Best OBS Settings for Streaming to Any Platform [2025]

If you want your streams to look good and not lag after you've spent so much time making your stream look professional, then this article is definitely for you. I'll be sharing the exact settings you should be utilizing when using OBS Studio. It doesn't matter whether you're streaming to YouTube, Kick, or Twitch- these settings will work exactly the same for each platform. 

If you haven't yet, be sure to check out Thestreameracademy.com where I share tons of tips to help create and grow your stream. There are lots of free resources to take advantage of here. 

Adjusting Your Advanced Settings 

The first thing we're going to do is get OBS Studio up and running so that we can make sure all of the settings are dialed in. 

Once you have this opened, on the bottom-right side, select 'Settings' and then go to 'Advanced'. 

This is where we're going to make some adjustments to make sure that everything is running smoothly. Once more, if you copy these exact settings, you'll never need to change them again unless you experience some kind of massive lag. 

The first setting you're going to adjust is toggling on 'Dynamically Change Bitrate to Manage Congestion'. This is going to allow you to know whether your internet speed is dropping or if it's being utilized too much. It lets OBS know to adjust your settings to maintain the quality of the stream if you are having issues with your internet. 

For 'Bind to IP', you're going to want to make sure this is set to 'Default'. 

Video Settings

Now, we're going to move on to 'Video' settings.

For the 'Base (Canvas) Resolution', set this to '1920x1080'. 

As for the 'Output (Scaled) Resolution', you want this to match the base resolution, so this will also be '1920x1080'. 

When it comes to the 'Common FPS Values', what you want this set to depends on the type of content you're making. If the video is just a "talking head", you can leave this set to '30 FPS'. If you're going to be gaming, which most of you are, then you'll want to set this to '60 FPS'. When it's set to 60 FPS, if you start to notice a little bit of a lag, go ahead and drop it to 30 FPS.

Audio Settings

Next, we can move on to the 'Audio' settings. 

For the 'Sample Rate', make sure this is set to '48 kHz'. 

Audio is by far much more important than video to your viewers. If it doesn't sound good, then they aren't going to stick around and keep watching your stream. 

Internet Speed

Before moving on to the 'Output' settings, it's important to figure out your internet speed as this is a big component in determining what settings your internet can handle. 

To check this, go to Speedtest.net and press 'Go'. This is going to give you both your 'Upload' and 'Download' speed. 

We're going to be using the 'Upload' speed to determine what settings we can use. I have an upload speed of '944 Mbps' which is a lot more than I need for what we're doing today. All you need is for your upload speed to be at least '10 Mbps'. 

The higher the number, the better. However, if you have less than 10, you're going to struggle a bit with these settings.

Once you have this and know that your internet can support these settings, you can head back over to OBS. 

Output Settings

Now that you know your internet speed and what it can handle, we can move on to the 'Output' settings. 

This is where the bulk of the settings we're adjusting will be. 

First, we'll look at the 'Streaming' section of the output settings. 

You're going to make sure that the 'Output Mode' is set to 'Advanced'. 

For the 'Audio Encoder' and the 'Twitch VOD Track', you can leave these as is for now. 

The 'Video Encoder' is going to be very important. If you have 'NVIDIA NVENC H.264', then this is what you're going to select. If you don't have that, then you're going to use 'x264' since it's your only option. 

For 'Rate Control', this should be set to 'Constant Bitrate'.

The 'Bitrate' is the number that's going to be determined based on the internet speed check that we just did. If you have an upload speed of 10 or more, then your 'Bitrate' can be at '6,000 Kbps'. 

This is really all you need to have a 1080p, 60 frames-per-second quality stream on every single platform. Even if you decide to multistream, you won't need to change any of these settings. They'll still work exactly the same and give your viewer the best experience. 

As for the 'Keyframe Intervals', you'll want to select '2s'. 

The 'Preset' is going to be sort of based on your computer. If you want the one that will be the smoothest, without any issues, then you can select 'P5: Slow (Good Quality)'. You could also go ahead and select 'P4: Medium (Medium Quality)'.

If you start to experience some lag or if you don't have a really strong PC, then you can select some of the lower-quality options. The closer you are to 'P1', the less strain there is on your PC, and the closer you are to 'P7', the more strain there will be. Medium or good quality tends to be a pretty good spot to keep it in. 

For 'Tuning', you'll want this to be set to 'High Quality'. 

Your 'Multipass Mode' should be set to 'Two Passes (Quarter Resolution)'. 

The 'Profile' should be set to 'High'. 

As for the 'Look Ahead' setting, you'll want to make sure that this is not checked. However, you will want to have the 'Adaptive Quantization' checked and turned on. This used to be called 'Psycho Tuning' which is a good feature to have on. 

For 'B-Frames', you'll set this to '2'. 

Now, you can select 'Apply' and your settings are dialed in for streaming, no matter which platform you're using. 

If you don't want to stream every time, and you want to use OBS to record, then these settings are not going to work. That uses a different set of settings. If you want to learn the best settings for recording using OBS Studio, check out this video here. In this, I'll walk you through step-by-step which settings to utilize.