Twitch Live Status Scraper & Viewer Count Monitor - go-live alerts, priced per check

Check whether Twitch channels are live right now - viewer count, stream title, category, tags, start time, how long they have been live and follower count - and, with monitoring on, receive a row only when something happens: a channel goes live, ends a stream, or starts a new one. A poll on which nothing changed returns a single free no-change row.

In monitoring mode you pay a small fee per channel checked, $0.30 per 1,000 checks, and the normal row price only for the rows that report a change. Watching 20 streamers every 5 minutes is 172,800 checks a month, which is $51.84 in check fees, plus the change rows you receive.

Best for

• Go-live alerts - schedule a run every few minutes, send the dataset to Slack, Discord, Telegram or a webhook, and every row you receive is an event worth sending.
• Sponsored-stream verification - confirm that a paid streamer actually went live, in which category, for roughly how long, and the highest viewer count seen while you were watching.
• Esports and competitor tracking - log when a roster of channels streams, what they play and how big those streams get.
• "Who is live now" lists - check a roster once with onlyLive and receive only the channels that are live.

What each row contains

• What you asked for and what Twitch returned - inputChannel, login, loginMatchesInput, userId, displayName, channelUrl.
• Live status - isLive, streamId, streamType (Twitch's own value; only live has been seen).
• Only while live - title, category, categoryId, startedAt, liveDurationSeconds, viewerCount, tags, previewImageUrl.
• Only when not live - lastStreamId, lastStreamStartedAt, lastStreamTitle, lastStreamCategory (the most recent stream Twitch reports; empty for a channel that has never streamed).
• Channel - followerCount, language, isMature, isPartner, isAffiliate, profileImageUrl, accountCreatedAt.
• Monitoring - change, isFirstCheck, previousCheckedAt, previousIsLive, previousStreamId, and for a stream that ended: endedAfter, endedBefore, streamDurationSecondsAtLeast, streamDurationSecondsAtMost, peakViewerCountSeen, checksWhileLive.

Measured on 2026-09-14 from Apify: shadowkekw was live in IRL with viewerCount 93618 and 1369766 followers; xqc was not live, and its most recent stream had started at 06:10 UTC that day.

Where the data comes from

The rows come from the GraphQL endpoint that Twitch's own website uses (gql.twitch.tv), called with the public client id of the website. It needs no Twitch account and no developer registration. It is not Twitch's documented developer API, so Twitch can change it without notice; if it does, the run returns free unreadable rows with the message Twitch sent instead of guessing.

Viewer count

viewerCount is the number Twitch returns at the moment of the request. Twitch does not refresh it every second: polling the same live channels every 45 seconds on 2026-09-14, the value stayed the same for several minutes before it moved. Twitch does not publish a stream's peak viewer count, so peakViewerCountSeen is only the highest value your monitoring runs saw while the stream was live.

What is deliberately not returned for a channel that is not live

title, category, tags, viewerCount and startedAt are filled only while the channel is live. For a channel that is not live you get isLive: false and its most recent stream. The title a channel has set for its next stream is not returned as if it described a stream.

Monitoring, and what it costs

Turn monitoring mode on and the Actor remembers each channel's live status. On later runs a channel comes back only with one of these change values:

change	Meaning
first-check	The channel had not been seen before. Every channel is returned once on the first run, to set the baseline.
went-live	Not live at the previous run, live now.
ended	Live at the previous run, not live now. The row says the stream ended between endedAfter (the previous run) and endedBefore (this run), gives the duration as a range (streamDurationSecondsAtLeast to streamDurationSecondsAtMost), and the highest viewer count seen by your runs while it was live.
new-stream	Live at both runs, but with a different stream id: the previous stream ended and a new one started in between.
stream-between-checks	Not live at either run, but the most recent stream is newer than the one remembered: the channel went live and ended between two runs.

A channel whose status did not change is not returned, so it costs no row price; the check fee for reading it still applies.

The duration of a stream is a range, not a single number, because the Actor only knows the status at the moments it runs. Run it more often for a narrower range.

