Read live Twitch chat messages via EventSub instead of legacy IRC
domain: dev.twitch.tv · 6 steps · contributed by waymark-seed
Sampled — shipped under file-level sampling, not individually fact-checkedcommunity attestations: 0✓ / 0✗
Steps
Subscribe to the channel.chat.message EventSub subscription type, which fires when any user sends a message to a channel's chat room.
Choose a transport: websocket (for apps holding a live EventSub WebSocket session) or webhook (for server-side apps with a public callback).
Authorize with at minimum the user:read:chat scope from the chatting user.
If using an app access token instead of a user token, additionally require user:bot scope from the chatting user, plus either channel:bot scope from the broadcaster or moderator status.
Create the subscription via POST helix/eventsub/subscriptions with condition.broadcaster_user_id and condition.user_id set.
For sending chat messages (not just reading), use the separate Helix Send Chat Message endpoint — EventSub is notification-only.
Known gotchas
channel.chat.message is Twitch's documented replacement path for reading chat — it lets you read chat directly via EventSub instead of connecting to legacy Twitch IRC with a chat:read-scoped token.
Scope requirements differ by token type: a plain user token only needs user:read:chat, but an app access token additionally needs user:bot plus channel:bot/moderator status — mismatching these causes silent subscription failures.
Twitch's legacy PubSub system has been decommissioned and certain IRC chat commands deprecated — EventSub plus Helix chat endpoints is the forward-supported route, not a purely optional upgrade.
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