If you stream to more than one platform, your chat lives in several places at once. I made CrossChat, a free, open-source companion for OBS Studio, and I compared it with six tools streamers already use to merge chat: Social Stream Ninja, Streamer.bot, Casterlabs, Restream, Streamlabs and StreamElements.
Every cell for the other tools comes from that product's own documentation, pricing page, licence or source code, checked 31 October to 1 November 2026. Where their pages didn't answer the question, the cell says not confirmed: the feature may still exist. The full table links every cell to its source.
The short version
| CrossChat | Social Stream Ninja | Streamer.bot | Casterlabs | Restream | Streamlabs | StreamElements | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reads chat from (of these 8: Twitch, YouTube, Kick, X, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, Rumble) | All 8 | All 8, plus 100+ other sites | 3 | 4 | 6 (no TikTok or Instagram) | 6 (no Rumble) | 4 |
| Replies on | All 8 | Where the source supports it and you're signed in | Twitch, YouTube, Kick | Not confirmed | 6, only while you stream through Restream | YouTube, Twitch, Facebook Pages, TikTok in Desktop; Kick and X read-only | Not confirmed |
| Moderates on the platform | Twitch, Kick, YouTube, Rumble, Facebook | Twitch and Kick deletes; timeouts and bans if you turn on sync | Twitch, YouTube, Kick, but its moderation actions are removed when its chat is docked in OBS | Not confirmed | None documented; blocklists work inside Restream only | Not confirmed | Not confirmed |
| TikTok LIVE | Your own LIVE page, in your browser, no outside service | Default desktop mode signs through Euler Stream, an outside service | Third-party TikFinity | Read-only, through Casterlabs' servers | Not supported | In Streamlabs Desktop | A separate dock |
| Account needed | No | No | No (Kick goes through its website) | Not confirmed | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Price | Free (MIT) | Free (GPL-3.0) | Free; supporter tiers from $3/month | Free | Free plan: 2 channels with Restream branding; Standard $19/month | Free: 1 horizontal + 1 vertical stream; unlimited with Ultra from $15.75/month | Free (SE.Live) |
| Runs on | Windows, macOS, Linux | Windows, macOS, Linux, browser extension | Windows | Windows 11 | Windows, Mac, Linux, web | Windows, macOS, web | Windows (SE.Live) |
What CrossChat does that the others don't, all in one place
All eight platforms, read and reply. Twitch, YouTube, Kick, X, TikTok LIVE, Facebook Live, Instagram Live and Rumble land in one window, each line tagged with where it came from. Type once and the reply goes to every live chat, as you. Use only: to post to one platform, or answer one person on their own platform (a threaded reply on Twitch).
Moderation on the platform itself, not just hidden in an overlay. Delete, time out, ban and unban on Twitch and Kick; remove, 5-minute timeout and hide user on YouTube; delete and mute on Rumble; delete comments on Facebook. On 31 October 2026 this was tested live with a second account in the chat: it worked on Twitch, YouTube, Kick and Facebook, and from the CrossChat dock inside OBS too (Twitch timeout and unban, YouTube remove, Kick timeout).
TikTok LIVE without an outside service. CrossChat reads your own LIVE page in your browser and replies there. TikTok gifts, follows and shares are marked in the chat.
No account and no server. Your chat stays on your PC. CrossChat connects to the platforms you set up, emote services and decapi.me (for Twitch viewer counts); if you switch them on, also your Discord webhook and a once-a-day GitHub update check. Twitch and Kick go through their official APIs.
Windows, Mac and Linux. The Windows installer is code-signed. The Mac version runs on Intel and Apple silicon, and the Linux version works with OBS from the OBS Project's PPA or from Flathub. Real OBS runs end to end on all three systems on every change.
The rest of the kit:
- Four OBS Browser Source widgets: chat feed, featured message, viewer counter and alerts, styled in a Theme Studio with eight built-in looks and full CSS control.
- A phone or second-PC companion, paired with a QR code, on your home network or away from home through Tailscale.
- Viewer cards, filters, 7TV/BetterTTV/FrankerFaceZ emotes, read-aloud, and 90 days of chat history on your PC.
- It starts and ends your X livestream together with OBS (X Premium needed), and can post to a Discord channel through a webhook.
Limits
- Rumble moderation has only been tested on the streamer's own message so far, not on another viewer.
- TikTok, X and Instagram are read from their own pages, so a page redesign can break them until CrossChat is updated.
- The Linux version was tested with Google Chrome on Ubuntu.
How this was checked
Prices and features change, so the source links in the full table show today's details. Product names are trademarks of their owners, and CrossChat isn't affiliated with any of them. If you spot a mistake, open an issue with a link to the product's own page and it will be corrected.
Get it
Free, MIT licensed, with a demo mode so you can try it without going live.
👉 https://github.com/RandyNorthrup/crosschat-obs
Going live on TikTok? Testers are wanted: issue #2.
If it saves you a few browser tabs on stream, a ⭐ on the repo helps other streamers find it.
CrossChat is built with help from Claude Code.
