How Much Does Podcast Hosting Cost?

How much does podcast hosting cost?

Expect $0 to about $20 a month to host one podcast. Free tiers exist and are real. Paid entry plans on the hosts we checked run from $8 to $20 a month, and the top plan each of them publishes runs from $30 to $250 a month.

Prices below were read directly from each company's public pricing page, in the currency that page quoted. Eight rows were read September 26, 2026; Captivate was read September 27, 2026. Where a page defaults to annual billing, the table says so, because the monthly price is higher.

The top plan each page names before it stops quoting a number is the other half of the ladder, and it is where the price actually spreads: Acast $39.99 a month, Buzzsprout $30, Podbean $99, RSS.com $37, Spreaker $250, Transistor $199 and up for anything over a quarter of a million downloads a month, Captivate $90 before custom plans it arranges by email past 300,000 downloads a month, and Libsyn $150 before its Professional and Enterprise plans, which it quotes on contact. Spotify for Creators names none, because it does not sell a subscription.

Three of these pages quote a higher figure if you decline annual billing. Acast's entry plan is $25 a month billed monthly against $14.99 billed yearly, Podbean's entry plan is $17 a month billed monthly against $12 billed yearly, and Captivate's entry plan is $19 a month billed monthly against $17 billed yearly. Spreaker's, Transistor's and Libsyn's listed prices are monthly.

What a free podcast host actually gives you

Free tiers are not a trial in disguise on every host, but they are not identical either. The difference is what gets capped and what the host wants in exchange.

• Acast's free Starter plan caps you at one show and five episodes, and its own footnote says you get unlimited episodes when you make the show available in Acast's advertising marketplace. That is a real free tier with a real condition attached.
• Buzzsprout's free plan caps you at two hours of uploads a month and keeps each episode online for 90 days, without paid add-ons or video distribution, and it asks for no credit card. Separately it lists a $5 a month Archive plan that keeps a finished podcast online without new uploads.
• Podbean says you can create a podcast for free and that its free plan lets you upload episodes, but it publishes no limits for that plan: its pricing page shows only the paid tiers, so what the free plan caps is not something we could read.
• RSS.com's free plan lists unlimited episodes, unlimited audio, a public RSS feed, distribution to the major directories, and analytics. Paid tiers add programmatic ad insertion, AI-generated transcripts, and team seats.
• Spotify for Creators publishes no pricing page at all. Its hosting is free and its business is the listening side, not a subscription.
• Spreaker's free plan is called Free Speech and is marked "Always" rather than a trial. It lists one podcast, unlimited episodes, a customizable RSS feed, auto-upload to Apple Podcasts, Spotify and iHeartRadio, and no credit card at signup. What it caps is not your publishing, it is your data and your take: six months of statistics against twelve on the paid plans, and a 20% fee on its Supporters Club that the paid plans drop to zero.
• Transistor offers a 14-day trial rather than a permanent free tier, and prices its plans monthly, with twelve months for the price of ten if you pay yearly.
• Captivate offers a 30-day free trial of the whole platform rather than a free plan, and its own FAQ answers "Do you offer free plans?" with "Nope!". Every feature is on every plan, and it takes 25% off for students, educational organizations, registered charities and non-profits.
• Libsyn offers a 30-day free trial on every plan rather than a permanent free tier, and its page says a credit card is needed to start it.

The question worth asking about a free tier is not whether it costs money. It is whether you own the feed. A podcast RSS feed is the address every directory, app and listener resolves your show through, and a host that will not let you take it with you can make a cheap plan expensive later. Every host on this list publishes an import tool for moving a show in; check that the same door opens outward before you commit a back catalogue to it.

How many downloads it takes to cover the bill

Hosting is a fixed monthly cost and podcast advertising is priced per thousand downloads, so the two convert into each other directly. This is the arithmetic that tells you whether your hosting plan is a real business decision or a rounding error.

