Podcast Host Rankings by Episode Share (November 2021)

This is an archived version, the current version is here.

One of the ways to measure the health of the current podcast ecosystem is to measure the number of new episodes published in a given period.

We looked at every single new podcast episode published (about 1.9 million in November 2021) and identified which podcast hosting company it belongs to.

We use the actual media file url (ignoring any non-host tracking redirects) to identify the host. It is not based on the feed url domain, which can often undercount hosts that offer custom domains.

In cases where a retail podcast host uses another podcast host to serve the audio, we credit the first host. In cases where a podcast migrates from one host to new host, we credit the new host. In general, the intent is to identify the podcast host the podcaster would say they are dealing with.

There are many market share numbers floating around out there for the various podcast hosting companies, but it’s often difficult to compare apples to apples - especially when considering inactive shows. Looking at only new episodes is one fairly objective way to compare each platform, at least by sheer amount of new output.

Below is the ranking of podcast hosters ordered by new episodes published during the month of November 2021.

A percentage of episode share is also included if > 0%.

  1. Anchor 22.4%
  2. Buzzsprout 8.4%
  3. Spreaker 7.0%
  4. Libsyn 4.9%
  5. Soundcloud 4.6%
  6. Podbean 4.5%
  7. Omny Studio 4.2%
  8. iVoox 2.9%
  9. Captivate 2.4%
  10. Megaphone 2.2%
  11. PromoDJ 2.1%
  12. SermonAudio 2.1%
  13. Blubrry 1.7%
  14. Internet Archive 1.6%
  15. Simplecast 1.5%
  16. Audioboom 1.5%
  17. Triton Digital 1.4%
  18. Acast 1.3%
  19. Transistor 1.1%
  20. RSS Podcasting 1.1%
  21. Akamai CDN 1.1%
  22. Amazon S3 1.0%
  23. Radio France
  24. Podigee
  25. Squarespace
  26. Whooshkaa
  27. ART19
  28. Podtrac
  29. RedCircle
  30. Audiostart
  31. Google Cloud
  32. SoundOn
  33. Podomatic
  34. Subsplash
  35. iono.fm
  36. Ximalaya
  37. Voice of America English News
  38. NPR
  39. Amazon CloudFront
  40. Castbox
  41. RTVE
  42. Castos
  43. Futuri Media
  44. Radiotalk
  45. Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty
  46. Kabbalah Media
  47. Feedpress
  48. Deutschlandradio
  49. Aragon Radio CARTV
  50. BBC
  51. Nox Solutions
  52. StreamGuys
  53. Sveriges Radio
  54. WideOrbit
  55. podcaster.de
  56. LIVEBOX
  57. Atresmedia
  58. Adventist World Radio
  59. Blog Talk Radio
  60. Pinecast
  61. Sermon.net
  62. Audiomeans
  63. Rackspace Storage
  64. Cesky rozhlas
  65. Streamakaci
  66. Fireside
  67. Podcast.co
  68. OnePlace.com
  69. Wasabi Cloud Storage
  70. Europe 1
  71. Sounder
  72. lizhi.fm
  73. hearthis.at
  74. PodServe.fm
  75. Nobex Partners
  76. LSM.lv
  77. msk.ru
  78. Canstream Internet Radio
  79. Freecaster
  80. Chartable
  81. WordPress
  82. Substack
  83. RTP
  84. SRF
  85. Hubhopper
  86. Voxnest
  87. COPE
  88. CBS Radio News
  89. Seesaa
  90. Vatican News
  91. ABC Australia
  92. CCMA
  93. mave
  94. PRX
  95. SpokenLayer
  96. PodPoint
  97. Podspace
  98. Jewish Podcasts
  99. CacheFly CDN
  100. DAR.fm
  101. Microsoft Azure Blob Storage
  102. Sharpstream
  103. LetsCast.fm
  104. DigitalOcean Spaces
  105. Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage
  106. PodBoxx
  107. podcasts.com
  108. bCast
  109. Kajabi
  110. RAC1
  111. Podcastics
  112. Zencast
  113. Zeno.FM
  114. Talkshoe
  115. Podty
  116. JustCast
  117. podCloud
  118. Flumotion
  119. WNYC
  120. Lightcast
  121. Enacast
  122. Podster.fm
  123. Securenet Systems
  124. BoxCast
  125. Podetize
  126. Adori Labs
  127. Dropbox
  128. Cast
  129. Hipcast
  130. Linode Object Storage
  131. Springcast
  132. Cogeco Media
  133. JW Player
  134. Djpod
  135. Julep Hosting
  136. Wistia
  137. Octopus
  138. leanStream
  139. (all others)
  140. Backtracks
  141. Play.ht
  142. ShoutEngine
  143. AdBarker
  144. Podsights
  145. PodCloud
  146. Megafono
  147. Graffiti Urban Radio
  148. This Is Distorted
  149. American Public Media
  150. TWiT
  151. Cuonda
  152. Ausha
  153. Casted
  154. Podbbang
  155. Podcorn
  156. Supporting Cast
  157. DAX
  158. MediaFire File Storage
  159. BackdoorPodcasts
  160. 5by5
  161. Typlog
  162. Hello Audio
  163. Breaker
  164. The Washington Post
  165. Messy
  166. ABC es

Analysis by John Spurlock

Thanks to the Podcast Index for crawling every podcast, and giving us a signal of when to check for new episodes.

And thanks to the Open Podcast Analytics Working Group for maintaining a list of media url patterns. We’ve incorporated these patterns along with some of our own to come up with the host identification and metadata for this ranking.

Updated 2021-12-02, with data for the month of November 2021.

Updated 2021-11-11, tweaked the host identification algorithm: in cases where one known host performs a temporary redirect (302, 307) to another known host as part of a single request chain, we credit the redirecting host, not the target. For permanent redirects (301), we credit the target.

Updated 2021-11-11, added a new footer link to last month’s version.

Updated 2021-11-10, with data for the month of October 2021.

Updated 2021-10-09, to clarify the universe and identification scheme, added an overall episode count, and replaced short domains with hosting company names.

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