Podcast Categories

The full list of Apple Podcasts categories

These are the 19 categories and 91 subcategories Apple supports in a podcast feed, in Apple's own order. A subcategory always sits inside its parent. Government, History, Technology and True Crime have no subcategories at all.

A category is broad on purpose. It tells an app which shelf a show belongs on, not what makes the show worth hearing. That second job belongs to the niche, which is narrower and is yours to define.

If you are still deciding what the show is about, read what podcast niches look like from the inside first, then come back and pick the categories that fit it.

How many categories should a podcast pick?

More than one, going by what real shows do. Of the 368 feeds we read that declare a category, 325 (88%) name more than one label, and the median show names 3; 126 of them (34%) name four or more. 176 (48%) reach across two or more different top-level categories, such as Business and Education.

That matters for a practical reason Apple states in its own guidance: a show can appear on the charts for each category and subcategory it selects. A second category is a second shelf, and a second chart a small show can place on.

The cost is focus. Each label you add is a claim about what the show is, and a listener who finds you under a category you barely cover leaves. A good rule is one main category with its most specific subcategory, plus one more only if a real share of your episodes belong there.

The first category you list is the one Apple files you under

Apple shows one genre on every show's listing. We compared that genre with the categories each show declares in its own feed, in the order the feed declares them. For 364 of 368 shows (99%), Apple's genre was exactly the first category in the feed, or that category's subcategory when one was nested inside it.

So order is not cosmetic. If your feed lists Education first and Business second, you will almost certainly be filed under Education, however much of the show is about business. Put the category you want to be known for first, and nest its most specific subcategory inside it, like this:

<itunes:category text="Business">
  <itunes:category text="Entrepreneurship" />
</itunes:category>
<itunes:category text="Education">
  <itunes:category text="How To" />
</itunes:category>

Most hosting platforms write these tags for you from a settings screen. Open your public feed once and check the order they actually published, because that order is what apps read.

This is an observation from 368 feeds, not a rule Apple publishes, and a handful of shows did not follow it. It is still the most reliable way we know to decide where your show lands.

Which podcast categories book guests?

If you want to be a guest, category is one of the first filters you will reach for. So we measured, per category, how many of the shows declaring it publish visible evidence of booking guests: a named guest in a recent episode title, or a description that calls the show an interview show. Across all 368 shows, 31% do.

Business, Society & Culture and Technology share the top rate, at 37%. News is last, at 10% of 29 shows, which makes sense: news shows are mostly the host reading or discussing the day, and even the ones with guests rarely name them in the title.

"Live" is the share that had released an episode within roughly six months when we read the feed. It is a separate question from guests, and a category can be open to guests but full of shows that have stopped. Check the last episode date before you pitch anyone.

Religion & Spirituality (13), Arts (8), Kids & Family (8), History (7), Government (6), Comedy (4), Sports (2) and TV & Film (2) appear in fewer than 15 of our shows each, so the table gives them no rate. Fiction, Leisure, Music and True Crime appear in none, because no niche we cover sits there.

What a guest should do with a show's categories

A show's categories are the host's own words for the show, which makes them the most useful vocabulary you have when writing a pitch. A feed that lists Business, Investing and Education is telling you the host thinks of the show as teaching people about money, and a pitch framed as a lesson will land better than one framed as a story about you.

• Filter by category, then by subcategory. Business alone covers 183 shows in our sample; its most declared subcategory, Entrepreneurship (62 shows), is a far better shortlist.
• Read every category a show declares, not only the one Apple displays. The second and third labels are often where your topic fits.
• Do not pitch a category, pitch a show. The category gets you to a list; the last three episodes tell you whether you belong on it.

Each show's be-a-guest page in our directory lists the categories that show declares in its own feed beyond the one Apple displays, beside how recently it published and whether it credits its guests.

Sources and benchmark date

The category list is Apple's. Every corpus figure is computed at build time: categories from the feeds of 368 shows read between 2026-09-12 and 2026-09-16, guest evidence and publishing status from our read of the same shows between July 16, 2026 and September 16, 2026.

• Apple Podcasts categories (Apple Podcasts for Creators)

  Apple's own list of supported categories and subcategories, how to declare them in an RSS feed, and the statement that a show can appear on the charts for each category and subcategory it selects.

• Which Podcasts Actually Book Guests? (our study)

  Original analysis of public podcast RSS feeds from our directory. Defines "publishes visible evidence of booking guests", which is the guest evidence column on this page, and states what it does not claim.

Frequently asked questions