What bitrate should I stream at?

Most bitrate advice starts from what a platform allows. That is the wrong end. A platform cap tells you what will be accepted, not what your connection can carry for four hours while someone else in the house starts a video call. Pick from your upload first, then check it against the cap.

Start from your upload, not the platform

Run a speed test, take the sustained upload rather than the peak, and plan to use 70 percent of it. That is the 70% Headroom Rule, and it exists because the moment your stream needs more than the line can give, frames drop and you get the buffering wheel. A connection that tests at 10 Mbps up is a 7,000 kbps stream, not a 10,000 kbps one.

Then check the ceiling you are sending to

Twitch's standard ingest tops out around 6,000 kbps, which is the Twitch 6000 Ceiling. Sending more does not buy quality, it buys dropped frames for viewers. YouTube accepts far more, so the same rig can look better there with no hardware change. That is worth knowing before you buy anything.

Resolution is the last thing to raise

Bitrate Beats Resolution: 1080p at a bitrate it can hold looks better than 1440p that is starved. If you are short on upload, drop the resolution and keep the bitrate honest. Motion-heavy content needs more than a talking head at the same resolution, so a camera pointed at a game deserves the higher end of a tier and a static webcam can sit at the lower end.