15 Best Podcast Analytics Tools to Measure Your Show’s Growth

More people than ever are listening to podcasts. In the past three years, podcast listenership has grown 29.5%, with experts projecting that over 160 million people will be tuning in by 2023. It’s a competitive field, and to get ahead, you need data. In this post we’ll look at some of the industry-leading podcast analytics tools to analyze your show’s performance and audience.

Most of the tools below offer IAB Certified analytics, which gives you more accurate data and helps you win more sponsors, advertisers, and investors.

In terms of affordability, scalability, and ease of use, these analytics platforms run the gamut from SMB to enterprise-level software. Several of them offer robust free plans.

This post may contain affiliate links. See my disclosure for more info.

What are the best podcast analytics tools?

Blubrry

Blubrry is a podcast hosting and publishing platform that provides live customer support and advanced statistics. Data points include where, how often, and for how long users listen to your show.

Their Podcast Statistics tool is designed to accurately reflect how many plays your podcast gets, unlike some other tools that give an inflated picture. The tool does this by considering unique IPs, interrupted and duplicate requests, network errors, and bot traffic.

Blubrry’s Advanced Statistics feature is available with the Advanced Hosting plan. This feature gives you an engagement metric called Impactful Plays, which shows you how long your audience listens to your content. With this data, you can find out how to tweak your podcast’s topics, length, ads, and more.

Pricing

The standard plan starts at $12 per month. A free trial is available.

Transistor

Transistor is a podcast publishing and distribution platform that provides detailed podcast analytics, including total listens per episode, total monthly listens, average downloads per episode, and number of subscribers.

The app also provides data on your audience, such as their geographic location and what devices they use. You’ll learn which listening apps they prefer, whether Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, iTunes, or something else.

You can order your episodes based on how popular they are, view detailed stats for each episode, and compare the performance of different episodes so you can focus on creating the kind of content that resonates best with your listeners.

Pricing

Transistor starts at $190 for an annual plan, which works out to $15.83 per month. It has a 14-day free trial.

Captivate

Captivate is an advanced podcast analytics and hosting platform that boasts “the most comprehensive analytics suite of any podcast host.” They’re regularly updating their analytics toolset to include data that’s detailed, visual, and easy to understand.

Their podcast analytics tools include detailed stats and download overviews for individual episodes, insights on what’s trending, timeline comparisons, and web player analytics to help you understand your listeners better.

Pricing

Plans start at $17 per month paid annually. All plans come with access to Captivate Growth Labs, where you can learn podcast marketing and monetization. Captivate offers a seven-day free trial.

Castos

Castos is a podcast hosting and analytics platform with a heavy focus on automation. Their highly visual analytics dashboard features many detailed podcast stats and filtering options, somewhat resembling Google Analytics.

You can break your podcast performance down episode by episode and select custom date ranges for your data. Audience insights include which devices and apps your listeners prefer and where they’re located geographically.

Castos will soon be adding customized analytics reports that you can send to sponsors, a subscriber count, and playback duration data.

Pricing

Plans start at $19 per month. Castos offers a 14-day free trial.

Megaphone by Spotify

Megaphone is an enterprise-grade podcast hosting and analytics suite for content creators and brand advertisers. Their client list includes names like WSJ, Bloomberg, Disney, and LinkedIn.

Compared to other podcast analytics services, they have a heavy focus on ad targeting and campaign tracking features to help you maximize revenue from your show.

Their analytics tools include audience listening and engagement stats and the ability to track downloads by app, city, state, region, and country.

Pricing

Megaphone is enterprise-level software. Contact the company for a customized quote.

Anchor by Spotify

Anchor is an easy-to-use and completely free podcast creation, distribution, and analytics toolset. Despite being free, they offer advanced analytics data for your listeners on Spotify, including audience engagement stats so you can see where your audience is dropping off. You’ll also get age, gender, geographic, and app data for your audience.

Anchor provides a number of interesting monetization features, including an array of pricing structures for your subscribers, as well as the ability to contact your subscribers by email to offer exclusive content. You can easily insert ads or record them in your voice using Ads by Anchor, or add an optional donate button to your profile.

Pricing

Anchor’s podcast analytics tools (as well as all its other features) are completely free.

Podbean

Podbean is a popular podcast hosting, monetization, and analytics platform. It provides podcast performance insights such as listeners, downloads, followers, comments, and likes.

Podbean also offers data about your audience, such as where they live and what apps they use to access your content.

Pricing

The basic plan is free. Premium plans with unlimited audio start at just $9 per month billed annually.

Spreaker

Spreaker offers advanced podcast analytics tools in addition to creation, distribution, and monetization features. Easy-to-read stats include audience insights and performance data for individual episodes over time.

You’ll get full data on how many listeners are tuning in while you’re live versus listeners who download your episodes and listen later. You can also find out how many of your listeners are repeat listeners.

Spreaker’s follower statistics trace your followers to individual episodes so you’ll know what kind of topics to focus on to generate more followers.

Audience statistics include the platforms your listeners use to tune in, geolocation, and preferred devices.

Pricing

Spreaker has a free plan, but you can’t monetize with ads. The Broadcaster plan costs $20 per month and gives you advanced podcast analytics tools plus the ability to monetize.

