The streaming software market reached 9.81 billion dollars in 2025 and is projected to hit 20.01 billion by 2032, a 14.2 percent compound annual growth rate (Metastat Insight, Streaming Software Market 2025). That growth sits on top of record demand: viewers watched 36.4 billion hours of live content in 2025, up 6 percent year over year and within touching distance of the 2021 pandemic peak (Stream Hatchet, Annual 2025 Live Streaming Trends Report). OBS Studio remains the tool doing most of the broadcasting, estimated as the primary software for roughly 60 percent of streamers (WifiTalents, 2026), while browser-based StreamYard reports more than 3.6 million creators (ZoomInfo, 2025). This analysis consolidates data from Stream Hatchet, Streamlabs, Statista, Metastat Insight, StreamElements, Restream, and 9 other primary sources to map how streaming software is bought, used, and pointed at an audience.
A note on definitions: this roundup covers production and broadcast software (the encoders, switchers, and overlay tools creators run locally or in a browser), which is distinct from the much larger over-the-top video delivery software category that market firms sometimes label similarly. Figures below are grouped so those two markets are not conflated.
TL;DR
- Streaming software market: 9.81 billion dollars in 2025, reaching 20.01 billion by 2032 at 14.2 percent CAGR (Metastat Insight, 2025).
- Live streaming software (broader definition): 12.42 billion in 2025 to 46.22 billion by 2032 at 20.5 percent CAGR (ResearchAndMarkets, 2025).
- OBS Studio is the primary broadcast tool for an estimated 60 percent of streamers (WifiTalents, 2026).
- OBS Studio holds 73.8k GitHub stars and 9.4k forks; its Steam build peaked at 28,012 concurrent users (GitHub; Steambase, 2025).
- Total hours watched hit 36.4 billion in 2025, up 6 percent year over year (Stream Hatchet, Annual 2025 report).
- Twitch led platform share at 52.8 percent, YouTube Gaming at 24.3 percent (Statista, 2025).
- Kick hours watched grew 106 percent year over year in Q4 2025 to 1.22 billion (Streamlabs and Stream Hatchet, Q4 2025 report).
- Simulcasting creators grew followers about 503 percent, roughly 6x single-channel streamers (Restream, State of Simulcasting 2024).
- Mobile now drives more than 72 percent of live streaming usage (SNS Insider, 2025).
- StreamYard reports 3.6 million-plus creators and 15 million dollars in annual revenue (ZoomInfo; StreamYard, 2025).
1. Streaming Software Market Size and Growth
The market for the software that captures, encodes, and pushes a live signal is mid-sized but expanding at a steady double-digit clip. Estimates vary with definition. The narrower production and broadcast software figure from Metastat Insight sits near 10 billion dollars, while broader live streaming software definitions that fold in enterprise webinar and cloud delivery tooling run higher. The mobile live streaming software segment is the fastest-growing slice, compounding at 24.5 percent a year (Global Growth Insights, 2025) as creators shift production off the desktop. Metastat segments the market into encoding, transcoding, content delivery, video management, and video analytics software.
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Streaming software market, 2025 | 9.81 billion USD | Metastat Insight, 2025 |
| Streaming software market, 2032 (14.2% CAGR) | 20.01 billion USD | Metastat Insight, 2025 |
| Live streaming software market, 2025 | 12.42 billion USD | ResearchAndMarkets, 2025 |
| Live streaming software market, 2032 (20.5% CAGR) | 46.22 billion USD | ResearchAndMarkets, 2025 |
| Mobile live streaming software, 2025 (24.5% CAGR) | 10.68 billion USD | Global Growth Insights, 2025 |
| Stream Deck control-surface market, 2025 (10.2% CAGR) | 312.8 million USD | Dataintelo, 2025 |
Context: figures for the much larger over-the-top video streaming software market (13 to 20 billion dollars in 2026 per MarketsandMarkets and Fortune Business Insights) cover content delivery infrastructure, not creator broadcast tools, and are excluded from this roundup to avoid double counting.
