Best OBS Settings for Streaming in 2026: Twitch, YouTube, Kick

You want the best OBS settings for streaming, and every guide gives different numbers. That is because Twitch, YouTube and Kick each publish their own encoder guide with their own limits. This guide takes the values straight from those three pages, checks them against OBS Studio 33.0.1 (the current release, out since 29 October 2026), and adds a full section for machines without a hardware encoder, where x264 on the CPU does the work.

Quick answer: The best OBS settings for streaming on all three platforms share a base: CBR rate control, a 2 second keyframe interval and AAC audio at 160 kbps. For Twitch, use 1080p60 at 6000 kbps, or 720p60 or 1080p30 at 4500 kbps; 6000 kbps is the highest value in Twitch's guide, and OBS caps Twitch at it. For YouTube with H.264, 1080p60 needs at least 6 Mbps and YouTube recommends 17 Mbps. For Kick, stay at 1920x1080, 60 fps or less, between 1,000 and 8,000 kbps, in H.264. Without a hardware encoder, use x264 with the veryfast preset at 720p60 or 1080p30, and watch OBS's Stats window for encoding lag.

Best OBS Settings for Streaming at a Glance

To see every field named in this guide, open Settings, Output and set Output Mode to Advanced. With x264 as the Video Encoder, the Streaming tab then shows Rate Control, Bitrate, Keyframe Interval (0=auto), CPU Usage Preset (higher = less CPU), Profile and Tune. The keyframe field defaults to 0, which means OBS picks the interval itself, so type 2 there.

Twitch: Settings From Twitch's Own Guide

Twitch's Broadcasting Guidelines give one block per resolution for x264 and one for NVIDIA NVENC:

Every block uses CBR and a 2 second keyframe interval. The x264 blocks add preset veryfast to medium and profile Main/High; the NVENC blocks add preset Quality and 2 B-frames. Twitch asks for CBR because a VBR stream drops very low in quiet moments, such as a hero selection screen, and then spikes in a team fight. That spike can make viewers buffer, and Twitch calls the result on the route to its servers "broadcast starvation".

What this means inside OBS:

• The 6000 kbps cap. With Twitch as the service in Settings, Stream, OBS limits the video bitrate to 6000 kbps, from the Twitch entry in its own service list, and also applies CBR, a 2 second keyframe interval and the x264 option scenecut=0. The box "Ignore streaming service setting recommendations" lifts that limit, and OBS warns that doing so "may result in degraded stream quality or prevent you from streaming."
• Audio. OBS allows up to 320 kbps audio for Twitch, but Twitch's guide names 160 kbps AAC as the maximum and 96 kbps as the most compatible value. Stay at 160.
• NVENC preset names. OBS 33 names its NVENC presets P1: Fastest (Lowest Quality) to P7: Slowest (Best Quality), so Twitch's "Quality" has no exact match in the list.
• Enhanced Broadcasting. In Settings, Stream, the Multitrack Video section has a box called Enable Enhanced Broadcasting (OBS 30.2 or newer). OBS then sends several qualities itself, between 1.5 and 10.5 Mbps in total, with the top track somewhere between 480p and 1080p60. Twitch describes its optional limits as caps on "network bandwidth and GPU encoding capacity", so it is built for a graphics card's encoder. On a CPU-only machine, leave it off and send one x264 track. Streaming in 2K (1440p) on Twitch needs Enhanced Broadcasting and is open to Affiliates and Partners only.

Twitch also compares the encoders: NVENC on Turing cards (RTX 20 series and GTX 1660/Ti) "will typically produce superior quality than x264 Fast and on par with x264 medium", while older Pascal and Kepler cards are close to veryfast or faster. If you have such a card, our x264 vs NVENC guide covers the choice in more detail.

YouTube: Bitrates From YouTube's Encoder Page

YouTube's page Choose live encoder settings, bitrates, and resolutions lists a minimum and a recommended bitrate per resolution and codec:

The same page asks for CBR, a keyframe every 2 seconds (never more than 4), 2 B-frames with 1 reference frame, CABAC entropy coding and Rec. 709 color for SDR. Leave Twitch's 6000 kbps habit behind here: YouTube's recommended 1080p60 value is almost three times higher. In OBS, pick the YouTube RTMPS service, which accepts H.264, HEVC and AV1 and allows up to 51000 kbps video and 160 kbps audio. Hardware AV1 shows up in OBS's encoder list only when your graphics card supports it, and OBS's Twitch entry and Kick's guide list H.264 only, so H.264 stays the one codec all three accept.

Kick: Limits From Kick's Help Page

Kick's guide How to stream on KICK.com is short and clear: "KICK currently supports a maximum bitrate of 8,000kbps", a maximum resolution of 1920x1080, a maximum of 60 fps, and "KICK currently only supports X264 / H.264 encoding." Its OBS block for x264 reads:

For NVENC and AMD, Kick lists P6: Slower (Better Quality), Ultra Low Latency tuning and Single Pass. Kick is not in OBS 33.0.1's service list, so choose Custom... as the service and paste the Server URL and Stream Key from your Kick dashboard (Channel, Stream URL and Key). If the stream stutters, Kick advises lowering the bitrate in steps of 1,000 kbps, or a lighter preset such as superfast for x264. Our Kick bitrate guide goes further.

One note on zerolatency: x264's own help shows that this tune sets 0 B-frames and 0 lookahead frames. That cuts delay but gives less quality per kilobit, so for Twitch and YouTube leave Tune at (None).