Simplecast

Simplecast is an industry-leading podcast hosting and distribution platform for everyone, from small businesses to brands like Facebook, Twitter, TechCrunch, and Shopify. They offer enterprise-level analytics that anyone can afford.

Audience by Simplecast, their audio analytics platform, provides some especially interesting insights about your listeners – for instance, where they listen to your podcast, whether it’s at home, at work, or on a plane. You can even get data on which parts of an episode your audience is sharing.

Pricing

Simplecast starts at $13.50 per month for the annual plan, which gives you basic analytics and everything else you need to launch a podcast.

Chartable

Chartable is a podcasts analytics and attribution tool suite for helping publishers grow and brands maximize their spend.

They offer a feature called SmartLinks, which gives you insights on what marketing channels are working for your show. SmartLinks are shareable, trackable URLs that send listeners to your podcast via their favorite apps, gathering information on clicks and downloads.

Another useful feature is SmartPromos, a podcast-to-podcast attribution feature which helps you discover your top-performing placements on other podcasts.

Charitable integrates with major streaming apps and lets you track your podcast’s performance across major charts like Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Stitcher. It also gives you data about how your listeners consume your content on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

Pricing

Chartable has a free starter plan. Premium plans start at $20 per month.

Backtracks

Backtracks is “the world’s most advanced podcast analytics and advertising platform” for podcasters, advertisers, and apps. They provide vast amounts of detailed real-time and historical data on podcast performance, listeners, content, and ads.

Among other stats, the tool shows trends like increasing or decreasing listenership and tells you which downloads resulted in a play.

Backtracks uses AI to detect false or fraudulent data, giving you accurate numbers. Their software is built to handle tremendous amounts of data, and they offer advanced search capabilities.

Pricing

Backtracks offers a seven-day free trial. Their plans start at $89 per month billed annually.

Sounder

Sounder is a podcast hosting and analytics tool for podcasts of all sizes. Their software tracks your podcast’s growth and audience demographics. They also provide data about what your listeners search for in your content.

Sounder integrates with Google Analytics, Facebook Pixel, and more third-party measurement tools.

Pricing

Sounder offers a free basic plan for one podcast, which includes analytics and up to 5000 streams per month. Premium plans start at $10.39 a month billed annually.

Omny Studio

Omny Studio is an enterprise audio management platform for podcasters and radio stations. They offer a powerful analytics toolset with a wide range of metrics.

For instance, you can view download information for a single episode, a playlist, a show, or your entire company. Audience insights include the devices and podcast apps your audience use and where they’re located (you can drill down to a city level). You can also find out how your audience listens to your podcasts – for instance, web or embedded players, social media, or RSS feeds.

Other highlights of the software are near real-time updates, flexible date ranges, and algorithms that filter out erroneous data.

Pricing

Omny Studio offers a two-week trial. The starter plan costs $29 a month.

Libsyn

Libsyn is a complete podcast hosting and analytics solution for beginners to experts. They offer excellent customer support in addition to a suite of powerful publishing, distribution, monetization, and analytics tools.

Some of Libsyn’s analytics features include audience sources and behavior, geographic heat map, comprehensive download stats, date range selector, trend analysis, and detailed episode breakdowns.

Libsyn can also connect with your social media profiles to deliver performance reporting straight to your account.

Pricing

The starter plan is just $5 per month (plus $2 for basic statistics). Advanced analytics are available starting from $20 per month.

What are the best free podcast analytics tools?

The following podcast analytics software is either completely free or offers a free basic plan (see above to learn more about each tool):

• Anchor by Spotify (completely free)
• Podbean
• Spreaker
• Chartable
• Sounder

Podcast analytics FAQ

What are podcast metrics?

Podcast performance metrics are numbers that show you how well your podcast is performing at any given time. Placed on a timeline, they can be used to analyze trends and provide insights about how to maximize your podcast’s performance.

Podcast audience metrics are important too. These include things like listener demographic data and interests.

Example podcast metrics include:

• Subscriber count
• Listens per episode
• Downloads per episode
• Average listening time
• Most popular episodes
• Audience location
• Audience age and gender
• Audience devices
• Apps listeners use to access your podcast
• Number of repeat listeners

How do I get podcast listener numbers and other stats?

An advanced podcast analytics tool can give you data about how many listeners you have, where they live, what devices and apps they use to tune in, and even where they start and stop listening to your show. Many of the tools listed above offer IAB Certified analytics to give you the most accurate data possible.

How can I check podcast analytics on Spotify?

Many of the above podcast analytics tools, such as Anchor by Spotify, provide advanced data for your Spotify listeners.

Spotify’s own platform, Spotify for Podcasters, offers data about who your audience is and what episodes they listen to most, as well as how long they listen and where they drop off.

Learn more about the best Spotify stats websites and apps for artists.

Summing up

The best podcast analytics tools on the market today are continuously improving the size and accuracy of their datasets, while simultaneously making it easier for podcasters and advertisers to apply the insights and grow their audiences.

To learn more about how to grow and monetize your podcast, check out The Podcast Masterclass, a bestselling course on Udemy with over 100,000 students.