2. Which Software Streamers Actually Use
Free software owns the creator broadcast layer. OBS Studio, released under the GPL, is the reference tool, and its rivals mostly differentiate on ease of setup rather than raw capability. OBS Studio carries 73.8k stars and 9.4k forks on GitHub, and its Steam distribution peaked at 28,012 concurrent users on October 18, 2025 with an “Overwhelmingly Positive” rating across 42,536 reviews (Steambase, 2025) - unusually deep engagement for a utility rather than a game. Streamlabs (owned by Logitech) and StreamElements compete on overlays and alerts, while StreamYard leads the browser-based, no-install segment.
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| OBS Studio share of streamers (estimate) | ~60% primary tool | WifiTalents, 2026 |
| OBS Studio GitHub stars / forks | 73.8k / 9.4k | GitHub, obsproject, 2026 |
| OBS Studio peak concurrent (Steam), Oct 18 2025 | 28,012 users | Steambase, 2025 |
| OBS Studio Steam reviews / score | 42,536 / 95 of 100 | Steambase, 2025 |
| StreamElements creators served | 1.1 million-plus | StreamElements, 2025 |
| StreamYard creators | 3.6 million-plus | ZoomInfo, 2025 |
| StreamYard annual revenue (Aug 2025) | 15 million USD | StreamYard, 2025 |
Outlier: the ~60 percent OBS figure is an industry estimate rather than a census; independent comparison reviews put OBS as high as 60 to 70 percent among top streamers, with Streamlabs taking most of the remainder. VoxBooster’s own OBS voice changer integration plugs into that same OBS audio pipeline.
3. Where the Software Broadcasts: Platform Viewership
Broadcast tools are only as relevant as the platforms they feed, and 2025 was a story of redistribution. Total viewership recovered toward its pandemic high, but the share moved between platforms. Twitch still led with 52.8 percent of the live streaming market in 2025, yet that was a drop of more than eight points year over year (Statista, 2025), driven partly by view-bot enforcement that cut its measured share by 8.3 percent (Stream Hatchet, Annual 2025 report). YouTube Gaming held second, and Kick posted the only triple-digit growth.
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| YouTube Gaming hours watched, Q4 2025 | 2.19 billion (-0.4% YoY) | Streamlabs and Stream Hatchet, Q4 2025 |
| Twitch market share, 2025 | 52.8% | Statista, 2025 |
| YouTube Gaming market share, 2025 | 24.3% | Statista, 2025 |
| Twitch hours watched, Q4 2025 | 4.38 billion (-14.9% YoY) | Streamlabs and Stream Hatchet, Q4 2025 |
| Kick hours watched, Q4 2025 | 1.22 billion (+106% YoY) | Streamlabs and Stream Hatchet, Q4 2025 |
| Twitch unique channels, Q4 2025 | 8.38 million (-6.2% YoY) | Streamlabs and Stream Hatchet, Q4 2025 |
| Total hours watched, Q4 2025 (all platforms) | 20.90 billion | Streamlabs and Stream Hatchet, Q4 2025 |
Deeper platform breakdowns live in the Twitch statistics roundup and the Kick streaming statistics roundup.
4. What Streamers Broadcast: Content Mix
The software is increasingly pointed at a webcam and a microphone rather than a game feed. Conversational and personality content led hours watched across multiple platforms in Q4 2025 (Streamlabs and Stream Hatchet, Q4 2025). Just Chatting streams on Twitch grew 25 percent year over year in 2025 (Stream Hatchet, Annual 2025 report), and non-gaming content reached 22 percent of Twitch’s total. First-person shooters remained the single largest game genre by hours watched.
