# Kick applies two limits, not one
Kick's help article on stream replays answers the retention question in one line: “Verified streamers can keep stream replays on their channel for up to 30 days after the livestream ends. For non-verified streamers, replays remain available for 7 days after the livestream concludes.”[1] That is the sentence the whole first page of search results is built on.
Immediately after it, the same article adds something else: “Note that there is a limit to the number of stream replays you can have on your channel at any time. Verified Channels: 30 stream replays. Non-Verified Channels: 16 stream replays.”[1] This is a separate constraint with separate units. The first is measured in days. The second is measured in videos. They are enforced together, and neither one waits for the other.
| Verified channel | Non-verified channel | |
|---|---|---|
| Time limit | 30 days after the stream ends | 7 days after the stream ends |
| Replay count limit | 30 stored replays | 16 stored replays |
| History if you stream once a day | 30 days (both limits land together) | 7 days (the clock is the limit) |
| History if you stream twice a day | 15 days (the cap is the limit) | 7 days (the clock is still the limit) |
| History if you stream three times a day | 10 days (the cap is the limit) | about 5 days (the cap is the limit) |
Worth saying how we know all of this, because it bears on how much to trust it. The Streamrise editorial team read five separate Kick help articles for this guide on 5 September 2026 — replays, missing VODs, downloads, verification grounds and the partner programme — and the replay cap appears in exactly one of them, two sentences below the number everybody quotes. Nothing here is inferred from a competitor's summary; every figure below is quoted from Kick and dated in the sources list.
There is also a wrong number circulating. One of the pages currently ranking for this query states that Kick VODs “expire in 14-30 days”. There is no 14-day tier on Kick. The documented values are 7 and 30, split by verification status; 14 days is a Twitch Affiliate figure that appears to have drifted across platforms.
# Which limit deletes your VOD first
The arithmetic is simple enough to do on your fingers, and it matters more than the headline number. At a steady schedule, the number of replays sitting on your channel settles at your streams-per-day multiplied by your retention window — unless that product is larger than your cap, in which case the cap is where you sit.
- Non-verified: the cap binds above roughly 2.3 streams a day. Seven days at two streams a day is fourteen replays, comfortably under sixteen. Only if you go live three or more times a day does the count limit arrive before the seven-day clock. For most non-verified streamers the standard “7 days” answer is genuinely the right one.
- Verified: the cap binds above one stream a day. Thirty days at one stream a day is exactly thirty replays — the two limits land on the same day. Go live any more often and the cap wins every time. Twice a day gives you fifteen days of history. Three times a day gives you ten.
- Short streams count the same as long ones. The cap counts videos, not hours. A twenty-minute test stream occupies exactly as much of your allowance as an eight-hour subathon session. If you are near your cap, a habit of hopping live briefly is expensive in a way that is not obvious from the interface.
This is why “how long do Kick VODs last” has no single correct answer, and why every page answering it with one number is answering a question you did not quite ask. The number you need is not the retention window on its own. It is whichever of the two limits your own schedule reaches first.
# What verification actually changes
Verification is the switch behind both replay limits, and it is worth understanding what else sits on that same switch, because the VOD benefit is the smallest part of it.
| Verified | Non-verified | |
|---|---|---|
| Replay retention | 30 days | 7 days |
| Stored replay cap | 30 replays | 16 replays |
| Payout cadence | Weekly or monthly, your choice | Monthly only |
| Streamer analytics and Media Kit | Rolling out to Verified and Partner first | Not in the first releases |
| Kick Partner eligibility | Prerequisite met | Cannot apply |
The payout line comes straight from Kick's payout article: “Verified Streamers can choose between weekly payouts and monthly payouts. Non-verified Streamers receive monthly payouts only,” with cadence changes arranged through support.[6] The Partner line is a hard gate: Kick's partner application article lists “your channel is verified ✅ on KICK before applying” among the requirements.[5]
What Kick does document is how verification is lost, and the list is unusually specific. Repeated Terms of Service violations inside a 30-day period. Artificially manipulating channel statistics, including joining communities that exist to inflate numbers, and self-financing subscriptions. Ninety days of inactivity. Mirror streams, blank streams or pre-recorded content. And this one, which matters for everything else on this page: “Your channel must have VOD content, allowing Viewers to catch up on missed streams.”[4] If verification is revoked you can appeal to verify@kick.com with the subject line “Appeal”, and reapply after 30 days.[4]
# Why a replay vanished earlier than it should have
If a stream is missing well inside your window, expiry is not the explanation. Kick's troubleshooting article covers most of the real causes, and they are worth separating because the fixes are completely different.
