What bitrate should you stream at?
For 1080p30, about 6 Mbps. For 1080p60, about 9. For 720p30, about 3, and 720p60, about 4.5. Frame rate drives the number far harder than resolution does, and your upload has to sustain it, not peak at it.
Bitrate is the first number anybody asks about and the one most often answered with a shrug. It should not be. The value follows from two things you already know — how big your canvas is and how much movement is in it — and the rest is a question of whether your connection can hold that figure for the length of a show.
Start from resolution and frame rate, in that order
These are the targets a 16:9 program runs at. A 720p canvas at 30 frames per second takes around 3 Mbps; at 60 frames, around 4.5. A 1080p canvas at 30 takes around 6 Mbps; at 60, around 9. Above that, 1440p at 30 is around 16 Mbps and at 60 around 24, which is worth knowing mostly as a reason not to reach for it casually.
Notice the shape of that. Doubling the frame rate costs you roughly half again as much bitrate, every time. Doubling the pixel count costs you roughly double. Frame rate is the expensive decision, which is why it deserves to be an editorial one rather than a default.
Match the number to what is moving
Two people talking at a desk are close to a still image. Almost nothing changes between one frame and the next, the encoder has very little to describe, and the 30-frame rung looks identical to the 60-frame rung to anybody watching. Spending 9 Mbps on a podcast buys you nothing you can see.
A football match, a gameplay capture or a stage under a lighting chase is the opposite. The picture is different in every frame, the encoder has a great deal to describe, and dropping to 30 frames produces judder that viewers notice immediately and comment on. That is the case where the extra 3 Mbps is the best money in your entire production.
The useful question is therefore not "what bitrate is good" but "how much of this frame is different from the last one". Answer that and the rung picks itself.
Your destinations get the last word
Whatever you choose, the value that actually goes out is clamped by what the platforms you have enabled will accept. Most of them — Twitch, Facebook, Kick, LinkedIn, X — top out at 1080p. One well-known platform tops out at 720p for live, and the moment you enable it every other destination receives the lower program too, because there is one encode and it has to satisfy the strictest member of the set.
That is the single most common reason somebody sets 1080p and finds 720p arriving at the other end. It is not a fault; it is arithmetic. If a platform in your mix is dragging the rest down, the fix is to drop it from the simulcast and post there separately afterwards.
Sustained, not peak
A speed test measures a moment. A stream needs the number for two hours while somebody else in the building is on a video call. Aim to have comfortably more headroom than your target — if you are sending 9 Mbps you want meaningfully more than 9 available, all the time, not occasionally.
This is where most streams actually fail, and no encoder setting compensates for an uplink that is not there.
Building against the API rather than running a show? Setting the output format (developer docs) covers the same ground in implementation detail.
Put it to work on a real show
Once you know your bitrate you know your storage, because an hour of recording is that bitrate times an hour. The calculator turns both into a monthly figure.
Sport is the case where the 60-frame rung is genuinely worth 9 Mbps, and where the uplink question decides your whole evening.
The opposite case: a talking-head show where paying for 60 frames buys nothing a listener can perceive.
Related guides
Choose 60 when the subject moves: sport, gameplay, a stage, a fitness class. Choose 30 for talking heads, slides and lecterns. Sixty costs roughly half again as much bitrate and buys nothing on a static shot.
Comfortably more than your target bitrate, sustained for the whole show. A 1080p60 programme at 9 Mbps wants real headroom above 9 at all times — not a speed test that touched 12 once on a quiet afternoon.
Because one encode has to satisfy every destination at once, the programme is clamped to the least capable one enabled. Switch on a service that caps live contribution at 720p and everything else receives 720p too.