Guide

Save Twitch VODs before they are deleted

By NONSTOPVOD · Updated 2026-10-03

If you stream on Twitch and save your past broadcasts, those recordings (VODs) do not stay forever. Twitch removes them after a fixed number of days, and once they are gone, the stream is gone. This guide explains how the retention works, what your options are for keeping your VODs, and how to build a backup habit that does not depend on remembering.

How long does Twitch keep a VOD?

Twitch limits how long past broadcasts are kept, and the limit depends on your account type: 7 days for most streamers, 14 days for Affiliates, and 60 days for Partners, Twitch Prime and Twitch Turbo. Highlights and uploads follow different rules. Twitch can change these numbers, so confirm them on Twitch's own help pages for your account before you plan around them. We do not speak for Twitch.

Two things in this are easy to miss. First, the clock starts when the stream ends, not when you last watched it. Second, nothing warns you that a particular VOD is the last copy: if you did not record locally, the Twitch VOD may be the only copy of that stream.

Why it matters

• Clips and highlights need a source. If you want to cut something from a stream three weeks later, you cannot if the VOD is gone.
• Milestones. The first stream, the charity day, the 10,000th follower. These are the ones you will want in a year.
• Content for later. A back catalog is material you can reuse, for example to rerun on a second channel.
• Disputes. If a moment is argued about later, the recording is the evidence.

Your options for keeping VODs

1. Highlights

On Twitch you can turn a past broadcast into a highlight from the Video Producer. Twitch's documentation says highlights are kept on a longer horizon than regular past broadcasts. A highlight is a clipped piece of a stream (you choose a start and an end), not the whole thing, so it is the right tool for the best moments and the wrong tool for an archive. Check the current Twitch documentation for how long highlights last and what limits apply.

2. Download the VOD yourself

Twitch lets broadcasters download their own past broadcasts from the Video Producer in the Creator Dashboard. You get a file you can store anywhere. The trade-offs:

• It is manual. You have to do it for every stream, inside the retention window.
• Very long streams make large files, and the download can fail partway.
• You need somewhere to put the files: a drive, a cloud storage account, or both.

If you go this way, treat the download like a backup, not a convenience. A copy on a single laptop drive is one failed disk away from being lost. The long-standing rule of thumb is three copies, on two kinds of storage, with one in a different place.

3. Record locally while you stream

OBS and similar software can write a recording to disk at the same time as the stream. It gives you a copy that does not depend on Twitch at all, and it is often higher quality than the VOD, because your own recording does not pass through Twitch's pipeline. The cost is disk space (hours of video are tens of gigabytes) and one more thing that can fail without you noticing. Pick a format that survives a crash, such as MKV, and convert afterward if you need to.

4. Use an archive service

An archive service pulls your VODs from Twitch automatically, before they expire, and keeps them. That is what NONSTOPVOD does. After you connect your Twitch channel, it copies each new VOD as a byte-identical recording (no re-encoding, so the quality is exactly what Twitch had), and keeps it while your subscription is active. You watch the archive in the browser.

If a subscription lapses or a payment fails, recordings may be removed after a grace period, and we warn you by email before anything is removed. Even so, an archive service is one copy, not the only copy: keep your own backup of anything you cannot afford to lose. A plan includes a fixed amount of storage, and more is bought in steps. Current plans and prices are on the pricing section of our home page.

A backup habit that holds up

1. Decide what you keep. Everything, or only streams over a certain length, or only the ones you mark.
2. Make it automatic. Anything that depends on you remembering will fail in the first busy week.
3. Keep two places. For example a local recording plus an archive service, or a download plus a cloud drive.
4. Check once a month. Open one old recording and play it from the middle. A backup you have never tested is a guess.
5. Write down the retention you are working with. Put the number of days in a note, and look at it whenever you change account type.

What about the muted parts?

Twitch can mute sections of a past broadcast when its systems detect copyrighted music. Those mutes are part of the VOD Twitch keeps, and they come with a copy you download. If a recording matters to you, it helps to know what was muted and why. We cover this in our guide to muted VOD audio.

A short checklist

• Find out your account's current VOD retention on Twitch's help pages.
• Turn on storing past broadcasts in your channel's stream settings, if it is not already on.
• Pick one automatic backup method today, and one manual one for the streams that matter most.
• Test a restore.