Downloads needed = (monthly hosting price / CPM) x 1,000

$15 a month at a $25 host-read CPM
= (15 / 25) x 1,000
= 600 sold downloads a month

$49 a month at a $25 host-read CPM
= (49 / 25) x 1,000
= 1,960 sold downloads a month

At the host-read benchmark we cite on our sponsorship rates guide, roughly $25 to $40 per thousand, a $15 plan is covered by 375 to 600 sold downloads a month. A $99 network plan needs 2,475 to 3,960. Those are sold impressions, not total downloads: unsold inventory pays nothing, so a show delivering 2,000 downloads a month with one sponsored slot is not covering a $99 plan.

• $15 a month: 600 sold downloads at a $25 CPM, 375 at a $40 CPM.
• $19 a month: 760 at a $25 CPM, 475 at a $40 CPM.
• $37 a month: 1,480 at a $25 CPM, 925 at a $40 CPM.
• $99 a month: 3,960 at a $25 CPM, 2,475 at a $40 CPM.

The honest reading of that table is that hosting is not what stops a podcast. A show that cannot clear 600 sold downloads a month has an audience problem or a sales problem, and moving from a $19 plan to a $15 plan solves neither. Pick the host whose features you will actually use and spend the argument you saved on the episodes.

The parts of the bill that are not the subscription

The plan price is the number every comparison article quotes and it is not the whole invoice. Six things move it, and all six are visible on the same pricing pages.

• Upload limits. Buzzsprout's paid plans are sized in upload hours (72 hours a year on the entry plans, 180 on multi-podcast), and unused hours do not roll over. Podbean's entry plan lists a 1GB monthly upload limit against 10GB on the next tier up. Captivate lists unlimited uploads and storage on every plan, so nothing there is sized in hours. Libsyn sizes its plans in audio upload hours per month: 3 on the $12 Basic plan, 10 on the $25 Advanced plan and 55 on the $150 Max plan. A weekly two-hour show is a different customer from a daily fifteen-minute one.
• Video. Video is the most common upgrade trigger on these pages. Acast lists a separate $39.99 Video tier, with up to 10,000 video views a month. Buzzsprout charges $25 a month against $15 for the same audio plan with video distribution added. RSS.com's $37 Max plan is the video one. Libsyn includes video uploads of up to 100GB a month, which it puts at about 50 hours, on every plan.
• Monetization mechanics. Podbean lists its dynamic ad insertion at $1 CPM on paid plans, free on one tier. Spreaker's free plan takes 20% of what its Supporters Club collects for you and its paid plans take none, so on that host the free tier is priced as a revenue share rather than as a bill. If you are inserting ads, that comes off the top of the CPM you charge.
• Selling your own ads. This is where the ladder stops being about hosting. Acast's free tier runs the opposite trade: it lifts the five-episode cap when you put the show into its advertising marketplace, which is Acast selling the inventory rather than you. Spreaker puts an ad campaign manager, the tool for selling and managing your own inventory rather than joining a marketplace, on its $250 a month Publisher plan and on no plan below it. Libsyn keeps dynamic ad insertion for its Professional and Enterprise plans, which it quotes on contact rather than on the page.
• Data retention. Spreaker prices statistics history directly, at 6 months free, 12 months on its $20 and $50 plans and 24 months on the $250 one. If you sell sponsorships on a year-over-year growth story, the plan that keeps the year is the plan you need.
• Number of shows. Several hosts price on show count rather than downloads. Acast's free tier is one show and its paid tiers are unlimited. Buzzsprout charges $30 a month for its multi-podcast plan, which carries up to five shows. Spreaker's free tier is one podcast and every paid tier is unlimited. Transistor includes unlimited podcasts on its entry plan. Captivate includes unlimited podcasts on every plan and counts downloads across all of them.

Add-ons like transcription and AI tooling sit on top of most of these. Read the plan you would actually be on in a year, not the one you would sign up for this week.

