KICK Pinned Messages vs Paid TTS: Which Lane Should a Viewer Use?

Two ways to pay for attention, one chat box

A Kick viewer who wanted to be noticed used to have a short menu: say something funny in chat and hope, or pay through whatever tipping and alert setup the streamer ran. Now there is a native option under the chat input. Kick's KICKs guide says a viewer picks the KICKs icon, chooses an amount with a slider, types a message, and confirms.

If you also sell paid TTS or viewer uploads, you now have two products that both feel like paying to get seen. Viewers will not read docs, so the split has to live in your panels and command replies. Below: what each lane is good for, where Kick's documentation stops, and which parts are my judgment.

What a pin gives a viewer that TTS and uploads do not

A pin lives in chat, on the platform, with no setup on your side. Kick's help page says the amount sent determines how long a message can stay pinned, and that pinned messages are ordered in a carousel by a mix of how many KICKs were sent and how recently the message was pinned. Higher-value and more recent messages sit closer to the front.

So the viewer is buying visibility with a clock on it. Everyone in chat, including late joiners and people watching with the sound off, can see the pinned line. A TTS read is over in seconds. A pin hangs around.

It is also the lane with no queue. The viewer confirms, and it happens. That suits a birthday wish or a question parked in front of the streamer, and it is exactly what makes pins risky for you.

• Silent visibility: works when the streamer is mid-boss-fight and audio would be a mess.
• Late joiners can still see it while it is pinned.
• No queue, no approval step, no browser source required.

What TTS and uploads give a viewer that a pin does not

A pin does not make the stream do anything. It sits in chat. Nothing in the help page says it is read aloud, shown on the video, or triggers a sound. If a viewer wants the streamer to react out loud, a pin only helps if the streamer happens to look at chat.

Paid TTS turns the message into a moment on the broadcast: audio, probably an on-screen card, and a reaction beat for the streamer. Uploads add an image or media element that the whole audience, including clip watchers, can see. Those lanes also carry something a pin lacks, which is a review step before anything reaches the stream. Streamable Bots, for one, puts paid viewer uploads behind auto moderation plus a manual approval step, and a gate like that is the main reason I would send anything risky to those lanes rather than to a pin.

That is the plain split. A pin buys presence in the chat window. TTS and uploads buy a place in the show. If a viewer cannot tell which one they want, ask them whether they want people to read it or hear it.

Final means final, including after a delete

Two rules from the KICKs guide deserve to be repeated to viewers in plain words. First, all KICKs transactions are final and non-refundable. Second, pinned messages can be deleted by moderators and the channel owner, and a deletion does not trigger a refund. A third-party write-up from win.gg, covering the pinned message rollout, says the same about deletion.

Put those together and you get a sharp edge: a viewer can spend KICKs on a message your mods then remove, and the money is still spent. Even if everyone behaved perfectly, a typo gets locked in.

That differs from a lane where a moderator rejects a submission before it airs. In a review queue, whether you refund, credit, or just decline is a choice you control and publish. With a pin, the platform already made that choice. If your mods delete pins, say so up front.

• Tell viewers before they pay: confirm the spelling, because pins are final.
• Never promise a pin refund in your own rules. The help page says the opposite.
• If a mod deletes a pin for breaking a rule, the viewer should hear the reason from the mod, not guess.

Mirroring a pin on stream with kicks.gifted

Kick's developer docs list a webhook event type, kicks.gifted (version 1), described as fired when a user gifts kicks to a channel. The documented fields are broadcaster and sender (user objects with user ID, username, verified flag, profile picture, and channel slug), then a gift object with amount, name, type, tier, message, and pinned_time_seconds, plus a created_at timestamp.

That is enough to build an overlay card that shows who sent how many KICKs and what they wrote. One caution: the docs sample gift also carries a name, type and tier, and the page never says every kicks.gifted event is a pin, so test what a plain KICKs gift looks like (empty message, zero or missing pinned_time_seconds) before treating each event as a pinned message. Done carefully, it is a natural way to give pinners a moment on stream without opening your TTS queue. StreamElements added KICKs support in September 2026 and describes KICKs gifts as their own event type with a filter and a minimum amount, which shows that other tools are treating this as a separate stream of events from subscriptions or tips.

