How Chaos Tools works

Most people looking for something to watch open a category and look at the first page or so: roughly thirty channels, busiest first. If you're not on it, almost nobody finds you by browsing. Chaos Tools works out where you would land.

What it counts

Every fifteen minutes it goes through the whole public Twitch directory, every live channel in every category, and notes how many viewers each one has. Nothing else about anyone's channel is used.

Where you'd land

Sign in with Twitch and the tools use your own numbers: your channel's language from Twitch, and your usual viewers from the broadcasts caught here, the middle of your last ten. Signed out, everything is shown for a channel with 3 viewers.

If you haven't been caught streaming yet, your usual viewers are estimated from what Twitch shows publicly: the views on your recent past broadcasts, or failing that your follower count. That estimate is checked every night against channels that have been measured, and it is labelled as an estimate. Once there's an hour of your streaming on record, your real figure takes over.

Channels are listed busiest first, so you'd sit just below everyone who has more viewers than you. That is your position. Up to 9 viewers it is exact; above that it is a close estimate, which is why some pages say "about".

Why "outside the top three"

A category can show 30,000 viewers and be one enormous stream with almost nobody watching anyone else. So the three biggest channels are left out and the viewers left over are counted. That is the crowd you could realistically reach.

The week grids

Each square is one hour of the week. It is brighter when you'd be on the first page more often and there are more people around to see you. Every hour needs two weeks of readings before it counts, and until then the square is striped as still learning.

What it can't tell you

It can't see recommendations, raids, clips or the front page, and it can't tell you whether people will like your stream. It tells you where you would stand in the queue. The rest is you.