No Graphics Card? CPU x264 Settings That Hold Up

Without a hardware encoder, the CPU encodes every frame with x264. x264 orders its presets from fastest to slowest: ultrafast, superfast, veryfast, faster, fast, medium, slow, slower, veryslow, placebo. Its source code warns that "the speed of these presets scales dramatically", with ultrafast "a full 100 times faster than placebo". A slower preset gives a cleaner picture at the same bitrate, at the cost of more CPU per frame. OBS's default is veryfast, labelled "medium CPU usage, standard quality".

Twitch gives two rules: start with veryfast, and "presets above Faster require CPUs with 6+ cores". The other lever is pixels. 1080p60 is about 124 million pixels per second, twice 1080p30 and 2.25 times 720p60, and Twitch's guide gives 720p60 and 1080p30 the same 4500 kbps. On a CPU encoder, those two are the realistic starting points: 720p60 for fast games, 1080p30 for slower games and talk streams.

The same holds for a cloud machine. Our streaming VPS plans come with OBS Studio pre-installed, and their graphics are mostly shared and differ per machine, so set them up with the x264 values in this section.

Set it up step by step:

1. Settings, Output, Output Mode: Advanced. On the Streaming tab, set Video Encoder to x264 (Simple mode calls it Software (x264)).
2. Encoder fields. Rate Control CBR, Bitrate from your platform's table, Keyframe Interval 2, CPU Usage Preset veryfast, Profile main or high (Kick's guide lists main), Tune (None) except on Kick. Leave the x264 Options field empty.
3. Settings, Video. Base (Canvas) Resolution at your monitor's resolution, Output (Scaled) Resolution 1280x720 or 1920x1080, FPS 60 or 30 (OBS starts at 30). The default Downscale Filter is Bicubic (16 samples); Lanczos is sharper but takes 36 samples, so keep Bicubic on weak integrated graphics.
4. Test privately. Twitch's developer docs let you add ?bandwidthtest=true after the stream key, which disables live viewing while you check the connection in Twitch Inspector.
5. Watch View, Stats. The line "Skipped frames due to encoding lag" is your CPU check. When it climbs, OBS warns "Encoding overloaded" and suggests "turning down video settings or using a faster encoding preset." Lower the frame rate or output resolution first, then move to superfast. If it stays at 0 and CPU Usage has room, try faster or fast, one step at a time.

Audio Settings

• Audio Bitrate: 160 kbps, the OBS default and Twitch's maximum. YouTube's page lists 128 kbps for stereo, and OBS allows up to 160 for YouTube.
• Sample Rate: 48 kHz, the OBS default. Kick allows "a maximum of 48kHz" in stereo and Twitch accepts any rate. YouTube lists 44.1 kHz for stereo, so you can switch to it in Settings, Audio if you stream only there.
• Channels: Stereo, the default.

For the microphone, a common filter order is Noise Suppression, Noise Gate, Compressor, Limiter. In Noise Suppression, OBS offers RNNoise ("good quality, more CPU usage") and Speex ("low CPU usage, low quality"). On a machine that also encodes with x264, Speex leaves more CPU for the stream.

Dropped Frames or Encoding Lag?

OBS's Stats window separates three problems, and each has its own fix:

For network drops, OBS's connection guide says "A good starting point is to set your bitrate to 75% of your total upload speed." For 6000 kbps video plus 160 kbps audio, that means about 8.2 Mbps of stable upload. The same guide points to Settings, Advanced, Network, "Dynamically change bitrate to manage congestion (Beta)", which lowers the bitrate instead of dropping frames; OBS notes it works only over RTMP, can add delay and can take a few minutes to recover. For rendering lag, OBS's encoding performance guide suggests running OBS as administrator on Windows and capping the game's frame rate. More fixes are in our post on OBS dropped frames.

If your home upload is the limit and the stream does not need your own PC, such as an always-on channel or a relay, a streaming VPS on a 1 Gbps uplink takes the home connection out of the chain.

FAQ

What are the best OBS settings for streaming? CBR, a 2 second keyframe interval, AAC audio at 160 kbps and a bitrate from your platform's own table: 6000 kbps for 1080p60 on Twitch, 6 to 17 Mbps for 1080p60 H.264 on YouTube, at most 8,000 kbps on Kick.

What are the best OBS settings for a PC without a graphics card? x264 with the veryfast preset at 720p60 or 1080p30, 4500 kbps on Twitch. Check View, Stats for "Skipped frames due to encoding lag" and lower the resolution or move to superfast if it climbs.

Which x264 preset should I use for streaming? Start with veryfast, the OBS default and Twitch's starting point. Medium is the slowest preset Twitch lists, and Twitch says presets above faster need a CPU with 6 or more cores.

Can I stream above 6000 kbps on Twitch? Twitch's guide tops out at 6000 kbps for one track, and OBS caps Twitch there unless you tick "Ignore streaming service setting recommendations". Enhanced Broadcasting can use up to 10.5 Mbps in total, spread over several quality tracks.

Why does OBS say "Encoding overloaded"? The encoder cannot finish frames in time. With x264 that means the CPU is too busy: pick a faster preset, lower the output resolution or drop from 60 to 30 fps.

Related: OBS Studio streaming setup guide, How to stream on Twitch, YouTube Live encoder settings guide

Sources

All opened on 3 November 2026:

• Twitch Help, Broadcasting Guidelines
• Twitch Help, Enhanced Broadcasting with Multiple Encodes
• Twitch Developers, Video Broadcast
• YouTube Help, Choose live encoder settings, bitrates, and resolutions
• Kick Help, How to stream on KICK.com
• OBS Studio, 33.0.1 release
• OBS Studio source at 33.0.1: service list, how OBS applies it, interface labels, default settings, x264 encoder, NVENC labels, audio filter labels
• OBS Knowledge Base, Stream Connection Troubleshooting
• OBS Knowledge Base, Encoding Performance Troubleshooting
• x264 source, x264.h preset list and x264.c help text