As part of our 2023 Streaming Results series, Streams Charts takes a look at the VTuber section of live streaming: one of the fastest-growing communities in the industry at the moment. VTubers are regularly some of the most-watched channels of the entire year, and there is a constant regular supply of fresh faces to the genre.
Overall, the VTuber industry is growing in live streaming. During 2022, VTubers across all relevant platforms received 979M Hours Watched. In 2023, the community experienced significant growth in viewership, culminating in a total watch time of over 1.1 billion hours of watch time, a 14.2% increase compared to last year. The VTubing community managed this despite recording 9% fewer channels live through 2023 compared to the previous year, highlighting the growing popularity of channels in the sphere.
- Top Asian VTubers
- Top VTubers outside of Asia
We will not only rank the most popular VTuber channels of the year, but take a wider look at the subsection as a whole. Which agencies are the most successful, what does a typical VTuber look like, and more will all be covered in this piece.
Top VTubers of 2023
For this ranking, we looked at the top-ranking VTubers in live streaming by their average concurrent viewers figure for the year. To be fair and ensure metrics are not warped, we only analysed channels with over 1K Hours Watched in the entire year.
The overall most popular VTubers in live streaming for 2023 all came from YouTube, and are all Japanese-speaking creators. Japan is the home of VTubing and remains the most popular region of this community of live streamers.
Marine Ch. 宝鐘マリン, a Japanese creator signed to hololive, was the most popular VTuber of the year. She received 31.9K concurrent viewers on average throughout her entire year of streaming, and she recorded a new personal best peak viewership in November: 175K Peak Viewers. She received this personal best peak viewership thanks to a fourth-anniversary stream.
Pekora Ch. 兎田ぺこら and Aqua Ch. 湊あくあ are the other two sat on the podium. Pekora reached 30.2K Average Viewers and 26.8K AV for Aqua. Both of these streamers also belong to hololive, the same agency as Marine. The majority of the top-ranked VTubers for 2023 are affiliated with hololive. The most popular streams for these two during the year were collaborative events held by their agency, anniversary streams, and 24-hour special marathon streams. These types of content are usually the most popular streams for VTubers, and this is true for most of these featured streamers.
剣持刀也 of NIJISANJI was the most popular male VTuber for 2023. The Japanese creator came into the limelight in 2022, and he continued to compound this success throughout 2023. The only other VTuber affiliated with NIJISANJI on this ranking is also the only other male VTuber here: Kuzuha Channel. Kuzuha is one of the most-watched VTubers in the industry, but also one of the hardest-working. Kuzuha recorded the most Airtime out of anyone on ranking, and was the only VTuber here to record more than 1K hours Airtime.
Miko Ch. さくらみこ, Suisei Channel, and Subaru Ch. 大空スバル are all hololive-affiliated creators, but ぽんぽこちゃんねる was the only independent streamer to rank so highly by popularity. The channel mainly focuses on YouTube videos and recorded the lowest Airtime of anyone in the ranking, but they received high viewership for the times they did stream. It also features two VTubers, who play off of each other and have built a community around both of them, proving independent creators can compete in the VTubing industry.
Finally, Gawr Gura Ch. hololive-EN was the only English-speaking creator among these top VTubers. Gawr Gura is one of the original hololive-EN affiliated streamers, having debuted back in 2020. Since then, she has built up a sizeable following of 4.41M Subscribers on YouTube and regularly reaches high viewership numbers.
Compiling the most popular overall VTubers of 2023 reveals many familiar faces and known members of the community. For a more comprehensive view of the VTubing scene, take a look at the most popular debutant VTubers of the year by average concurrent viewers.
Raden Ch. 儒烏風亭らでん ‐ ReGLOSS was the most popular new streamer of 2023, a member of hololive’s new DEV_IS branch. The wave of VTuber is focused on musical talent and creating content for the new hololive DEV_IS channel. The ReGLOSS channels are the first generation of DEV_IS VTubers for hololive; Raden is accompanied by Ririka Ch. 一条莉々華 ‐ ReGLOSS in this wave.
