Top Podcast Hosting Companies by Episode Share (December 2024)

January 2, 2025

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 independently verify every single new podcast episode published (about 1.7 million in December 2024, down 9.9% from last month on a normalized basis) and identify which podcast hosting company it belongs to.

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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.

We were not able to identify a known host for 4.54% of the new episodes found in December.

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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.

A special note for March/April 2024

We now have a better signal of when Spreaker releases new episodes, so our crawlers are finding more, starting early-March. It’s likely that we were undercounting Spreaker prior to this.

A special note for September/October 2023

We now have a better signal of when Spotify for Creators (formerly Spotify for Podcasters, formerly Anchor) podcasts release new episodes, so our crawlers are finding more, starting mid-September.

October was the first full month where this new signal was incorporated for the entire month, so should be a more accurate baseline going forward. It’s likely that we were undercounting S4C prior to this, in general our goal is to observe and validate every change to every podcast.

First, a quick chart of the top podcast hosting companies over time, based on share of new episodes every month.

Spotify for Creators , Spreaker , and Buzzsprout are the clear top three producers of new podcast episodes.

Now let’s graph the same data again, excluding them to see the others more clearly.

And finally, a ranking of podcast hosters ordered by new episodes published during the month of December 2024.

A rounded percentage of episode share is also included if at least 1%.

Analysis by John Spurlock

Thanks to the Podcast Index and other sources, for giving us signals of when to check for new episodes in public podcasts.

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 2025-01-02, with data for the month of December 2024. Still ex Radio France.

Updated 2024-12-01, with data for the month of November 2024. Still ex Radio France.

Updated 2024-11-06, with data for the month of October 2024. Still ex Radio France.

Updated 2024-10-01, with data for the month of September 2024. Still ex Radio France.

Updated 2024-09-01, with data for the month of August 2024. Still ex Radio France.

Updated 2024-08-01, with data for the month of July 2024. Still ex Radio France.

Updated 2024-07-01, with data for the month of June 2024. Still ex Radio France.

Updated 2024-06-01, with data for the month of May 2024. Still ex Radio France.

Updated 2024-05-01, with data for the month of April 2024. Still ex Radio France.

Updated 2024-04-01, with data for the month of March 2024. Still ex Radio France.

Updated 2024-03-02, with data for the month of February 2024. Still ex Radio France.

Updated 2024-02-02, with data for the month of January 2024. Still ex Radio France.

Updated 2024-01-01, with data for the month of December 2023. Still ex Radio France.

Updated 2023-12-03, with data for the month of November 2023. Still ex Radio France.

Updated 2023-11-02, with data for the month of October 2023. Still ex Radio France. October was the first full month where the new S4P signal was incorporated for the entire month, so should be a more accurate baseline going forward. It’s likely that we were undercounting S4P prior to this, in general our goal is to observe and validate every change to every podcast.

Updated 2023-10-01, with data for the month of September 2023. Still ex Radio France. We now have a better signal of when Spotify for Creators (formerly Spotify for Podcasters, formerly Anchor) podcasts release new episodes, so our crawlers are finding more, starting mid-September.

Updated 2023-09-01, with data for the month of August 2023. Still ex Radio France.

Updated 2023-08-01, with data for the month of July 2023. Still ex Radio France.

Updated 2023-07-01, with data for the month of June 2023. Still ex Radio France.

Updated 2023-06-01, with data for the month of May 2023. Still ex Radio France.

Updated 2023-05-01, with data for the month of April 2023. Still ex Radio France.

Updated 2023-04-01, with data for the month of March 2023. Still ex Radio France.

Updated 2023-03-01, with data for the month of February 2023. Still ex Radio France.

Updated 2023-02-01, with data for the month of January 2023. Still ex Radio France.

Updated 2023-01-01, with data for the month of December 2022. Still ex Radio France.

Updated 2022-12-01, with data for the month of November 2022. Still ex Radio France.

Updated 2022-11-01, with data for the month of October 2022. Still ex Radio France.

Updated 2022-10-02, with data for the month of September 2022. Removed Radio France from the universe this month due to many of the same episodes appearing in multiple feeds but with different urls. We try to make sure in cases like this that we are not underrepresenting everyone else until we can ensure duplicates are properly represented.

Updated 2022-09-01, with data for the month of August 2022.

Updated 2022-08-01, with data for the month of July 2022. Updated share pct calculation denominator to all new episodes, not just new episodes with known host entities. As part of this, also now reporting the pct of new episodes with unknown hosts.

Updated 2022-07-01, with data for the month of June 2022.

Updated 2022-06-01, with data for the month of May 2022.

Updated 2022-05-01, with data for the month of April 2022.

Updated 2022-04-05, RSS Podcasting is now known as RSS.com.

Updated 2022-04-02, with data for the month of March 2022 and a new graph. Removed dynamic/aggregate search feeds that don’t represent shows, which signifcantly lowered the episode share ranking for Internet Archive, SermonAudio, and PromoDJ.

Updated 2022-03-01, with data for the month of February 2022.

Updated 2022-02-01, with data for the month of January 2022.

Updated 2022-01-10, was missing data for December 31, now fixed.

Updated 2022-01-02, with data for the month of December 2021. Now filtering out episodes with the same media file url across multiple feeds (e.g. in aggregate category feeds), and filtered out dynamic search feeds from archive.org (they do not represent “shows” for any meaningful definition of the term). Universe shrank by 10.6% with these new filters. After that, December’s universe was still 6.8% smaller than November’s, presumably due to the holiday season.

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.

Previous versions:

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