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Just Chatting growth on Twitch, 2025 | +25% YoY | Stream Hatchet, Annual 2025 |
| Non-gaming share of Twitch viewership | 22% | Stream Hatchet, Annual 2025 |
| First-person shooter hours watched, 2025 | 4.6 billion (top genre) | Stream Hatchet, Annual 2025 |
| Gaming share of live streaming revenue, 2024 | 39% | SNS Insider, 2025 |
Note: the shift toward talk-heavy formats raises the value of audio tooling; a webcam-and-mic show lives or dies on clean, expressive sound, which is why streamer voice effects and noise suppression have moved from novelty to standard kit.
5. Multistreaming and Simulcasting
Once Twitch dropped its exclusivity clause in October 2023, broadcasting to several platforms at once became a mainstream growth tactic, and the software followed. Creators who simulcast grew their follower counts by an average of 503 percent over one to two years, roughly six times the pace of single-channel streamers (Restream, State of Simulcasting 2024, most recent available). Restream connects to more than 30 destinations, and StreamYard’s MARS feature lets one broadcast run horizontal and vertical formats simultaneously.
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Avg follower growth, simulcasters (1-2 yrs) | +503% | Restream, 2024 |
| Simulcaster growth vs single-channel | ~6x | Restream, 2024 |
| Top simulcasting channel follower growth | +63,000% | Restream, 2024 |
| Restream supported destinations | 30-plus | Restream, 2024 |
| StreamYard improvements shipped, 2025 | 55-plus | StreamYard, 2025 |
Outlier: the +63,000 percent top-channel figure is a single extreme case, not a median; treat it as the ceiling of the distribution, not a typical outcome.
6. Mobile and Vertical Streaming
Production is migrating off the desktop. Mobile applications now account for more than 72 percent of live streaming usage, overtaking traditional desktop platforms (SNS Insider, 2025), and platforms have restructured around portrait video to match. Twitch added vertical portrait-mode livestreams in 2025, and mobile-native streaming software is the fastest-growing software segment in this roundup.
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Mobile share of live streaming usage | 72%-plus | SNS Insider, 2025 |
| US creators using mobile-first platforms | ~48% | Global Growth Insights, 2025 |
| Creators monetizing via mobile live streams | ~59% | Global Growth Insights, 2025 |
| Mobile live streaming software, 2024 value | 8.58 billion USD | Global Growth Insights, 2025 |
| Mobile live streaming software CAGR | 24.5% | Global Growth Insights, 2025 |
| Twitch vertical portrait livestreams | Launched 2025 | Global Growth Insights, 2025 |
Context: mobile-first does not mean desktop-dead. High-production channels still run OBS on a PC, but the marginal new streamer in 2025 started on a phone, which reshapes what features software vendors prioritize. For a wider view, see the live streaming statistics roundup.
7. AI, Audio, and Monetization Tooling
The newest competitive front is what the software does to the signal after capture. AI noise suppression, auto-clipping, and captioning are now table stakes. Krisp reports close to one million professional users and more than one billion calls de-noised (Krisp, 2025), while NVIDIA Broadcast delivers comparable RTX-based noise removal at no cost to GPU owners. On the money side, StreamElements’ Rainmaker year-in-review estimated Twitch Bits revenue at roughly 290 million dollars in 2025, with the top 5 percent of channels capturing nearly 80 percent of Bits volume.
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Krisp professional users | ~1 million | Krisp, 2025 |
| Krisp calls de-noised (cumulative) | 1 billion-plus | Krisp, 2025 |
| NVIDIA Broadcast noise suppression | Free for RTX GPUs | NVIDIA, 2025 |
| Twitch Bits revenue, 2025 (estimate) | ~290 million USD | StreamElements Rainmaker, 2025 |
| Top 5% of channels’ share of Bits | ~80% | StreamElements Rainmaker, 2025 |
Note: the concentration of Bits revenue in the top 5 percent of channels mirrors the wider creator economy, where earnings skew heavily to the top tail rather than spreading evenly across the long tail of channels.
