Podcast Host Rankings by Episode Share (October 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This is an archived version, the current version is here.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 2.0 million in October 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 October 2021.

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

  1. Anchor 23.1%
  2. Buzzsprout 8.0%
  3. Spreaker 7.3%
  4. Libsyn 4.9%
  5. Soundcloud 4.7%
  6. Podbean 4.5%
  7. Omny Studio 4.1%
  8. iVoox 2.8%
  9. SermonAudio 2.2%
  10. Megaphone 2.1%
  11. Captivate 2.1%
  12. PromoDJ 2.1%
  13. Blubrry 1.8%
  14. Internet Archive 1.6%
  15. Triton Digital 1.5%
  16. Simplecast 1.4%
  17. Audioboom 1.4%
  18. Acast 1.2%
  19. RSS Podcasting 1.1%
  20. Transistor 1.1%
  21. Akamai CDN 1.0%
  22. Amazon S3 1.0%
  23. Radio France
  24. Podigee
  25. Squarespace
  26. ART19
  27. Whooshkaa
  28. Podtrac
  29. RedCircle
  30. iono.fm
  31. Podomatic
  32. Google Cloud
  33. SoundOn
  34. Subsplash
  35. Audiostart
  36. Ximalaya
  37. Voice of America English News
  38. NPR
  39. Deutschlandradio
  40. Futuri Media
  41. Amazon CloudFront
  42. RTVE
  43. Castbox
  44. Radiotalk
  45. Feedpress
  46. Castos
  47. Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty
  48. BBC
  49. Kabbalah Media
  50. Aragon Radio CARTV
  51. Nox Solutions
  52. LIVEBOX
  53. StreamGuys
  54. Sveriges Radio
  55. WideOrbit
  56. podcaster.de
  57. Blog Talk Radio
  58. Atresmedia
  59. Adventist World Radio
  60. Pinecast
  61. Audiomeans
  62. Sermon.net
  63. Cesky rozhlas
  64. Podcast.co
  65. Fireside
  66. Wasabi Cloud Storage
  67. Streamakaci
  68. Rackspace Storage
  69. OnePlace.com
  70. Europe 1
  71. Freecaster
  72. LSM.lv
  73. Nobex Partners
  74. Sounder
  75. WordPress
  76. msk.ru
  77. Canstream Internet Radio
  78. lizhi.fm
  79. PodServe.fm
  80. Substack
  81. Voxnest
  82. hearthis.at
  83. SRF
  84. Chartable
  85. COPE
  86. RTP
  87. Seesaa
  88. Vatican News
  89. CBS Radio News
  90. ABC Australia
  91. Hubhopper
  92. SpokenLayer
  93. CCMA
  94. PRX
  95. mave
  96. PodPoint
  97. CacheFly CDN
  98. Podspace
  99. DAR.fm
  100. Microsoft Azure Blob Storage
  101. DigitalOcean Spaces
  102. Sharpstream
  103. LetsCast.fm
  104. Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage
  105. bCast
  106. podcasts.com
  107. PodBoxx
  108. Podcastics
  109. Zeno.FM
  110. Talkshoe
  111. Zencast
  112. Flumotion
  113. WNYC
  114. Kajabi
  115. JustCast
  116. Podty
  117. podCloud
  118. RAC1
  119. Enacast
  120. Lightcast
  121. leanStream
  122. Securenet Systems
  123. Cast
  124. Adori Labs
  125. Podster.fm
  126. Podetize
  127. BoxCast
  128. Hipcast
  129. Springcast
  130. Linode Object Storage
  131. Ausha
  132. Dropbox
  133. JW Player
  134. Backtracks
  135. ShoutEngine
  136. TWiT
  137. Julep Hosting
  138. Djpod
  139. Play.ht
  140. DAX
  141. Wistia
  142. Octopus
  143. MediaFire File Storage
  144. Cogeco Media
  145. PodCloud
  146. (all others)
  147. Megafono
  148. Podsights
  149. AdBarker
  150. American Public Media
  151. This Is Distorted
  152. Himalaya
  153. Cuonda
  154. Podcorn
  155. Casted
  156. Breaker
  157. Supporting Cast
  158. Typlog
  159. 5by5
  160. Podbbang
  161. BackdoorPodcasts
  162. The Washington Post
  163. Hello Audio
  164. Messy

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 2021-11-11, 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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