FUWAMOCO Ch. hololive-EN was the second-most popular debutant of 2023, receiving 8K Average Viewers. Hololive’s English division is thriving and growing, with many new entrants to the industry in 2023 many of these were some of the fastest-growing creators in VTubing. Of the top-ranked 10 debutants, 4 of them are part of hololive’s English division: including Koseki Bijou Ch. hololive-EN, Shiori Novella Ch. hololive-EN, and Nerissa Ravencroft Ch. hololive-EN.
One more English-speaking creator featured in this ranking, henyathegenius of Twitch. Henya is affiliated with the VShojo agency, one of the more select agencies with much fewer affiliated creators than other agencies in the industry. VShojo is the same agency that wildly popular VTuber ironmouse is signed to.
English-language VTubers were not the only growing section of the community, Korean-speaking VTubers have made a proper leap forward in popularity for 2023. Many of the top debutant streamers of the year came from the Korean side of the VTubing industry.
Read also: Top Live Streaming Debutants of 2023
아야츠노 유니 AYATSUNO YUNI was the most popular of these Korean creators, with 6.08K Average Viewers for the year. Generally, Twitch has a smaller audience for VTubers than YouTube, but the Korean Twitch streamers have been able to compete with some of the fastest-growing Japanese creators for the year.
All three Korean streamers, including 아이리 칸나 AIRI KANNA and 아라하시_타비, are signed to the same agency, StelLive. StelLive was set up in early 2023, and the Korean VTuber agency has experienced quick success. With the Korean VTuber industry coming to life so quickly, what other regions could be waiting to embrace the VTuber cultural wave?
VTuber Distribution Statistics of 2023
With the most popular individual channels of 2023 out of the way, we can get a broader overlook of the entire year of streaming for the VTuber community. Firstly, the breakdown of watch time by agency. As previously covered, the VTuber industry received a total of 1.118B Hours Watched throughout the year, but different agencies committed different amounts to this total figure.
Despite only one singular independent VTuber appearing in both of our top 10 rankings for this article, independent VTubers without an agency affiliation contributed the largest chunk to the total watch time: 29.4%. Although independent VTubers are usually not the most popular, they make up a large majority of the community; 73.9% of all total VTubing channels are independently operated.
Hololive was the most-watched agency of the year, generating a total of 298M Hours Watched, for a total of 25.8% of the industry’s watch time. Hololive creators are generally popular, and the recent expansion from the agency into English-speaking signings and the new wave of ReGLOSS creators has boosted the agency to the top.
Close behind was NIJISANJI, with a total of 269.4M Hours Watched accumulated. The organisation was the closest any other organisation came to hololive, but it was ultimately unable to beat its rival here. The remaining agencies contributed a much smaller chunk of the total watch time for the year, none of them able to contribute >5% to the total.
ISEGYE IDOL is a six-piece VTuber and girl group which makes KPop music. The group was originally not an agency, but they eventually signed under Parable Entertainment, a streamer management company, making it official.
Neo-Porte is a Japanese agency founded by the CEO of Crazy Raccoon Esports Team and some streamers: soraru, mafumafu, and most well-known Shibuya HAL. Both Neo-Porte and 774 Inc. are Japanese agencies, and although they recorded less watch time than many of the other agencies here, they have more signed creators to their agency than VShojo, Virtual eSports Project, and ISEGYE IDOL.
The single largest agency on this ranking was NIJISANJI, with almost triple the total signed creators of hololive, and almost ten times that of Neo-Porte. Hololive was the second-largest agency on this list, with the smallest being the six-piece group of ISEGYE IDOL.
Instead of analysing the industry by the agencies themselves, we can directly compare the viewership of all VTubers in the large Streams Charts database. Unsurprisingly, the vast majority of creators garner somewhere between 1 and 500 Average Viewers, 83.7% of total VTubers for 2023.
