Ironmouse sets new Twitch sub record at 321,000

Ironmouse is now Twitch‘s most-subscribed-to streamer ever. During her latest subathon raising money for the Immune Deficiency Foundation, the VTuber soared past Kai Cenat‘s 2023 record of 306,621 subscribers to more than 321,000–and that number’s still going up.

Ironmouse, who’s one of the world’s top VTubers and has amassed more than 2 million followers on Twitch, was live for 30 days straight to make this number happen. It’s her third year hosting a subathon for the Immune Deficiency Foundation (a personal cause for her, as she’s been open about her struggle with having common variable immunodeficiency), and each year, she’s broken subscription records. During the first subathon in March 2022, she became Twitch’s most-subscribed-to female streamer, beating kkatamina‘s record of 76,623 subscribers with a final total of 171,818.

A year later, in July 2023, she broke her own record, bringing in 205,488 subscribers and reaffirming her place as Twitch’s most-subscribed-to female streamer.

With this latest record, though, she’s now the top streamer across all of Twitch–no gender category about it.

This year, she purposefully scheduled it during SUBtember, a monthlong event where Twitch charges viewers 25-30% less to subscribe to streamers’ channels, but still gives streamers their usual payout amount for each subscription. So, viewers got to spend less while supporting Ironmouse and the Foundation–and they showed up in droves to do it.

Within minutes of the stream starting, Ironmouse had racked up over 12,000 subs, and couldn’t even get through her stream’s opening announcements without being interrupted by new subscriber notifications. The deluge slowed a little bit over the course of the subathon, but she was still bringing in tens of thousands per day before a final big push during the ‘thon’s last 24 hours.

“Words cannot express how I am feeling nor can they express my gratitude. Thank you all so much for the incredible support and thank you for changing my life,” she tweeted. “Thank you for being the best community in the universe. WE DREAMED BIG AND WE DID IT BROS! I LOVE YOU ALL!”

Cenat, who’d just finished playing basketball against a bunch of kiddos in the youth sports tourney Little Ballers Association, gave a statement surrounded by his tiny teammates.

“W Ironmouse, you know what I’m saying?” he said. “She took the record. She really did that, you feel what I’m saying? But I promise one thing to my supporters if it was broken: We will see what happens in the future.”

Cenat took the record from Ludwig in March 2023, who took it from Ninja in April 2021. Here’s a timeline, and each streamer’s sub count:

• Ninja—269,154 (April 2018)
• Ludwig—283,066 (April 2021)
• Kai Cenat—306,621 (March 2023)
• Ironmouse—321,000+ (September 2024)

Ironmouse has said she’ll donate 50% of proceeds from all these subs to the Immune Deficiency Foundation. We don’t have exact details of her financial agreement with Twitch, but if we take an average subscription price of $4.99 (people can pay more for higher-tier subs, but we’ll take lowest-tier since we can’t guesstimate how many are higher) and assume Ironmouse has a 70/30 revenue split with Twitch, the math breaks out like this:

• One sub: $4.99
• After Twitch’s 30% cut: $3.49
• 50% of that going to the Foundation: $1.75

$1.75 x 321,000: $561,750 for the Immune Deficiency Foundation

And, of course, Ironmouse gets the other $561,750. Not a bad month!

These sorts of events are also good for the VTuber community, and the streaming community, as a whole. Creators are always raising the bar—and streamers especially are consistently upping the ante with spectacle, seeing who can be live longest and raise the most money for charity. We don’t really have that on YouTube anymore, since MrBeast—regardless of how contentious he is—dominates viewership and charity charts alike. Gone are the days where collectives like Smosh and individual creators like PewDiePie competed with one another to be the biggest creator with the most fans on YouTube. (Maybe it started going away with PewDiePie vs T-Series?)

But with Twitch, that spirit lives on. Ironmouse and Kai Cenat each represent major sectors of the platform–Ironmouse as a more private person, Cenat constantly putting his face out there. In the end, they’re complementary: they both love gaming, and they’ve both built dedicated communities—communities that are now pushing them to bigger and bigger records.