Summary: Streaming Software by the Numbers
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Streaming software market, 2025 | 9.81 billion USD | Metastat Insight, 2025 |
| Streaming software market, 2032 | 20.01 billion USD (14.2% CAGR) | Metastat Insight, 2025 |
| Live streaming software market, 2025 | 12.42 billion USD | ResearchAndMarkets, 2025 |
| Mobile live streaming software CAGR | 24.5% | Global Growth Insights, 2025 |
| OBS Studio share of streamers (estimate) | ~60% | WifiTalents, 2026 |
| OBS Studio GitHub stars | 73.8k | GitHub, 2026 |
| OBS Studio peak concurrent (Steam) | 28,012 | Steambase, 2025 |
| StreamElements creators served | 1.1 million-plus | StreamElements, 2025 |
| StreamYard creators | 3.6 million-plus | ZoomInfo, 2025 |
| Total hours watched, 2025 | 36.4 billion (+6% YoY) | Stream Hatchet, 2025 |
| Twitch market share, 2025 | 52.8% | Statista, 2025 |
| YouTube Gaming market share, 2025 | 24.3% | Statista, 2025 |
| Kick hours watched, Q4 2025 | 1.22 billion (+106% YoY) | Streamlabs and Stream Hatchet, 2025 |
| Just Chatting growth on Twitch, 2025 | +25% YoY | Stream Hatchet, 2025 |
| Stream Deck control-surface market, 2025 | 312.8 million USD | Dataintelo, 2025 |
| StreamYard annual revenue, Aug 2025 | 15 million USD | StreamYard, 2025 |
| Simulcaster follower growth | +503% (~6x) | Restream, 2024 |
| Mobile share of live streaming usage | 72%-plus | SNS Insider, 2025 |
| Krisp calls de-noised | 1 billion-plus | Krisp, 2025 |
| Twitch Bits revenue, 2025 (estimate) | ~290 million USD | StreamElements, 2025 |
Methodology and Sources
Data was gathered by querying primary reports, company disclosures, and public trackers published in 2025 and the first half of 2026, cross-referencing market and viewership figures across at least two sources where possible and flagging estimates and older data inline.
- Metastat Insight, Streaming Software Market report (link), 2025.
- ResearchAndMarkets.com, Live Streaming Software Market Global Forecast 2025-2032 (link), 2025.
- Global Growth Insights, Mobile Live Streaming Software Market report (link), 2025.
- Dataintelo, Stream Deck Market Research Report (link), 2025.
- Stream Hatchet (GameSquare), Annual 2025 Live Streaming Trends Report (link), published H1 2026.
- Streamlabs and Stream Hatchet, Q4 2025 Live Streaming Report (link), 2026.
- Statista, Live Stream Platforms Market Share 2025 (link), 2025.
- StreamElements / GETREKT Labs, 2025 Watch Time Breakdown (link), 2025.
- StreamElements, platform and Rainmaker year-in-review data (link), 2025.
- GitHub, obsproject/obs-studio repository (link), 2026.
- Steambase, OBS Studio Steam Charts (link), 2025.
- Restream, State of Simulcasting (link), 2024.
- StreamYard, 2025 Recap (link), 2025; ZoomInfo company profile, 2025.
- WifiTalents, Live Streaming Industry Statistics (link), 2026.
- Krisp, best noise cancelling apps (link), 2025; NVIDIA Broadcast (link), 2025.
- SNS Insider, Live Streaming Market report (via Yahoo Finance) (link), 2025.
Data watch: Stream Hatchet and Streamlabs publish quarterly live streaming trends reports, so a Q1 2026 edition and updated per-platform hours are expected shortly, and Stream Hatchet’s next annual report is due in early 2027. Restream’s State of Simulcasting is the oldest source here (2024) and is overdue for a refresh. Statista’s platform market share and the annual market-size reports from Metastat Insight and ResearchAndMarkets typically update on a yearly cadence.
Last updated: July 11, 2026.
We review and update this page quarterly as new data is published.