How to start streaming for free

Choose where your stream will live — Twitch, YouTube, or Kick are the common starting points — and create a free account there.

All the major platforms are free to stream on, so the choice is mostly about audience. Twitch is the default for live-first communities and discovery through categories. YouTube is strong if you already make videos there, since your streams and uploads share one channel. Kick is a newer option with similar mechanics to Twitch.

Don't overthink this decision. You can move later, and everything else in this guide — OBS, your overlay, your scenes — works the same on every platform. Create the account, pick a channel name you can live with, and move on.

Download OBS Studio (free, open source) and build a basic scene: your game or screen capture, a microphone, and a webcam if you have one.

OBS Studio is the free, open-source broadcasting app most streamers use. Install it from obsproject.com, then run the auto-configuration wizard — it measures your connection and picks sensible output settings so you don't have to understand bitrates on day one.

In OBS, a scene is a layout of sources. Make one scene to start: add a Game Capture or Display Capture source for what you're showing, an Audio Input Capture for your microphone, and a Video Capture Device if you have a webcam. Talk into the mic and watch the audio meter move — if it does, you're most of the way there.

Finally, connect OBS to the platform you picked in step one. In OBS settings, under Stream, choose your service and paste in the stream key from your platform's creator dashboard (keep that key private — anyone with it can stream as you).

Open the Streamer Garden studio in your browser, copy your overlay URL, and add it to OBS as a Browser Source so viewers can vote, hype, ask, and draw on your stream.

A plain stream is a one-way broadcast. An interactive overlay gives your viewers something to do: with Streamer Garden, they scan a QR code shown on your stream and can vote in polls, charge a shared hype meter, submit questions, and draw doodles that appear on the broadcast — after you approve them. Nothing reaches the screen without your say-so.

Setup takes a few minutes and Streamer Garden is free to use while it grows. Open the Studio in your browser — there's nothing to download — and copy your overlay URL. In OBS, add a Browser Source to your scene, paste the URL, and set its size to your canvas (1920x1080 is typical). The overlay is transparent, so it paints your widgets on top of your gameplay or camera.

Your join QR code renders on the overlay automatically. Viewers point a phone camera at it and land on your channel's viewer page in their mobile browser — no app to install, no account to create. You arrange where everything sits with a drag-and-drop layout editor in the studio.

Do a short private test recording, then press Start Streaming in OBS and run your first stream — keep it simple and talk to whoever shows up.

Before your first real stream, click Start Recording in OBS instead of Start Streaming and play for five minutes. Watch the recording back: is the game visible, is your voice audible over the game, does the overlay sit where you want it? Fixing that offline beats debugging it live.

Then press Start Streaming. Your first streams will be small, and that's normal — treat them as practice. Say hello to every viewer, point at the QR code, and let the overlay carry the interaction: a running poll or an open question gives a new viewer a reason to participate instead of lurking.

Keep a repeatable schedule if you can, even just once a week. Consistency does more for a new channel than any single big stream.