Free tool · For hosts
Is your podcast ready for guests?
Paste your RSS feed and see your show the way a guest researching you does. We read your own feed, score it out of 100, and tell you exactly what it does not publish. Free, no sign-up, nothing stored.
It is the same score we compute for all 336 shows in our directory, where the median is 50 and 68% of readable feeds publish no checkable sign that they book guests at all.
How it works
- 1
Paste your RSS feed URL
Any host: Anchor, Buzzsprout, Libsyn, Transistor, Captivate. We read it server side and store nothing.
- 2
Read your score out of 100
The same four things a guest checks: do you book guests, are you live, how often you publish, and whether there is a way to reach you.
- 3
Fix what your feed does not publish
Every gap comes with the specific tag or habit that closes it, worst first.
What the score is read from
Nothing here is an opinion about your show, and nothing is inferred from how good it is. Every point comes from something your feed published: your recent episode titles, your show description, your publish dates, your itunes:author, and the contact tags Apple asks every podcast to carry. If we cannot read something, we say so and score it neutral rather than guess.
That last rule matters more than it sounds. “We found no guest markers in your recent titles” is a claim about our read. “This show has no guests” would be a claim about you, and we do not make it, here or on any show page in the directory.
The method, and what it found across 314 readable feeds, is written up in Which Podcasts Actually Book Guests? Once the feed reads well, the next problem is being found: see how to find guests for your podcast and the free guest invitation writer.
Frequently asked questions
What is a podcast guest readiness score?+
It is how open your show looks to someone deciding whether to pitch you, read entirely from your public RSS feed. Four things carry it: whether your recent episodes and description show that you book guests (40 points), whether you have published recently (25), how often you publish, because that is how many guest slots you have to fill (15), and whether there is a way for a stranger to reach you (20). It is the same 0-100 score we compute for all 336 shows in our directory, so it is not a marketing number: it is the one that decides where you appear when a guest searches your topic.
How do I make my podcast easier for guests to find?+
Publish the three things a guest checks and most feeds leave out. Put the guest's name in the episode title rather than only in the show notes, so the booking is visible to anyone reading the feed. Say the words "interviews" or "guests" in your show description. And set a real contact address in your feed's itunes:owner tag, or publish a guest form on your site, because a show with no reachable door is skipped even when the fit is perfect.
Why does my feed say it has no contact route when I have an email in it?+
Most likely because the address is your hosting platform's relay rather than yours, something like an anchor.fm or acast.com forwarding alias that the platform generated when it built your feed. Some relays reach the creator and some are the platform's own ad-sales inbox, and from the address alone nobody can tell which, so tools that rank shows for guests do not count them. Replacing it with an address you actually read is the fastest single improvement most shows can make.
Is this the same score your directory uses?+
Yes, exactly the same code path, which is the point of the tool. It is the scorer behind our study of 314 readable podcast feeds, where the median show scores 50 and 68% publish no checkable signal that they book guests at all. Nothing you paste is stored, and running the check does not add your show to anything.
Does a high score mean guests will pitch me?+
No, and nothing here predicts that. The score says how legible your show is to someone already researching you: it cannot create demand, only remove the reasons a guest passes over you. Being found in the first place is a separate problem, which is what listing your show is for.
Can I run this on a show I want to be a guest on?+
Yes. It reads any public podcast feed, so a guest can use it to sort a pitch list: a show with visible guest bookings, a live cadence and a published contact route is worth writing a real pitch for, and one with none of those probably is not. That is the same reasoning our finder uses to rank shows.
