If you're researching a particular podcast, or planning to pitch yourself (or someone else) as a guest, you probably want to know how many people are listening to it.
Perhaps you want to boost your revenue by sponsoring podcasts in your niche?
Or maybe you host your own show, and you're dying to know how similar shows are performing. You might even want to reach out to a podcast host with a similar audience size and suggest some cross-promo opportunities.
But can you see how many listeners a podcast has? Surely finding that info will be a piece of cake?
Well, it is if you use Rephonic. The trouble is that only the podcast publisher knows their actual number of listeners, subscribers and downloads.
If you're the podcast publisher, jump to the part where we explain how to see your own listener metrics. Otherwise, we’ve laid out a few ways to look up valuable podcast stats and figure out how popular a show is that's not yours.
Table of Contents
- Six ways to tell how many listeners a podcast has
- Rephonic
- Ratings and reviews
- Apple Podcasts chart rankings
- Metrics revealed by some apps
- Social media presence
- Ask the publisher
- Is it possible to check how many downloads a podcast has?
- Is it possible to see how many subscribers a podcast has?
- How to see listener metrics for your own show
- Conclusion
🎧 Six ways to see how many listeners a podcast has
1. Get podcast listener numbers using Rephonic
Rephonic is the easiest way to tell how many listeners a podcast has. Rephonic has comprehensive podcast statistics for all 2.5m+ shows on its database, including listener numbers per episode. The numbers are front and center on each podcast's page.
We collect hundreds of publicly available data points for each podcast to come up with our metrics. Of course, it is a "best guess," so if you're determined to know the actual listener numbers, you'll have to contact the podcast host or publisher directly.
Get started with a 7-day free trial
2. Check ratings and reviews
When sizing up a podcast, many people often turn to platforms like Spotify and Apple Podcasts, two of the leading podcast players, particularly in the US and the UK. They aggregate the most listener feedback, allowing users to check the average rating, number of ratings, and even read reviews on Apple Podcasts.
You could try to guess that a podcast has a large audience by the total number of ratings it has. But this is a somewhat flawed approach because there's not always direct link between the volume of listener feedback and audience size.
Also, to get a full picture of its audience, you'll have to check each of the podcast apps where you can listen to the show. The best ones to check are Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Castbox, Podcast Addict, Podchaser and Amazon/Audible.
How many stars do fans give, and what are the reviews like? Enthusiastic? Excited? Are their superfans raving, or are the comments short and boring or even non-existent?
Rephonic collects all of this listener feedback and makes it available for free. Here's an example for The Daily (scroll down to "Reviews").
3. Inspect chart rankings
Similarly to ratings and reviews, Apple Podcasts and Spotify are the best places to look for the most comprehensive podcast chart rankings. If a show is ranking high in its category — or perhaps across all categories — then that's a pretty good indication that they have a sizeable audience.
The charts are not an ideal measure of popularity, though. It's thought that they are calculated by looking at the number of new followers (previously 'subscribers') each podcast has added over a recent time window.
If a show's listeners skew towards another platform, or another country where Apple or Spotify is less dominant, then they won't perform so well in the charts.
Rephonic collects these Apple and Spotify chart rankings and makes them available for free. Here's an example for The Daily (scroll down to "Charts" - if it's missing then that show is not ranking at all).
Google Podcasts maintain their own charts too, but these are less comprehensive.
4. Investigate podcast stats revealed by some apps
There's no official way to see a podcast's global number of listeners across every app, but a few podcast apps have data about their own users.
For example, Castbox shows you how many users have subscribed to a show and how many times its episodes have been streamed on their app. Note that Castbox represents roughly 2% of podcast listeners.
Spotify is one of the most popular podcast apps and Rephonic now provides Spotify follower numbers on its platform.
Although not ideal, these numbers give you a clue as to the size of a show's listenership. One way to use them is by comparing the stats between shows on the same platform.
Only the podcast host or publisher has access to how many listeners or streams a show has.
5. Check social media presence
Checking a podcast's social media accounts can tell you something about their listenership figures and how engaged their listeners are.
Usually you can go to the podcast's official website (often listed in podcast listening apps) to find links to their social accounts.
Check out their Instagram feed or X account. Are they active on TikTok? How many followers do the hosts have? Can you see a lot of positive listener engagement on these accounts?
See total YouTube podcast views with Rephonic
If you're looking for the number of podcast views, you can do a quick search on YouTube and scroll through their videos to get an idea of how many views each episode has. You can see the total number of YouTube views for each podcast on Rephonic's database.
A lot of people watch podcasts on YouTube now, so knowing a podcast's viewership numbers can help you get a better understanding of its total reach.
