The podcasting industry continues to expand, attracting new listeners and more investment every year.
Rephonic is a comprehensive podcast database and in this article we dig into how many podcasts currently exist and other related stats.
The figures in this article include all the shows that are available on Apple Podcasts. While there are a few major podcasts that do not appear on Apple Podcasts (e.g. Spotify exclusives like Joe Rogan) it's important to note that the vast majority of shows are listed on the platform.
How many podcasts are there?
As of September 2023, we counted 2.87 million podcasts.
Of these podcasts, 381k are active, i.e. they have published a new episode in the last 45 days.
This means that 13% of all podcasts are currently active.
Number of podcasts by year
The pandemic in 2020 marked a significant uptick in the number of podcasts.
In the subsequent years, while the rate of new show creation has slowed, the total number of podcasts continues to grow.
Here are the figures by year:
| Year | Total Podcasts | New Podcasts | YoY Growth |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2006 | 6,834 | ||
| 2007 | 12,686 | 5,852 | 86% |
| 2008 | 20,439 | 7,753 | 61% |
| 2009 | 30,566 | 10,127 | 50% |
| 2010 | 44,740 | 14,174 | 46% |
| 2011 | 63,807 | 19,067 | 43% |
| 2012 | 83,340 | 19,533 | 31% |
| 2013 | 109,436 | 26,096 | 31% |
| 2014 | 135,570 | 26,134 | 24% |
| 2015 | 173,313 | 37,743 | 28% |
| 2016 | 225,808 | 52,495 | 30% |
| 2017 | 302,441 | 76,633 | 34% |
| 2018 | 451,983 | 149,542 | 49% |
| 2019 | 717,550 | 265,567 | 59% |
| 2020 | 1,645,059 | 927,509 | 129% |
| 2021 | 2,370,173 | 725,114 | 44% | 2022 | 2,634,432 | 264,259 | 11% |
Number of podcasts with a guest format
Guest interviews are one of the most popular podcast formats.
There are currently 122k active podcasts that have a guest format, representing 32% of all active podcasts.
Number of podcasts by genre
Society & Culture has the highest number of podcasts, accounting for 13.4% of the total.
True Crime takes the bottom spot, comprising 0.55%.
Here are the stats:
| Position | Category | Number of podcasts | Proportion |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Society & Culture | 383,072 | 13.38% |
| 2 | Education | 377,125 | 13.17% |
| 3 | Business | 277,180 | 9.68% |
| 4 | Arts | 275,519 | 9.62% | 5 | Religion & Spirituality | 256,586 | 8.96% |
| 6 | Comedy | 190,707 | 6.66% |
| 7 | Health & Fitness | 176,209 | 6.15% |
| 8 | News | 143,180 | 5.00% |
| 9 | Leisure | 141,380 | 4.94% |
| 10 | Sports | 138,355 | 4.83% |
| 11 | Music | 127,667 | 4.46% |
| 12 | TV & Film | 80,567 | 2.81% |
| 13 | Kids & Family | 60,985 | 2.13% |
| 14 | Science | 54,449 | 1.90% |
| 15 | Technology | 54,237 | 1.89% |
| 16 | History | 51,169 | 1.79% |
| 17 | Fiction | 41,956 | 1.47% | 18 | True Crime | 15,812 | 0.55% |
| Other | 17,120 | 0.60% |
Number of podcasts by language
58.94% of all podcasts are in English, with Spanish coming in second place at 11.50%.
Here is the full breakdown:
| Position | Language | Number of podcasts | Proportion |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | English | 1,688,502 | 58.94% |
| 2 | Spanish | 329,452 | 11.50% |
| 3 | Portuguese | 195,973 | 6.84% |
| 4 | Indonesian | 134,451 | 4.69% | 5 | German | 80,731 | 2.82% |
| 6 | French | 60,747 | 2.12% |
| 7 | Italian | 30,525 | 1.07% |
| 8 | Japanese | 30,009 | 1.05% |
| 9 | Russian | 26,667 | 0.93% |
| 10 | Korean | 24,879 | 0.87% |
| 11 | Chinese (China) | 24,543 | 0.86% |
| 12 | Dutch | 22,567 | 0.79% |
| 13 | Swedish | 15,615 | 0.55% |
| 14 | Arabic | 12,412 | 0.43% |
| 15 | Turkish | 11,819 | 0.41% |
| 16 | Polish | 11,809 | 0.41% |
| 17 | Norwegian | 11,255 | 0.39% | 18 | Danish | 10,251 | 0.36% |
| 19 | Farsi | 7,217 | 0.25% | 20 | Hebrew | 6,662 | 0.23% |
| Other | 74,786 | 2.61% | |
| Unknown | 54,039 | 1.89% |
Number of podcasts by country
The vast majority of podcasts have an audience primarily based in the US.
The UK comes in a very distant second place.
| Position | Country | Number of podcasts | Proportion |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | United States | 2,269,756 | 80.69% |
| 2 | United Kingdom | 78,876 | 2.80% |
| 3 | Germany | 54,512 | 1.94% |
| 4 | Canada | 48,630 | 1.73% | 5 | Australia | 36,407 | 1.29% |
| 6 | France | 31,585 | 1.12% |
| 7 | Brazil | 28,871 | 1.03% |
| 8 | Mexico | 22,423 | 0.80% |
| 9 | Taiwan | 20,888 | 0.74% |
| 10 | Spain | 19,691 | 0.70% |
| 11 | Russia | 18,973 | 0.67% |
| 12 | Japan | 18,573 | 0.66% |
| 13 | Italy | 12,987 | 0.46% |
| 14 | Netherlands | 12,932 | 0.46% |
| 15 | Sweden | 12,901 | 0.46% |
| 16 | India | 12,827 | 0.46% |
| 17 | China | 12,801 | 0.46% | 18 | Indonesia | 8,804 | 0.31% |
| 19 | Denmark | 8,123 | 0.29% | 20 | Norway | 6,865 | 0.24% |
| Other | 127,487 | 4.45% |
Final thoughts
The podcasting industry continues to trend upward following the surge in new shows during the pandemic.
We expect that podcast languages and audience demographics will continue to diversify with time.
View stats for individual shows with Rephonic. We provide data such as listener numbers, social reach, chart rankings, reviews and more for over 2.5m shows.
