Best Cities For Live Streamers

Complete Rankings*

Our Methodology

Here’s how we found and ranked the best cities for Twitch streamers in the world right now.

Factors we assessed

Average broadband download speed. We used this as a measure of the availability of fast internet in the city. As a streamer, you need to be able to download games and watch other HD streams without buffering.

Average broadband upload speed. As a streamer, your upload speed is even more important than your download speed. You need a fast, consistent connection to upload HD video to the internet in real time.

Lowest cost of a 1 Gbps internet connection. Although a 1 Gbps broadband connection may not be a necessity for all live streamers, we used this as a measure of the cost of fast internet.

5G coverage. We assessed each city’s 5G coverage as either “none”, “partial”, or “complete” as of June 2021. Having good mobile broadband coverage is especially important for real-life (also known as “IRL”) streamers, so that you can stream yourself on the go without your stream dropping out. Some streamers also use mobile broadband as a backup in case their fixed-line internet drops out.

Cost of an RTX 3090. For those streaming video games, the cost of games consoles and PC parts is extremely important. We looked for the cheapest cost of a new RTX 3090 graphics card in each city to measure not just the cost of PC parts, but as a proxy for the cost of gaming hardware more broadly. Since graphics cards are having significant stock issues at the moment, we looked at prices on display from leading outlets, even if the GPU was out of stock, in order to more accurately reflect prices of gaming hardware.

Cost of a Sony A7 III. While most streamers may not need to use an expensive DSLR camera, we used this to measure the cost of camera gear in each city. The A7 III was chosen as it is a common choice among professional streamers.

Number of major gaming expos in the previous 5 years. For gaming streamers, expos are a fantastic opportunity to meet fellow streamers and keep up-to-date with future game releases. We included major expos such as E3 and TwitchCon, from 2015 to 2019, to account for the effect of COVID-19.

Average flat rent. Cost of living is an important consideration in our analysis, as some cities have cheap broadband but expensive rent. Therefore, we looked at the average monthly unit rent in each city.

Scoring methodology

Each factor was given a weighting to calculate each city’s final score. For example, depending on the city’s average internet speed, it got a “score” for this metric:

< 20 Mbps: +0 score
>= 20, < 40 Mbps: +1 score
>= 40, < 60 Mbps: +2 score
>= 60, < 80 Mbps: +3 score
>= 80, < 100 Mbps: +4 score
>= 100 Mbps: +5 score

We used a similar method with different weightings for each metric we analysed. See the complete spreadsheet to see the exact scoring methodology.

Currency conversions

All costs were initially recorded in each city’s local currency. These costs were then converted to US dollars simultaneously to ensure a fair comparison.

Why are certain cities missing?

For this study, we focused on major cities with a population of at least 500,000 people, to ensure a fair comparison. Some cities were excluded – for example, China currently has 160 cities with a population of at least one million people. We recognise that there may be other smaller cities that have a low cost of living and cheap, fast internet, which would be perfect for some live streamers.

If we’ve missed a city that you think we should include, let us know and we can include it in next year’s rankings.

Why didn’t you account for Twitch usage by city?

One limitation of this study was that we did not account for how likely you are to build an audience on Twitch, given where you live. For example, if you live in Paris and only speak French, it’s harder to build an audience on Twitch than if you live in LA and speak English, because most Twitch users speak English.

There are a few reasons we did not explore this data point.

Firstly, there is limited data on Twitch usage by city. Some information is available regarding the top ten countries that use the site, but there is no data about the language of platform users that is publicly available.

Secondly, many countries have their own streaming websites, especially in Asia. Twitch and YouTube are not the only platforms where you can make a living as a streamer. Accounting for usage of all the world’s streaming platforms is not something that is possible to do accurately.

Thirdly, adding this factor would have advantaged the United States significantly. The US already performs well because gaming hardware is so cheap – we did not want to disadvantage cities because their primary language is not English.

Resources

Contact Us

Tom Paton, founder, Broadband Savvy

tom(at)broadbandsavvy.com

*Data collected during June 2021. Where “N/A” is shown this means that no broadband packages with speeds of 1 Gbps or greater were available. Broadband Savvy makes no warranties or guarantees as to the accuracy of the data provided.

About the author

Tyler Bevan

Tyler built his first PC at the age of 12, and since then, he’s become obsessed with all things networking and internet-related. He’s a massive gamer, loves Rocket League, and also plays Sunday League football.