Questions

Short answers. The longer version is on how it works.

Does this test my upload or my OBS settings?

No. It measures playback arriving in the browser you are running it in. If you test your own channel on your own machine, you are measuring your own download of your own stream, which is useful but is not the same thing as measuring your broadcast.

Then why would a streamer use it?

Because it answers questions your own preview cannot. Whether Twitch is transcoding your broadcast at all. What delay your viewers are sitting at. Whether a viewer's complaint is reproducible from a second connection. Hand a viewer a link and their result tells you more than your own does.

What does the percentage actually mean?

It is our own weighted score, not a Twitch measurement. Connection health carries most of it, then smoothness, then the quality received, then whether playback stayed up. Excellent is 90 and above, Good from 78, Fair from 65, Unstable from 50, Poor from 35, and Very poor below that. We will keep tuning these as we see more real streams.

I got two different results for the same channel.

That is expected and it is the point. Different device, different network, different moment in the broadcast, or a Twitch ad landing in the window. Run it a few times before drawing a conclusion, and note which conditions changed between runs.

Some readings say “not reported”.

Twitch does not expose every statistic in every browser. Frame rate in particular is unavailable in some, and there are browsers where the whole statistics call returns nothing at all. When that happens ViewerVitals says so and lowers its own confidence rather than inventing a number — a test that read only two of six values should not be able to announce a perfect score. If everything reads as unavailable, try Chrome.

Do I need to log in?

No, and the main test will always work without it. Twitch login is coming so you can save test history and compare networks over time, and when it arrives it will ask for the smallest permission each feature needs — never chat, moderation or broadcaster controls for an ordinary sign-in.

What do you keep?

Right now, nothing. Tests are not stored, and the channel lookups are cached on the server for well under a minute purely to avoid hammering Twitch. See privacy.

Can I see who follows a channel, or when someone followed?

Not for other people. Twitch made that information private, and rightly so. You will be able to see your own follows and follow dates once you have authorised it yourself, and a broadcaster will be able to see their own channel's followers. Any tool claiming to show you arbitrary follow relationships between strangers is either wrong or is misusing access.

Is this affiliated with Twitch?

No. It is an independent tool built on Twitch's public API and embedded player, developed by OPD Technologies.