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Twitch Raid Timing Calculator

Enter your stream end time and up to five channels you'd like to raid, with the typical hours each one is live. The calculator picks the 30-minute window where the most of your targets are likely on air and your raid is most likely to land cleanly. All computation runs locally in your browser.

Target channels (up to 5)

How Twitch raids work in 2026

A raid sends your concurrent audience to another live channel as you end your own stream. The target channel receives a short on-screen notification, raiders arrive in chat tagged as such, and a welcome bot usually greets them. Raids can be accepted automatically or reviewed — most Affiliate and Partner channels auto-accept, but many streamers turn on manual acceptance to filter bot-raid incidents. On acceptance, your branding and a tribute message surface on the target channel for a few seconds.

Retention from a raid depends on three factors: timing (is the target live and at an early-enough point in their stream that the raiders have somewhere to land), category alignment (is the content similar enough that raiders stay), and chat culture (does the target welcome raiders and make them feel seen). The calculator addresses the first factor — the other two are a community judgement only you can make.

Raid etiquette: the unwritten rules

Raid culture on Twitch has some reliable norms. First, never raid a stream in its last fifteen minutes — the raiders arrive, the host ends the stream, and your audience is dumped back to the browse page. Second, pre-announce the raid target in your own chat a few minutes in advance so your regulars can prep a raid message. Third, raiding friends back over the course of a week builds a real hosting loop; one-way raids are forgettable. Finally, pick a target whose audience size is within 2x of yours — overwhelming a 20-viewer stream with a 200-viewer raid is awkward, and raiding a 2000-viewer stream with 100 viewers disappears into the crowd.

Streamers new to Twitch sometimes skip the raid or end cold to the "raid? No thanks" button. That misses the simplest free audience growth tool the platform offers. Ending to a raid takes 20 seconds more than ending cold and compounds into a hosting reciprocity loop that starts paying off in the second month.

How the calculator scores a window

Each candidate raid time (your end time plus or minus 15-to-45 minutes) is scored against every target channel. The base score is the fraction of a 30-minute arrival window that overlaps with the target's typical live hours. A 100% score means the target is reliably live through the full window; a 0% score means they aren't live at all when you'd raid. The scorer adds a 50% penalty if the raid lands within the last 15 minutes of the target's typical stream — that's the classic "raided a dying stream" scenario etiquette warns against.

The five candidate times use your end time as the anchor, then evaluate small offsets (minus 15, zero, plus 15, plus 30, plus 45). Small offsets are easy to implement — wrap up the stream two minutes early or chat for an extra ten — and usually move the raid window off a bad alignment without forcing a structural change to your schedule.

Community building via raids

The best raid strategies treat raids as relationships, not transactions. Keep a running list of ten to fifteen channels in your category whose schedule you know roughly. When your stream ends at an awkward time, raid the one whose content complements yours. After two or three raids in the same direction, a reciprocal host often follows naturally; that's how many mid-tier streamers build a stable cross-pollinated audience without buying ads or running giveaways.

For anyone raiding regularly, keep a one-line note on each target channel: their typical Monday through Friday schedule, their typical Saturday and Sunday, a trigger you should avoid (some channels flag aggressive chat messages on raid-incoming), and whether they've hosted you back. The calculator is a quick-check tool; a good raid list is the long-term structural habit.

Why we built this

The "when do I raid" decision is always the last thing on a streamer's mind when the ads roll and the "End Stream" button is right there. Making it a two-minute click beforehand instead of a snap judgement at the end has an outsized effect on raid retention. The calculator is opinionated in the small ways that matter (penalising end-of-stream raids, preferring size-aligned targets, keeping everything client-side so your target list stays private) and neutral in the ways that shouldn't matter (no scoring based on who Twitch surfaces or whom we partner with).

FAQ

What is a good raid acceptance probability?
Above 70% is strong. 50-70% is workable. Below 50% — pick a different target or shift your end time.
Does the tool check whether the target is live?
No — it works from the typical live hours you enter. Verify live status right before the raid.
Should I always raid the biggest channel I can?
No. Raids across a 5x size gap rarely retain. The sweet spot is 0.5x to 2x your concurrent.
What if no targets are live when I end?
Delay your end by 15-30 minutes, expand the target list, or use Twitch's recommendation panel at raid time.
Is there any data sent to Streamrise?
No. The calculator is pure client-side.

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