The Real Cost of Running OBS 24/7 for Steam Broadcasting

OBS is brilliant software. I use it, and I have absolutely nothing against it.

It's free, powerful and great for live gameplay broadcasts. But I find it a bit ridiculous to leave an entire gaming PC running day and night just to stream a video to your Steam Store page.

Especially when there are simpler ways to do it.

OBS is free. Running the computer isn't.

Let's start with electricity. Suppose a computer consumes an average of 100 watts while it's running a video stream through OBS.

• 100 watts × 24 hours = 2.4 kWh per day.
• Over 30 days, that's 72 kWh.
• At an illustrative electricity price of $0.20 per kWh, that's $15 bucks a month.

Those aren't universal costs. Your machine could use less or a lot more, your electricity price will differ, and a computer you already keep running doesn't have the same incremental cost. A gaming rig can cost as much as $30 a month to keep running and powering OBS.

Still, it makes sense to calculate rather than assume continuous streaming is free.

How much upload bandwidth does 24/7 broadcasting use?

In the Broadcastloop admin section we monitor this usage and a single stream is well over a terabyte of data a month ( upload rate of 5 megabits per second). That's a serious amount of upstream traffic. If you've got unrestricted fibre, it may not matter financially. If you're on a limited connection, or you're sharing that connection with colleagues and family, it may matter quite a lot.

This is upload data, by the way, not download data.

The hidden cost: reliability

What happens when Windows decides to restart? What happens when your internet drops? Or somebody closes OBS? Or you want to use the same machine for development?

You can engineer around these things, of course. But that's more setup and maintenance.

If you're a solo developer, those hours could be better spent fixing bugs or getting your next update ready.

Cloud broadcasting changes the equation

This was one of my motivations for building BroadcastLoop.

Rather than relying on a PC at your office or home, I wanted the broadcast delivered by a cloud server. Upload the video once, connect the Steam account and start streaming.

After the upload, your local PC doesn't need to stay switched on, and your own connection isn't carrying the outgoing broadcast.

What does BroadcastLoop cost?

We sell prepaid broadcasting time instead of requiring a monthly subscription. At our published prices when I wrote this:

• $10 buys 20 days of streaming.
• $25 buys 58 days.
• $50 buys 125 days.
• $100 buys 260 days.

That's around $0.38 to $0.50 per day, depending on the package. If you stop a broadcast, you preserve the remaining time. Each simultaneous stream to another Steam page uses additional broadcasting time.

You can check the current prices here. They may change, so I always recommend looking at the live pricing page rather than an old comparison article.

Which would I use?

For live developer commentary, community sessions and interacting with an audience, I'd still use OBS.

But if I simply wanted a gameplay video running continuously on a Steam Store page, I wouldn't want to tie up a whole PC. I'd rather upload it once and let a cloud service handle it.

You can try BroadcastLoop free for 24 hours and decide whether it makes sense for your own setup.