Every number on this page came off a page we loaded, and the sources are linked below so you can re-read them. Podcast pricing changes. Eight rows were read September 26, 2026; Captivate was read September 27, 2026. Check the source before you sign anything.

Does your host affect whether you can book guests?

Almost not at all, and it is worth saying plainly because hosting comparisons often imply otherwise. Guests find shows through directories and search, and they reach hosts through whatever contact route the feed and the show page publish. None of that is a paid hosting feature.

What does affect it is whether your feed carries a working contact address and whether your episode pages make it obvious that you interview people. Both are free on every plan on this page. If you are choosing a host partly to make guest booking easier, you are optimising the wrong line: the constraint is the invitation you send and the reasons a guest has to say yes to your show over the other one in their inbox.

Sources and benchmark date

Every price on this page was read off the vendor's own public pricing page, in the currency that page quoted, on the day named beside each source below. Prices change without notice; re-read the source before acting on a figure.

• Acast: Pick your plan

  Read September 26, 2026. Source for the free Starter tier (1 show, 5 episodes, unlimited when the show joins Acast's advertising marketplace), the $14.99 Essential, $29.99 Pro and $39.99 Video yearly-billed tiers ($25, $40 and $50 billed monthly) and Video's 10,000 monthly video views. Its German, French and UK English editions quote €14.99, €29.99 and €39.99.

• Buzzsprout: Pricing

  Read September 26, 2026. Source for the free plan (2 upload hours a month, episodes hosted for 90 days, no credit card), the $15, $25 and $30 annually-billed plans, the 72 and 180 upload-hour limits, Multi-Podcast's five shows, and the $5 Archive plan.

• Podbean: Podcast hosting pricing

  Read September 26, 2026. Source for the $17/$12, $39/$29, $99/$79 and $129/$99 monthly-versus-yearly plans, the 1GB and 10GB upload limits, the $1 CPM dynamic ad insertion line, and the line offering a free account. The free plan's own description is on Podbean's start-a-podcast page (podbean.com/start-podcast).

• RSS.com: Pricing

  Read September 26, 2026. Source for the $0 free plan with unlimited episodes and a public RSS feed, and the $15, $26 and $37 annually-billed tiers.

• Spotify for Creators

  Read September 26, 2026. Its /pricing URL returns a 404 page; the product publishes no subscription price and hosting is free.

• Spreaker: Plans

  Read September 26, 2026. Source for the $0 Free Speech plan marked "Always" (one podcast, unlimited episodes, 6 months of statistics, 20% Supporters Club fee, no credit card) and the $20 Broadcaster, $50 Anchorman and $250 Publisher plans, their 12 and 24 month statistics windows, and the ad campaign manager on the Publisher tier.

• Transistor: Podcast hosting pricing

  Read September 26, 2026. Source for the $19, $49, $99 and $199+ monthly plans, their 20K, 100K and 250K monthly-download sizes, the 14-day trial, and twelve months for the price of ten on yearly billing.

• Captivate: Pricing Plans

  Read September 27, 2026. Source for the $17 Personal, $44 Professional and $90 Business plans billed yearly ($19, $49 and $99 billed monthly), their 30,000, 150,000 and 300,000 monthly downloads, custom plans by email above 300,000, the 30-day free trial, the FAQ's "Nope!" to free plans, unlimited podcasts and storage on every plan, what happens past the download limit, and the 25% discount for students, education, charities and non-profits.

• Libsyn: Plans & Pricing

  Read September 26, 2026. Source for the $8 bare-essentials plan, the $12 Basic, $25 Advanced and $150 Max plans billed monthly after a 30-day free trial that needs a credit card, their 3, 10 and 55 monthly audio upload hours, the 100GB of monthly video uploads on every plan, and dynamic ad insertion on the Professional and Enterprise plans. Its old /pricing URL still answers "This page is no longer available".

• Let's Make A Podcast: Podcast sponsorship rates

  Our own guide, and the source for the $25 to $40 host-read CPM benchmark used in the break-even math above.

Frequently asked questions