- It has not finished processing. Replays are not instant. Kick asks you to allow 15 to 30 minutes for shorter streams and up to an hour for longer ones before assuming anything is wrong.[2] A replay still processing will not appear on your public channel page.
- Your stream disconnected and split into several replays. Kick states plainly that a disconnect and reconnect during broadcast splits the session into multiple VODs.[2] Check your Streamer Dashboard for other replays from the same date before concluding one is lost.
- It is set to private, sub-only or unlisted. If it appears in your dashboard but not on your channel page, that is the first thing to check. Kick offers public, subscriber-only, hidden and deleted as replay visibility states.[2]
- You ended the stream almost immediately after going live. Kick lists this among the reasons a stream may never save at all.[2]
- Your verification status changed. This is the one nobody mentions. If verification is revoked, your channel moves from the 30-day window and 30-replay cap to the 7-day window and 16-replay cap. Replays that sat comfortably inside the old limits are now outside them.
If a replay is genuinely missing from the dashboard as well as the channel page, Kick's support address for this is techsupport@kick.com, and they ask for your username, the date and approximate start and end times, the stream length, the encoder you used, and a description of the failure.[2] Sending all six in the first message saves a round trip.
# How to actually keep a Kick VOD
Here is the blunt version: Kick does not offer a way to keep one. There is no permanent-archive tier, no highlight system that survives the window, and no export button. Kick's own help article on downloading replays opens by pointing you at third-party tools, and gives instructions for extracting the .m3u8 playlist by hand through your browser's network tab if you would rather not use one.[3] A platform that documents the manual devtools method is telling you clearly that it has not built the feature.
If you stream regularly, build downloading important VODs into your routine. Once a VOD is auto-deleted, we cannot recover it.— Kick Help Centre, “My VOD is missing or not appearing after my stream”
Take that at face value. It is not a disclaimer, it is the retention policy stated plainly: anything you have not pulled off the platform before the window closes is gone, and support cannot restore it. The practical response is to stop treating Kick as storage and start treating it as a seven- or thirty-day buffer.
- Record locally while you stream. OBS and Streamlabs will write a local file at the same time as they send the stream out. This costs disk space and nothing else, and it is the only method that does not depend on Kick's window at all.
- Clip during the stream, not after. Clips can be created from replays as well as live[1], but only while the replay still exists. Clipping the good moment on the night removes the deadline entirely.
- Download on a schedule, not on impulse. If you are non-verified, seven days is one missed week. Pick a fixed day and pull anything you might want later.
- Do not delete to tidy up. The next section explains what that costs. Set replays to hidden or unlisted instead if you simply do not want them on your channel page — Kick offers that as a distinct option from deletion.[2]
Replays only earn if people find them
Kick views from the Streamrise pool, paced across your replays and clips at a speed you set, so the curve reads as organic discovery rather than a spike. Real, non-drop, 60-day refund.
# Why deleting VODs can cost you Partner
This is the part of Kick's replay documentation with real money attached, and it is one sentence long, filed under a how-to about removing a video: “Any VODs deleted from your channel will also affect your statistics. For example, if you streamed for 5 hours and then deleted the VOD, your total stream time would be reduced by 5 hours.”[1]
Deleting a replay is not a display change. It rewrites your channel's streamed-hours figure retroactively. And streamed hours are not decorative on Kick — the Partner application requires 30 hours streamed in the past 30 days, alongside 250 followers, 75 average concurrent viewers, 25 active subscriptions, 250 unique chatters and 3 VODs in the same window.[5] We keep the full breakdown of those thresholds and how they are counted in our Kick Partner requirements guide.
