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 $15 to $19 a month, and the top plan a host lists publicly is usually under $100 a month unless you are a network.

Prices below were read directly from each company's public pricing page on August 26, 2026, in the currency that page quoted. 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: Buzzsprout $30 a month, RSS.com $37, Podbean $99, Acast €39.99, and Transistor $199 and up for anything over a quarter of a million downloads a month. Spotify for Creators names none, because it does not sell a subscription.

Two of these pages quote a higher figure if you decline annual billing. Podbean's entry plan is $17 a month billed monthly against $12 billed yearly, and Acast's Essential plan is €25 a month against €14.99. Transistor's listed prices are monthly, with twelve months for the price of ten if you pay yearly.

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.

• Spotify for Creators publishes no pricing page at all. Its hosting is free and its business is the listening side, not a subscription.
• 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, transcripts, and team seats.
• 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 and Transistor offer trials rather than a permanent free tier. Buzzsprout separately lists a $5 a month Archive plan that keeps a finished podcast online without new uploads.

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. Four things move it, and all four are visible on the same pricing pages.

• Upload limits. Buzzsprout's plans are sized in upload hours per year (72 hours 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. 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: Buzzsprout charges $25 a month against $15 for the same audio plan with video distribution added, Acast lists a separate €39.99 Video tier, and RSS.com's $37 Max plan is the video one.
• Monetization mechanics. Podbean lists its dynamic ad insertion at $1 CPM on paid plans, free on one tier. If you are inserting ads, that comes off the top of the CPM you charge.
• Number of shows. Several hosts price on show count rather than downloads. Transistor includes unlimited podcasts on its entry plan; Buzzsprout charges $30 a month for its multi-podcast plan; Acast's free tier is one show and its paid tiers are unlimited.

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.

Two prices we could not read

Two well-known hosts are missing from the table above, and the reason is worth stating rather than quietly omitting them.

• Libsyn's pricing URL returned a page reading "This page is no longer available" on August 26, 2026. Libsyn is one of the oldest hosts in the market and it may well quote a price after a signup step, but it did not publish one we could read on the day we checked.
• Captivate's pricing page returned a Cloudflare bot verification screen rather than its price table. That is a normal defence and not a criticism; it just means we cannot quote a figure we did not see.

Every other 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; treat any figure here as dated August 26, 2026 and 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 on August 26, 2026, in the currency that page quoted. Prices change without notice; re-read the source before acting on a figure.

• Acast: Pick your plan

  Read August 26, 2026. Source for the free Starter tier (1 show, 5 episodes, unlimited when the show joins Acast's advertising marketplace) and the €14.99, €29.99 and €39.99 yearly-billed tiers.

• Buzzsprout: Pricing

  Read August 26, 2026. Source for the $15, $25 and $30 annually-billed plans, the 72 and 180 upload-hour limits, and the $5 Archive plan.

• Podbean: Podcast hosting pricing

  Read August 26, 2026. Source for the $17/$12, $39/$29, $99/$79 and $129/$99 monthly-versus-yearly plans, the 1GB and 10GB upload limits, and the $1 CPM dynamic ad insertion line.

• RSS.com: Pricing

  Read August 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.

• Transistor: Podcast hosting pricing

  Read August 26, 2026. Source for the $19, $49, $99 and $199+ monthly plans, the 14-day trial, and twelve months for the price of ten on yearly billing.

• Spotify for Creators

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

• 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