6. Ask the publisher directly
To find out the most accurate podcast numbers, you need to go direct to the source. That means reaching out to the host, owner or publisher. It can be challenging to find podcast email addresses, which is why we've written a guide to help you out.
Once you've sent your email, there's no guarantee that they'll respond. But the likelihood depends on your intent. If you're looking to spend money on sponsoring their show then you may get a quick reply! On the other hand, if you're looking to research your competitors before you launch your own podcast, you’re probably not going to be so lucky.
Watch out for publishers giving you their all-time number of downloads, i.e. the number of times all combined episodes have been downloaded since the podcast was founded. It may sound impressive, but it doesn't tell you a lot about how many listeners they're currently pulling in per episode.
🎙️ Is it possible to check how many downloads a podcast has?
Finding podcast download numbers is a common approach you might use to make decisions about which shows to reach out to.
As a listener, you can't see download numbers in any of the podcast apps. However, if a podcast host adds an OP3 prefix to their URL, they'll see all their podcast's performance across all the platforms and this data is automatically made public via the API.
Unfortunately, download numbers are somewhat misunderstood in the world of podcasting. They seem to indicate how many listeners a podcast has, but in fact, they show how many times the podcast was downloaded onto a device.
Listeners can choose to subscribe and automatically download every episode, or download it on the go, which is known as user-initiated episodes. So, download numbers don’t tell you how many listeners a podcast has because you don't know when or even if they actually heard that episode.
That's why Rephonic gives you listener per episode numbers instead of downloads, to provide a more accurate idea of the size of an individual podcast’s audience.
Get started with a free trial.
📈 Is it possible to see how many subscribers a podcast has?
Podcast subscriber numbers are often used as a guide to understanding a podcast's popularity.
However, finding the total podcast subscriber count is notoriously difficult, for the same reason that it’s difficult to find the number of listeners and downloads. Podcast distribution is decentralized - in other words, podcasts publish in many different places so you can listen to episodes and subscribe to shows wherever it suits.
This is how podcasts become available:
And therein lies the problem when it comes to finding out podcast subscriber numbers.
There are piles of platforms out there. Spotify, Apple podcasts, and iHeartRadio are three of the largest, but there are many smaller players too. Buzzsprout lists at least 39 different podcast apps in its Definitive Podcast Directory List for 2024.
Spotify is now the #1 or #2 podcast app, and although it's impossible to view subscriber numbers through the Spotify app itself, Rephonic is able to pull this data and make it available on its platform.
Remember - just because someone follows or subscribes to a podcast doesn't mean they will actually listen.
How to see listener metrics for your own show
Analyzing your metrics helps you grow your show's popularity by improving your content.
Spotify and Apple Podcasts are two of the largest podcast apps, so let's see how they help you analyze your own podcast statistics.
Spotify
Spotify analytics measure many data points:
- Starts: logged whenever someone presses play on your podcast
- Streams/play counts: how many people listen for 60 seconds or more
- Listeners: unique listeners who have started at least one episode
- Followers: shows your subscriber numbers.
- Reach: Aka impressions, reach is counted at podcast and episode level and measures how many times your podcast is shown in Spotify Home, Search and Library over 30 days.
- Duration: The total time your audience listened
- Retention graphs: These show how people engage with your episode by tracking where people start, stop, or drop off
- Geographic distribution: Where your listeners where when they heard your podcast.
You get these analytics and more through for free at Spotify for Creators (formerly Spotify for Podcasters.)
Apple Podcasts
Apple podcasts analytics look at similar stats to Spotify's, but you access them through Apple Podcasts Connect. A podcast host or publisher can see their stats by episode or over all time.
Engaged Listeners is possibly one of Apple's most important metrics for measuring podcast success, because these are unique devices that played at least 40% of an episode with a single session. Understanding how many listeners actually heard that much or more of your podcast can be a game changer, revealing listener behavior as well as the content and guests they enjoyed.
Watch Grow Your Podcast By Doing This for an interesting overview or see Apple's Support Resources for further information.
OP3 prefix
But how can you see how popular your show is without going into every single app that plays it? That's where the OP3 prefix comes in.
OP3 (Open Podcast Prefix Project) works by adding a small piece of tracking information to the beginning of the episode file URL. This means that podcast episode downloads can be tracked across all platforms.
Discover how popular a podcast is with Rephonic
The easiest way to look up podcast stats is with Rephonic. For any podcast, see how many listeners it has, its chart rankings, social followers, YouTube viewership, reviews and more so you don’t have to waste valuable time searching the web.
If you're looking for podcasts to pitch as a potential guest or sponsor, Rephonic is a great way to find the right shows in any niche and quickly find the best email address to contact them with.
Get started with a free trial today.
Further Reading
