This is how much money CSGO’s top Twitch streamers make

By Steven Rondina

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Oct 15, 2021

Reading time: 5 min

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive boasts some of the richest streamers on all of Twitch, and it’s served as a jumping off point for a few of the platform’s biggest overall earners.

Twitch recently suffered a massive data leak during which everything about the site was made public, from hidden moderation rules to the platform’s supposed source code itself. Included in that leak were exact figures related to the income of thousands of Twitch streamers.

A fair number of CSGO personalities were included on that list. These are the richest CSGO streamers and how much money the top CSGO Twitch streamers make:

Alexandre “gAuLeS” Borba$2,863,780.63
JohnPitterTV$1,215,717.01
Anomaly$908,794.96
Erik “fl0m” Flom$727,817.81
TrilluXe$533,493.81
Jacob “Pimp” Winneche$330,978.72
Ricardo “boltz” Prass$215,659.82
Jean “mch” Michel D’Oliveira$204,424.49
Fillipe “bt0” Moreno$147,729.10
Leonardo “Laski” Arroyo$87,433.38
Doutora$73,356.05
Gabriel “FalleN” Toledo$69,382.55
Malek “maleK” Bennouioua$68,396.27
Natacha “nahzinhaa” Hessel$68,351.21
André “tiburci0” Rossetto$67,823.44
Oleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev$64,082.68
aimbotcalvin$52,061.29
WarOwl$51,452.88
buster$44,646.07

The numbers included in the Twitch leak cover a two-year span between September 2019 and September 2021. Though reports on what these numbers include are varied, most agree that these numbers cover streamers’ revenue from ads, subscriptions, and bits.

These numbers are intriguing but it’s important to note that there have been questions regarding their accuracy. Certain streamers have oddly high reported incomes despite relatively low viewer counts. Streamers have also been mixed regarding the Twitch leak, with claims that the numbers are anywhere from too high, to too low, to just right.

Twitch has confirmed that there was a significant data breach, but has not confirmed the accuracy of the released numbers or even if Twitch payouts were a part of the leak to begin with. Either way, there’s a lot of interesting information to cover.

gAuLeS is CSGO’s richest streamer

After reportedly earning $2,844,985.18 in a two-year span, Alexandre “gAuLeS” Borba is the biggest CSGO streamer in the world and one of Twitch’s top earners overall.

gAuLeS is a former Counter-Strike 1.6 pro who played during the game’s formative years as an esport. He was a member of g3nerationX, which was one of the best teams in Brazil during its prime. He ended his career as a player on the original mibr, transitioning into a coaching role before stepping away from competition entirely.

Today, he runs the biggest non-English language channel on Twitch.

gAuLeS remains closely tied to the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive scene, which includes playing the game and casting some events. Unfortunately he doesn’t always use his platform in a positive way, which was seen in 2020 when he baselessly accused Chaos Esports Club’s Simo “Leaf” Mykkänen of cheating during a win over MIBR. He later apologized for the accusation, but this came after weeks of Leaf enduring death threats from Brazilian CSGO fans.

summit1g technically highest-earning CSGO streamer on Twitch

According to the Twitch leak, Jaryd “summit1g” Lazar earned $5,847,541.17 within two years on the platform.

Technically speaking, the term “CSGO streamer” is a flexible one and there’s a case to be made that summit1g is actually the top earner representing the game. He made more than double the money gAuLeS did during the same timeframe and stands as the third highest-paid streamer on Twitch behind only Overwatch pro turned variety streamer Felix “xQc” Lengyel and Dungeons and Dragons channel Critical Role.

summit1g is primarily known as a variety streamer these days, but longtime fans know that he’s actually a former CSGO pro. He spent more than a bit of time doing the regional grind in North America, with his most notable run coming in 2017 alongside Mythic. That iteration of Mythic had quite the following on Twitch, as it also featured Erik “fl0m” Flom, who is the 139th highest-earning Twitch streamer.

summit1g is far from the only popular Twitch streamer to first gain notoriety in CSGO. Former CSGO pro Michael “shroud” Grzesiek’s income was also leaked, and he has some eye-popping numbers that likely would have rivaled summit1g’s if not for his foray with Mixer.

Anomaly has lots of money for buying CSGO keys

Anomaly has reportedly made $908,794.96 on Twitch over the last two years.

Though there’s no shortage of dedicated CSGO streamers, Anomaly is perhaps the most “pure” CSGO personality on Twitch. That’s because in addition to playing the game, he spends a great deal of his broadcast time cracking open CSGO cases and delivering over-the-top celebrations for his great unboxings while forgetting about all the consumer-grade NEGEVs, MP7s, and Galils he’s opened.

There’s no word on how much he actually spends to produce his streams, because most of his popular content revolves around opening hundreds or even thousands of cases in one sitting. Either way, he likely needs a healthy stream of income just to sustain his style of content.

Why doesn’t s1mple make much money from Twitch?

During this two-year span, Oleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev made $64,082.68 from Twitch.

One of the biggest things that the Twitch leak highlighted was how radically different the income is for streamers from different regions. North American and European streamers largely dominate the upper echelons of Twitch earnings, with a handful of South American personalities mixed in. Meanwhile, there’s a very limited number of Russian, Korean, and Japanese personalities near the top, and almost none from Southeast Asia.

Though appears s1mple on the list of top-earning Twitch streamers, he comes in ranked at only 3,415.

Generally speaking, esports personalities don’t place well when it comes to top-earning streamers due to how inconsistently they stream. s1mple does regularly stream and consistently pulls strong viewership as one of the biggest Russian-language channels on Twitch. But that’s not enough for him to place high on the list of top earners on Twitch.

s1mple isn’t alone in this regard. Russian streamer Buster, not to be confused with pro CSGO player Tımýr “buster” Tólepov of Virtus.pro, has a similarly large following but only made $44,646.07. It isn’t just a CSGO phenomenon either, as iconic Dota 2 pro Danil “Dendi” Ishutin doesn’t even rank inside the top 10,000 highest earners despite getting strong viewership numbers.