The remaining brackets decrease in members as the AV figure rises, excluding the increase to 2.5% for the 2500 - 5000 AV bracket, after which the bracket size continued to decrease. Only 0.2% of streamers fell under the 20000+ bracket, all of whom are visible in our above most popular ranking of the year. The top per cent of VTubers in the industry received above 10000 Average Viewers for 2023.
Lastly, a look at the profile of the average VTuber for 2023. Although the most popular VTubers of the year came largely from YouTube, Twitch hosted the largest amount of VTubers on their platform in 2023. YouTube and Twitch were almost equal in the number of streamers hosted, something you would not expect considering the most popular streamers of the year. 1% of VTubers tried out Kick, with a negligible amount coming from AfreecaTV, NimoTV, and Trovo.
Of all the VTubers in our large database, the overwhelming majority of VTubers who went live in 2023 were female: 77% of streamers in VTubing this year were women. Male VTubers make up only 21% of the total, with 2% self-identifying as LGBTQIA+. According to the Streams Charts database, the majority of streamers for 2023 overall were male, but this majority is reversed in the VTubing community.
Looking at the top 5 countries per distribution of total VTubers for the year, Japan is still the dominant force behind the industry, with 38.5% of the total 2023 VTubers coming from the Land of the Rising Sun. The USA contributed 8.4% to the total, followed by Thailand with 3.2%, South Korea with 2.4%, and Taiwan with 1.5%.
Despite only contributing 2.4% of the total amount of VTubers in the year, South Korea hosted some of the fastest-growing new VTubers of the year. The VTubing industry is growing and setting down roots in South Korea, so keep an eye on this country’s contribution to the total scene: this figure will likely continue to rise in the upcoming years.
VTubing News for 2023
The VTuber community has hosted some highly-watched esports events of the year. Various collaborative tournaments have taken place throughout the year, most notably the VTuber Most Cooperatitive Tournament series, which hosted their yearly Apex Legends event, as well as a brand-new Valorant event.
The Valorant event, VTuber Most Cooperatitive Tournament Act1, received over 365K Peak Viewers. The event was one of the top 10 most popular Valorant events of 2023 and received more viewers at peak than the VCT 2023 Game Changers final, and the entire VCT EMEA League.
The Apex Legends event was even more popular, receiving 527K Peak Viewers, once again falling into the top 10 most popular tournaments of the year for its discipline. The Apex Legends event was boosted by Shibuya HAL, who is best well-known for his Apex Legends gameplay.
Both of these tournaments covered the largest esports disciplines in Japan. The VTubing industry is extremely well-refined and knows how to generate the largest viewership; the brand new Valorant event for this year highlights the growing popularity of the discipline in Japan.
VTubing is growing and expanding to places never imagined before, and in 2023 Opera GX, an internet browser, announced its own VTuber. Opera GX has gained notoriety in Internet culture for their social media presence. The company’s social media accounts employ and unfiltered and raw vibe, which connects with many users.
GX Aura, the first-ever official VTuber of a web browser
The gaming-focused web browser released an anime mascot for their Discord community known as GX Aura. GX Aura quickly gained popularity with fans, which caused the company to expand her role within the company. GX Aura is now the first official web browser VTuber, and is quickly approaching 100K Subscribers on YouTube.
VTubing is one of the largest subsections of live streaming culture. Although Japan, the home of VTubing, remains one of the largest and strongest regions in terms of viewership, other audiences are opening up in the sphere. English-speaking VTubers are growing in popularity, something recognised by the talent agencies who are starting to release more waves of English-speaking creators, and Korea is entering the industry at a rapid rate.
VTubers already rank as some of the most-watched creators of the year across various platforms, but if these trends continue, VTubers will entirely dominate the viewership of live streaming platforms, especially YouTube Live. Streams Charts PRO users can analyse the top channels of each platform for themselves with our Channels page, and make sure to keep an eye out for the remaining 2023 Streaming Results articles to come.