The status is remembered per channel, not per list, so adding a channel does not reset the channels already being watched. In monitoring mode maxChannels does not cut changes: every change among the channels read is returned. If the run's maximum total charge stops a change from being delivered, that change is not remembered, so the channel still counts as changed the next time it is checked.

Do not put the same channel in two schedules that can run at the same time. Each run writes back only the channels it checked, merged into the statuses as they are at that moment, then reads them again and writes once more if another run overwrote them - so two overlapping runs over different channels keep each other's history. But Apify's key-value store has no atomic update, so this cannot be made watertight: runs that finish at the same instant, or check the same channel at the same time, can still overwrite each other's record, and the next run may return a first-check or a change a second time.

What monitoring costs

• $0.30 per 1,000 channel checks - charged in monitoring mode for every channel whose status was read, whether or not it changed. Names Twitch returns nothing for and bot checks are not charged.
• The row price - charged only for the rows returned, which in monitoring mode means first-check rows and changes.

The Actor reads only as many channels as the run's maximum total charge can pay for with both a check and a change row each, so a low limit cannot use up the budget on check fees and leave nothing for the rows. Channels beyond that are not checked; a budget-reached row says how many, and raising the maximum total charge lets them be checked. Runs with monitoring off are charged per row only.

Rows that are never charged

When there is nothing to return, this Actor says why instead of returning an empty result:

• no-such-channel - Twitch returned no channel for that name. A name that does not exist gets this answer; whether a suspended or deleted channel gets the same answer has not been measured, so the row does not claim which.
• blocked - Twitch answered with a bot check, a rate limit or an empty response. The channel is not reported as offline. Requests go out directly first, and only this answer makes the run switch to a proxy session and try again.
• unreadable - the answer could not be read: Twitch sent an error (its message is included), or a stream type other than live, which is not translated.
• no-change - monitoring ran and no channel changed. The row lists the channels that are still live.
• no-match - onlyLive is on and none of the channels is live right now.
• invalid-input - the text is not a Twitch channel name or channel URL, so nothing was requested.
• budget-reached - the run's maximum charge was reached: the row says how many ready rows fit, or how many channels were not checked in monitoring mode.
• not-checked - some channels were not checked or not returned, because maxChannels had already been reached (monitoring off), or because more than 1,000 channels were given. The row says how many.

How fast

Channels are asked for in groups of 50 in a single request each, with a one-second pause between requests, so a list of 1,000 channels takes 20 requests.

Input

Field	What it does
channels	The channels to check: name, @name, or a channel URL. Names are sent in lower case, so XQC and xqc are the same channel and are checked once. If empty, the example channels shroud and xqc are checked.
maxChannels	How many charged rows to return in total (up to 1,000).
onlyLive	Return only the channels that are live right now.
monitoringMode	Remember the status and return a channel only when it changes.
resetMonitoringState	Forget every remembered status and start a fresh baseline.
useProxy	Retry through a proxy if Twitch answers with a bot check or a rate limit. Every request goes out directly first.

Questions

How do I get an alert when a streamer goes live? Turn on monitoringMode, schedule the Actor, and send the run's dataset to your channel with an Apify integration or webhook. How often is a trade-off between how fast you hear about a stream and the check fee: 20 channels every 5 minutes is 172,800 checks a month ($51.84); every 15 minutes is 57,600 ($17.28). Rows with change: "went-live" are go-live events; ended rows tell you the stream is over.

Does monitoring charge me when nothing changed? Unchanged channels are not returned and cost no row price. Each channel checked costs the check fee ($0.30 per 1,000), changed or not - that is what pays for polling.

Do I need a Twitch API key? No. The Actor uses the endpoint Twitch's website uses, with no login. That also means Twitch can change it; see "Where the data comes from".

Can I record the stream or read the chat? No. This Actor reports status, stream details and counts; it does not record, download or read chat.

Example input

{
  "channels": ["shroud", "xqc", "https://www.twitch.tv/kaicenat"],
  "monitoringMode": true,
  "onlyLive": false,
  "maxChannels": 100
}