Here is where I would stay careful. The docs example shows one payload, and I do not read one example as a price list or a duration rule. The page does not say how pinned_time_seconds maps to amounts, and I did not find a published table, so do not tell viewers that X KICKs buys Y seconds. Also, the event list has nothing for a pin being deleted. That means a card your overlay already showed is not automatically taken back by anything in that list. I would treat that as a gap to plan around, not a fact about every case.

The moderation question hiding behind the mirror

The moment you put a pinned message on the broadcast, you have changed what a pin is. In chat it is a line that mods can delete. On stream it is a card or a voice, and the review step Kick gave you in the chat window does not follow it there.

Pick one of three policies and write it down. Show nothing: pins stay a chat-only feature and the overlay mirrors only the amount and username. Show after a delay: the overlay holds the message text for a short window so a mod can delete the pin first, then displays it. Show instantly but filtered: you trust a word filter and accept some risk. My own pick for most channels is the delay, because it uses the one power mods already have.

Whichever you choose, keep synthetic voices out of it. Reading a pin aloud hands a TTS voice a message that skipped your approval queue. If a pinner wants it spoken, they can use the TTS lane.

• Chat-only: safest, least interesting.
• Delayed mirror: a few seconds for mods to delete the pin before it shows.
• Instant mirror with a filter: fastest, most exposed.

Stacking, queue jumping, and what counts as fair

Kick's description of the carousel gives you two ingredients: how many KICKs and how recently. It does not publish a formula, so I cannot tell you exactly how a late, small pin compares with an earlier big one. What the help page does say is that higher-value and more recent messages move closer to the front.

For your community, the fairness question is more about expectation than math. A viewer who drops a small pin right after a much larger one should not be surprised to sit behind it. A viewer who keeps re-pinning to stay at the front is buying attention, which is allowed, but it can crowd out others. Some streamers will like an auction feel. Others will want a rule such as one active pin per person.

Be honest that you cannot see inside the ordering. If you want strict first-come-first-served for spoken messages, that belongs to your TTS queue, where you set the order yourself.

Lane-selection copy for panels and commands

Keep the wording short and put the difference in one sentence. Here are four lines for different places. They are examples to adapt, with your own prices and rules filled in.

• Panel header: A KICKs pin keeps your words in chat. Paid TTS gets them said on stream after a mod check. Pick the one that matches what you want.
• Command reply for !tts: Want it heard on stream? Use this. Want it to sit in chat for everyone to read? Use the KICKs pin button instead.
• Warning above the pin button: Pins are final. Check your spelling, because a deleted pin is not refunded.
• Upload command reply: Got an image or clip? Send it through Upload Corner so a mod sees it first. Pins are for chat text.

A mod policy for pins, and a test plan

Give mods a short written rule for pins. Delete anything that would be rejected in the paid queue anyway, such as slurs, private info, impersonation, and sponsor conflicts, then tell the viewer why. For borderline lines while the streamer is mid-game, make the default delete. The viewer's spend is already gone, so no one should delete casually, but safety wins.

Check the eligibility side too. The guide's eligibility answer is about receiving KICKs: Streamer status in Achievements and completed Stripe Connect setup. If your pin button is missing on a test channel, look there first rather than blaming your overlay.

Then run a rehearsal before telling anyone about the lane split. Use your own account. The guide's slider starts at 1 KICK, but win.gg's coverage says pinning costs between 500 and 50,000, so check what the slider actually lets you pin with. Everything you spend is final, so start at the lowest amount that pins.

• Pin a harmless test line and confirm it shows in the carousel on desktop and mobile.
• Have a mod delete it and confirm what the viewer sees and what your overlay does.
• Pin a second line right after and watch where it lands relative to the first.
• Check that the kicks.gifted fields you plan to use arrive as documented, including a missing message.
• Confirm that your TTS and upload lanes still behave exactly as before.

Edge cases worth deciding before they happen

A viewer pins a message and then asks for TTS to read the same line. Treat that as two separate purchases; the pin does not substitute for the paid lane, and the TTS request goes through the normal review.

A viewer pins during a sponsor read or a guest segment. Your hold rules for the paid queue do not cover pins, because pins skip the queue. Decide whether mods delete pins during those windows or leave them, and tell people in the panel if the answer is a pause.

An overlay misses the event. Webhooks can fail, so the stream may not mirror a pin that is plainly visible in chat. Keep a manual way to show it.

A raid lands and ten pins arrive within a minute. The carousel sorts them in chat, but your mirrored cards will not sort themselves. Cap how many cards show at once.