VTubing continues to build momentum and draw in millions of Hours Watched per month. Many of our readers will have already heard about Ironmouse’s subathon, which lasted the entire month of June and helped her to reach 6.8M Hours Watched in the month. This makes June one of the very rare periods where we saw an English-speaking VTuber dominate the space.
VTubing originated in Japan and remains hugely popular there. These Japanese VTubers are some of the most popular content creators not only locally, but in the world. Drawing in millions of Hours Watched every month each, who are the most popular VTubers? And how do they stack up against one another?
Most watched VTubers for June 2023, multiplatform
Looking at Hours Watched, it should come as no surprise that ironmouse came out on top for the month of June. Ironmouse was the queen of Twitch for June with her subathon exploding all across the platform. Not only was ironmouse the largest VTuber of the month, but she also was one of the top ten streamers on Twitch for the month, when ranked by Hours Watched. The only question now is how ironmouse will take advantage of this viewership going forward, the subathon was anything but sustainable with the Puerto Rican-American streamer live for over 22 hours a day on average during June.
Pekora Ch took second place with 2.5M Hours Watched, a slight decrease from last month and ironmouse’s recent wave of popularity will deny Pekora from the top rank this month. Following closely behind is Kuzuha. With 2.1M Hours Watched in June, Kuzuha is the most-watched male VTuber, and only one of two to make this list.
With 1.99M and 1.98M Hours Watched, respectively, Miko Ch and Koyori ch slot into fourth and fifth. The two hololive-affiliated streamers just barely missed out on two million: an improvement for Miko but a shame for Koyori who drops down from second place in the rankings last month.
Our second Twitch streamer on the list, anny brought in 1.7M Hours Watched throughout the month. Anny is the first independent VTuber to be featured on this list and one of the newest to VTubing. Anny started streaming in early 2016 but only made the jump to becoming a fox girl back in 2021.
Rounding out the list, Subaru and Korone saw a slight improvement in Hours Watched this month, roughly a 0.4M increase each. AdmiralBahroo makes it onto the list, too. Last month Bahroo was the most-watched Twitch VTuber but did not make the cut for the multi-platform top ten. With 1.15M Hours Watched, Bahroo reaches the penultimate spot and appears in the top 10 this month, despite a drop in Hours Watched compared to last month.
Last but not least, フブキ (Fubuki) had her best month of the year so far, bringing in 1.1M Hours Watched, a 100% increase in Hours Watched compared to her averages. Taking an overall look at the top ten lineup, YouTube continues to reign supreme with seven of the top ten choosing to livestream on this platform. Of these seven YouTubers, all of them were Japanese and every one of the Japanese except Kuzuha is affiliated with hololive.
Most popular VTubers on YouTube and Twitch, per Peak Viewers for June 2023.
Moving over to Peak Viewers, the Japenese take over the rankings completely. Japan is the largest market for VTubing, so this should be unsurprising that Japanese streamers find the most success in terms of Peak Viewers. Top of the list is Iroha, she achieved 100K Peak Viewers during her birthday event stream.
In second place is 郡道美玲の教室 (Gundo) who reached 95K Peak Viewers during her graduation announcement stream. For those unaware, graduating is when a VTuber moves on from an agency and in Gundo’s case it seems she also retired. All of her content and social media is now private and the VTuber has earned a rest, making her debut over four years ago.
Both Hinano Tachibana in fourth and Ren kisaragi in tenth saw huge spikes in viewership, Hinano reaching a 647% increase compared to her average month and Ren receiving 1200% more viewers compared to her second-highest Peak Viewers figure. Both of these VTubers enjoyed a spike in viewership as they were unveiling new 3D models. The YouTube VTuber sphere is always changing with new events, new models, and new VTubers constantly debuting. But what’s happening outside of Youtube?
Most watched Twitch VTubers for June
Moving to a graph exclusively dealing with Twitch-based VTubers, we can see Ironmouse, anny, and AdmiralBahroo claiming the top three spots. Henyathegenius took fourth place by breaking 1M Hours Watched for the first time. Henya, an affiliate of VShojo, is a Japanese VTuber who streams in English. Just before her debut, she advertised her first month of streaming with the help of her agency, which set her up for success with a strong first month. She’s received more than a warm welcome to Twitch, already ranking fourth on the platform she could continue to become one of the biggest VTubers in the industry.
Once we move past Henya, we move into the Korean side of Twitch. Korean VTubers made up the entirety of the remaining spots, with 비챤_ taking the lead spot among them. Critically, these Korean VTubers have many fewer followers than their peers. Many Korean VTubers on this list are hovering somewhere between 150-300K Followers on Twitch. Nevertheless, they performed better in terms of Hours Watched than VTubers with many more Followers, possibly meaning the Korean market for VTubing is small but passionate and loyal.
Most popular VTubers on Twitch for June 2023, according to Peak Viewers.
This passionate Korean demographic for VTubers becomes even more obvious turning to Peak Viewers. Ironmouse took the top spot with her subathon, but she only came out 1K ahead of second place 릴파_. The Koreans made up the entirety of the list and even hugely popular debuts like Henya couldn’t come close. For reference, Henya received a Peak Viewers figure of 9K during her second month on the platform.
Finally, let's analyse how the agencies behind these VTubers are performing.
Top VTuber agencies for June
Top VTuber agencies for June 2023, based on Hours Watched of all affiliates.
Independent VTubers continue to be the large majority when it comes to the platform, but they do not preform as well as their peers who are affiliated with agencies. Almost 1500 independent VTubers streamed in the month of June, but they only achieved 3M more Hours Watched than the 41 VTubers with hololive.
Hololive continues to be the biggest agency in terms of Viewership but NIJISANJI has the most VTubers signed to them, amassing 17.8M Hours Watched throughout the month. VShojo saw a significant boost in watch-time but ironmouse and her subathon accounted for over 80% of VShojo’s Hours Watched.
June was truly the month of ironmouse, her subathon was wildly successful and allowed her to easily top all of our statistics for the month. Despite this, Japanese VTubers continue to make up a huge part of the industry and Korean VTubers are building themselves a dedicated audience to stream to on Twitch. Whether you come to Streams charts for our monthly updates or you're a PRO subscriber and can find this data all yourself, stay up to date with all the updates in the VTuber industry with Streams Charts.