There is a timing consequence too. Because the Partner window is a rolling 30 days while non-verified retention is 7 days, a non-verified streamer's replays expire long before the window they are being measured against closes. Whether Kick counts replays that have since expired against the “3 VODs in the past 30 days” line is not documented anywhere we could find, and we are not going to assert it either way. If you are close to applying, the safe reading is to get verified first — which is required regardless — so that your replays outlive the assessment period rather than expiring inside it.
# The bottom line
Kick VODs last 30 days if you are verified and 7 days if you are not — and that answer is only complete for streamers who go live once a day or less. Above that frequency the binding constraint is the replay cap, 30 slots or 16, and your real archive depth is your cap divided by your streams per day. Verification roughly quadruples the window in the best case, and also moves you to weekly payouts, unlocks analytics, and is a hard prerequisite for the Partner programme — though Kick publishes no numeric criteria for earning it.
The one habit worth changing today is the tidy-up instinct. Deleting replays subtracts their hours from your channel statistics, thins the VOD content that verification requires you to have, and reduces the replay count the Partner application measures. Hide them instead. And because Kick offers no native download and cannot restore anything it has auto-deleted, the only replay you truly own is the one already sitting on your own drive.
# faq
How long do Kick VODs last?
Thirty days after the stream ends if your channel is verified, seven days if it is not. Kick applies a second limit at the same time — a maximum of 30 stored replays on a verified channel and 16 on a non-verified one — and whichever limit you reach first is the one that removes your oldest stream. If you go live more than once a day on a verified channel, the replay cap will reach you before the 30-day clock does.
Does Kick delete old VODs automatically?
Yes. Kick's troubleshooting documentation states that replays have a retention period and are automatically deleted afterwards unless you have downloaded them or saved them elsewhere, and that once auto-deleted they cannot be recovered by support. There is no archive tier and no way to extend the window other than getting verified.
Can I turn VOD saving off on Kick?
Kick automatically saves your stream as a replay when you finish, and its documentation does not describe a setting that prevents this. What it does describe is control over visibility after the fact: a replay can be made public, subscriber-only, hidden or unlisted, or deleted permanently, from your Streamer Dashboard. If your goal is that nobody sees the replay, hiding it achieves that without the statistics penalty that deletion carries.
Can I get a deleted Kick VOD back?
No. Kick states directly that once a VOD is auto-deleted it cannot be recovered, and the same applies to replays you delete yourself. There is no restore window and no support route for it. The only protection is having a copy before the replay goes — either a local recording made while you streamed, or a download taken during the retention window.
How do I download my Kick VOD?
Kick provides no native download button. Its own help article recommends third-party tools such as Kicklet and the Streams Charts VOD downloader, where you paste the replay URL and choose a resolution, and it also documents how to locate the master .m3u8 playlist yourself through your browser's network tab. Recording locally in OBS while you stream avoids the problem entirely.
How many followers do you need to get verified on Kick?
Kick does not publish a follower threshold, or any other numeric requirement, for verification. It documents what verification unlocks and it documents the grounds on which verification is refused or revoked — terms of service violations, statistic manipulation, 90 days of inactivity, mirror or pre-recorded streams, and channels without VOD content — but no qualifying numbers. Specific follower counts quoted elsewhere are not sourced from Kick.
Why did my stream save as several separate VODs?
Because the stream disconnected and reconnected during the broadcast. Kick states that this splits the session into multiple replays, and advises checking your dashboard for other replays from the same date. Worth knowing: each fragment occupies one slot of your 16 or 30 replay allowance, so repeated disconnects shorten how far back your channel history reaches.
Does deleting a VOD affect my Kick Partner application?
It can, in more than one way. Kick states that deleting a replay reduces your total stream time — five hours deleted removes five hours from your statistics — and 30 hours streamed in the past 30 days is a Partner requirement, as is having 3 VODs in that window. Kick also lists a channel having VOD content among the conditions for holding verification, which is itself a prerequisite for applying. Hiding or unlisting a replay is the safer option.