Twitch Commands: The Complete Guide

There are two completely different things people mean by “Twitch commands”, and mixing them up is why most command lists are confusing. The first kind are slash commands — /timeout, /raid, /announce — built into Twitch itself. They work in any channel with no bot, no setup and no account beyond the one you already have, and they're restricted by role: some are broadcaster-only, some are for moderators, a couple are for everyone.

The second kind are custom commands — !lurk, !discord, !followage — which Twitch knows nothing about. They only exist because a bot account is sitting in your chat reading every message, spotting the trigger and posting a reply. Twitch doesn't provide those; you add them through a bot, and you decide what each one says.

This page covers both. Start with the native list if you're moderating, and the custom list if you're building a channel viewers can navigate without asking you the same three questions every stream.

Notes on the Native List

A few of these deserve context. /shoutout is the newest addition and the one most streamers still don't use: it produces an official, clickable shoutout card in chat with the target channel's most recent category, and unlike a bot command it can only be fired once every two minutes and only for a channel that isn't your own. That rate limit is exactly why most channels run a bot !so command alongside it — the bot version has no such restriction and lets you write the wording yourself.

/host is gone. Twitch removed hosting entirely in late 2022, so any command list still showing it was written before then — a useful staleness test when you're evaluating a guide. Raids replaced it, and /raid remains broadcaster-only for obvious reasons.

/marker is the most underused command on the platform. It drops a timestamp into your VOD at the exact moment you type it, and those markers show up in the Twitch video editor afterwards, which turns a five-hour VOD into a navigable list of moments worth clipping. Bind it to a hotkey or hand it to a trusted mod and your editing time drops sharply.

Finally, note that /uniquechat is the current name for what old guides call /r9kbeta. It blocks messages that repeat something already said recently — brutal against copypasta raids, and slightly annoying for a chat where everyone genuinely wants to type the same emote at once.

The Twitch Bot Ecosystem

Twitch has the deepest bot ecosystem of any live platform, which is both an advantage and a source of decision paralysis. The long-standing free options are Nightbot and the StreamElements bot, joined by Moobot, Fossabot and a long tail of self-hosted projects. They all do roughly the same core job — read chat, match a trigger, post a response — and differ in variables, moderation depth and which other platforms they reach.

Whichever you pick, the mechanics of adding it are the same. The bot signs into Twitch as its own account, joins your channel, and needs to be given moderator status in your chat. That last step is not optional in practice: an unmodded bot is subject to the same rate limits and link-blocking as any random viewer, which is why the single most common bug report — “my bot's Discord link keeps getting deleted” — is almost always a missing mod badge on the bot account.

A second Twitch-specific quirk is the global rate limit. An unmodded account can send roughly 20 messages per 30 seconds; a modded one gets a much higher allowance. If you're running a big command set plus timers plus alerts through a single bot on a busy channel, modding it is what keeps responses from silently disappearing.

Where the options genuinely diverge is reach beyond Twitch. Nightbot also covers YouTube; the StreamElements bot is Twitch-focused; neither supports Kick. If Twitch is your only platform that doesn't matter. If you're already multistreaming to several platforms, running one bot per platform means maintaining the same command list in two or three dashboards and watching them drift apart.

Chat Modes That Change How Commands Behave

Twitch lets you gate chat in several ways, and each one quietly changes what your commands do. Followers-only mode (/followers 10m) means a brand-new viewer physically cannot type !lurk or !socials until they've followed and waited out the delay. That's often the correct trade during a raid-bombing wave, but it also means your welcome commands are invisible to exactly the people who needed them.

Subscriber-only mode is stricter still, and if you rely on commands to answer FAQs — where to find your Discord, what your PC specs are — you've just locked those answers behind a paywall. A common compromise is to leave chat open but restrict specific commands: most bots let you set a per-command user level, so !quote add can be mods-only while !discord stays open to everyone.

Slow mode interacts badly with fun commands. If chat is set to one message every 30 seconds, a viewer who spends their turn on !8ball can't say anything else for half a minute, and engagement commands stop being fun. Turn slow mode off before you encourage chat to play with commands, or accept that they'll go mostly unused while it's on.

One more Twitch-specific detail: commands respond in the same chat window everyone else is in, so on a busy channel a burst of command replies can push real conversation off screen within seconds. Keep responses to a single line and set cooldowns of 30 seconds or more on anything a viewer might type repeatedly for laughs.

Adding Custom Commands to Your Twitch Chat

Every command guide linked above includes step-by-step setup for StreamUps, Nightbot and StreamElements, so you can follow along with whatever you already run. If you're starting fresh, StreamUps custom chat commands take about a minute: connect your Twitch account, add a trigger and a response, and the bot answers from the next message onwards — nothing to install and nothing to host.

The reason to look past a Twitch-only bot is what happens when you add a second platform. A StreamUps command list runs on Twitch, YouTube Live and Kick from a single dashboard, so the same !discord answer reaches everyone watching regardless of where they found you. On top of that sits the StreamUps AI chat bot for Twitch, which handles the conversational questions no static command can — the ones that make up most of what chat actually asks.