/low-motion streams). Unlike Twitch, YouTube doesn't apply a flat platform-wide cap — the resolution/frame-rate combination is the limiting factor, not the platform itself.

Should I use CBR or VBR for streaming?

CBR (constant bitrate). Live platforms expect a steady, predictable stream of data — VBR's variable output can cause buffering or dropped frames on the viewer's end even when your average bitrate looks fine. Save VBR for local recording or video-on-demand exports, not live streaming.

Why does my stream still look bad even at the recommended bitrate?

Bitrate is one variable, not the whole picture. A slow encoder preset for your hardware, a keyframe interval longer than 2 seconds, or genuinely high-motion content (fast camera pans, particle-heavy games) pushing past what your bitrate can represent cleanly are all common causes — see our guides on dropped frames and encoding overload if frames are actually dropping rather than just looking soft.

How much upload speed do I need for a given bitrate?

Keep your stream bitrate under roughly 70-80% of your tested (not advertised) upload speed. For a 6000 kbps stream, that means at least 7.5-8.5 Mbps of real upload headroom — pushing bitrate right up against your maximum leaves no room for normal network variance and is a common cause of intermittent dropped frames.

Embed this tool

Free to embed on your own site — it's the same calculator, without our header/footer, in an iframe. Attribution link stays in the widget's footer.

Embed code

<iframe src="https://youtubeplays.com/tools/bitrate-calculator/embed/" width="100%" height="900" style="border:1px solid #d9dce3;border-radius:8px;" title="Streaming Bitrate Calculator by YouTubePlays" loading="lazy"></iframe>

Building out the rest of your setup? See our guide to the right streaming PC setup, or check our reviews and comparisons if a capture card or dedicated encoder is next on your list.