Bitrate vs Upload Speed: What a 24/7 Stream Really Costs in Data

Data sent equals bitrate multiplied by time. At a constant bitrate (YouTube recommends CBR), one megabit per second is 0.125 megabytes per second, which is 10.8 gigabytes per day (decimal units, 86,400 seconds in a day).

The bitrates below are the "recommended" figures from YouTube's encoder guidance. This is our arithmetic on those figures, not a YouTube statement, and it ignores audio and protocol overhead, so the real totals are slightly higher.

Streaming from a home computer around the clock means a continuous upload of that size, a machine that never sleeps, and a connection that never drops. A cloud service moves the encoding and the upload to a data center, so none of that traffic goes through your own line.

Whichever route you take, a lower bitrate with a newer codec is a legitimate way to reduce the load, as YouTube's own table shows.

YouCast turns the videos you upload into a 24/7 live stream that runs from the cloud, to YouTube and, with a stream key, to Twitch, Kick and Instagram, so there is no encoder to configure, no computer to keep awake and no home upload line to saturate.

The data figures above are what a home line would have to carry. With a cloud stream the encoding and upload happen in a data center, so none of it goes through your own connection.

You can try one stream on the free trial and add more streams as the channel grows.