Streaming Bitrate Calculator

Our streaming bitrate calculator will help you find the optimum bitrate and the required upload speed for live streaming on any platform. If you are new to streaming or want to learn more about the software you're using, you probably have a couple (a lot) of questions. Such as: 'Do I have enough upload speed for streaming?', 'What bitrate should I stream at?', 'What is the bitrate for 1080p?', and the most frequent 'What is bitrate on Twitch or YouTube?'

We will briefly answer those questions and more below, or if you are already familiar with the concepts, feel free to experiment with our streaming bitrate calculator! We have listed several bitrate-resolution pairs to find what works best for you, or use the Custom option to input your own and test different combinations.

Bitrate is the number of bits transferred or processed in a set amount of time (usually seconds) by a video encoder. Its unit is often kbps or Mbps, kilobits, and megabits per second, respectively.

Whenever a video file is compressed, some data is lost, while the remainder is kept. More data kept = more quality. The bitrate determines how much information is kept/lost in the compression. Therefore, bitrate affects video quality.

This concept is really useful in live streaming since we're usually trying to send a large file through the internet (as we covered in our data transfer calculator and bandwidth calculator), and we need a metric of how much speed we need to produce an enjoyable experience.

Another parameter we need to consider when estimating bitrates is the source video's resolution. A 1080p video will produce a $1920\times 1080\ \text{px}$ image each frame. If the video is recorded at $60\ \text{fps}$ this means each second $1.24\times 10^{8}\ \text{px}$ are rendered ($\text{resolution in px} \times \text{fps}$).

Read more on our video frame size calculator.

Bits per pixel

As we said before, this video file needs to be compressed, so each frame is represented by a certain number of bits of information. The relation between the number of pixels each frame contains and the number of bits we will use to represent it is the bpp or bits per pixel value.

This value acts as a parameter for video quality and, in most cases, we should aim for, and never exceed, a $0.1$ value. Any increases after that produce diminishing returns in video quality regarding file size (unless you're working with low resolutions).

So, for example, let's say we use a $0.05 \ bpp$ value for this particular video. That means each bit will represent $20 \ \text{pixels}$ (from the formula above). If we multiply that by the number of pixels in each second of video, we'll need:
$6.22 \times 10^{6} \ \text{bits}$ or $6221 \ \text{kb}$ to represent each second of video.

That means working with this video will represent $6221 \ \text{kbps}$ of data to be processed.

Here is the formula we used for calculating the bitrate in the previous example:

where:

• $w$ and $h$ – Video's resolution's width and height (in $\text{px}$);
• $fps$ – Number of frames per second in the video;
• $bpp$ – Bits per pixel value; and
• We divide by $1000$ to express the result in $\text{kbps}$.

This calculation is just an approximation since it assumes every pixel changes between each frame, and this is almost never the case (thanks to video codecs), but it serves its purpose as a starting point.

Now, we previously saw that a 1080p 60fps video will need to process about $6221 \ \text{kbps}$ of information (estimated bitrate for 1080p using our approximation). We could have a $6221 \ \text{kbps}$ connection, and, theoretically, it would be enough for live streaming this content to any platform. However, in a real-life case, the connection won't be stable at all, and the stream will stutter a lot or completely freeze since we're using all our resources to maintain the stream.

So, to avoid that, we'll need to allocate more bandwidth to account for fluctuations with our internet provider's speed, allow other programs/devices to use said bandwidth, etc. That's why it is wise to add about 50% of the bitrate number to obtain an upload speed that keeps the stream stable (our streaming bitrate calculator already includes it 😉).

We already explained what bitrate is on Twitch and other platforms, but we have yet to use our streaming bitrate calculator to obtain it. Let's do that!

Our streaming bitrate calculator allows you to select whether you will host your stream on a streaming platform or by yourself. We'll start with the former.

Live streaming on platforms

First, we need to know the type of content we'll be streaming. Is it an FPS (first-person shooter) game? A card game? Painting? Self-recording?

The content type will determine our resolution since, for example, a fast-paced action game will require $60 \ \text{fps}$ to produce a smooth transition with rapid camera movements. On the other hand, a card game doesn't benefit as much with an fps increase as it does with a resolution increase (720p from 540p).

Different resolutions will work the best in different scenarios, so there's no definitive answer to the question 'What bitrate should I stream at?', but obtaining the bitrate for a 720p stream is a great starting point to work your way up (or down).

The streaming bitrate calculator already has a list of bitrates preloaded based on guidelines from different streaming platforms. Just select your desired resolution, and the calculator will output a bitrate and the recommended upload speed for that value (you can check the $bpp$ value used for the selected resolution by checking the View further streaming properties? checkbox).

The last section will discuss an example of achieving a good-quality stream by testing with the streaming bitrate calculator.

Self-hosted live stream

This type of streaming is the least recommended, and you should avoid it unless you're experimenting or trying to build something on your own. The reason is that by self-hosting, you introduce the need to serve each viewer at the same time, which is extremely demanding on your bandwidth (unless you use a good quality CDN – content delivery network).

But if you're good with that, just switch the 'Platform' dropdown in our streaming bitrate calculator to 'Self-hosted', and a 'Viewers' input will now appear where you will need to type in the number of viewers you expect to stream for (this number multiplies your required bandwidth).

So far, we've already answered the following questions:

• What is bitrate on Twitch?
• What bitrate should I stream at?
• What's a good internet speed for streaming on Twitch?

To finish our explanation, let's say we want to stream an adventure game at 720p resolution with our $5000 \ \text{kbps}$ connection (upload speed), so we do that, we select the 720p 60fps option on the calculator and check the result. Turns out we need a $∼4500\ \text{kbps}$ bitrate paired with a $∼6700 \ \text{kbps}$ connection to maintain an stable stream.

The required upload speed is way more than what we currently have, and the recommended bitrate is close to that value, too, so we won't have much bandwidth to spare if we choose this bitrate, so let's lower it.

We need to choose something to sacrifice:

• The resolution (lowering it, reducing video quality);
• The fps value (lowering it to 30, making the gameplay less smooth);
• The $bpp$ value (smaller values reduce video quality); or
• The desire to stream our top-quality gameplay.

If you've read this far, the last item is out of the question. Hence, as a rule of thumb, aim to reduce the fps value first (unless it is a fast-paced game), then resolution, and lastly, if the stream doesn't look good on lower resolutions, the $bpp$ value (remember to keep as close to $0.1$ as possible).