Measuring your podcast analytics is one of the most important things you can do to scale and keep improving the quality of your show.
These podcast metrics include consumption rate, unique listeners, audience demographics, drop-off rates, and (so much more).
However, in order to get the podcast data and audience insights you need to scale your show, you'll need to invest in a quality podcast analytics tool.
After all, with 5 million podcasts and counting, podcasting has become an increasingly competitive space where data-driven decisions are necessary to get ahead.
That’s why we’ve compiled our top list of industry-leading podcast analytics tools that'll provide you with the data you'll need to understand your audience, grow your listenership, and secure sponsors.
What is a podcast analytics tool?
Before we dive into our top picks, let's standardize our definitions.
A podcast analytics tool is a software application or platform designed to gather and analyze data from podcast episodes. It tracks metrics such as downloads, plays, listener demographics, retention rates, and more. These insights help podcasters understand their audience's behavior, preferences, and engagement, enabling them to tailor content and improve their shows.
CoHost Tip: Is understanding your podcast audience really the key to podcast success? Check out our blog where we dive into why audience demographics are the most important podcast metric to track.
1. CoHost
Owned by the award-winning podcast agency, Quill, CoHost is a podcast analytics and audience insights platform built for pro podcasters, agencies, and networks looking to grow their audience and drive revenue.
Trusted by clients like Paramount, JAR Audio, Content Allies, and The Podglomerate, CoHost empowers users with in-depth insights and tools to understand who their audience is and how their podcast is performing.
CoHost Prefix:
We understand that switching podcast hosting platforms can be time-consuming--or sometimes not an option. That's why we built CoHost's Prefix, which allows brands and agencies to gain industry-leading analytics and audience insights from CoHost – regardless of your current hosting platform.
Currently offering our B2B Analytics and Advanced Audience Demographics data in a prefix, you can tailor your content to listener preferences, drive growth by understanding listener behavior, and verify if your show is reaching your target audience.
Price: $35/month – custom enterprise pricing
Features:
- Advanced Audience Demographics: Verify if podcasts are reaching your desired target audience by gaining insight into your listeners' age, household income, family members, lifestyle, hobbies, social media habits, and more.
- B2B Analytics: Discover which companies your listeners work at and their industry, size, location, and average revenue through an exportable list. Users can view this data on both a show and episode level.
- Tracking Links: CoHost’s Tracking Links allow users to track clicks to downloads across multiple marketing channels all through one single link. Discover top download sources, individual link analytics, and a consolidated LinkTree style display.
- In-Depth Analytics Dashboards: Dashboards including show and episode consumption rates, growth rates, top episode vs. latest episode insights, and downloads and unique listener data.
- Automatic Transcriptions: In-app AI-powered transcription tool for effortless editing, distribution, boosted SEO, and accessibility. This feature comes at no additional cost to your CoHost podcast hosting plan.
- Hosting Capabilities: Including one-click publishing, multiple user permissions, custom media player, and multi-show management.
2. Megaphone
Megaphone (by Spotify) is an enterprise-grade podcast hosting and analytics suite for content creators and brand advertisers. Their client list includes names like WSJ, Disney, Bloomberg, and LinkedIn.
Megaphone focuses on ad targeting and campaign tracking features to help you maximize revenue from your show.
Price: Contact for pricing
Features:
- Audience insights: View downloads by app, time of day, and geo-location. Publisher and show level data, including Chartable data, based on demographic data
- Marketing attribution measurement: Using Chartable technology, measure new listener conversions via web and cross-promotion campaigns.
- Advanced targeting: Using Nielsen to target listeners by demographic and purchase intent, Megaphone helps you precisely target listeners down to the zip-code level.
3. Podbean
Podbean is another popular podcast hosting, monetization, and analytics platform. It provides podcast performance insights such as listeners, downloads, followers, comments, and likes. Podbean also offers data about your audience, such as where they live and what apps they use to access your content.
Price: Free - enterprise plans available
Features:
- Top 10 Episodes: Podbean compiles download data and highlights the top 10 episodes for different periods. This feature allows podcasters to identify their most popular content and discern patterns that could help expand their listener base.
- Listener geographies: Podbean provides a geographic breakdown of where listeners are located to help you tailor content and target sponsors more effectively.
- Downloads by time of day: Podbean tracks when episodes are downloaded the most, showing podcasters the best days and times to release new content.
- User retention: Podbean provides insights into user retention, showing how well the podcast has retained listeners over recent weeks. This data is presented in a graph, highlighting the attractiveness and stickiness of podcast content.
4. Blubrry
Blubrry offers advanced features for podcast analytics for data-driven performance. Their free plan provides most analytics, and their standard plan includes integrated statistics, listener’s location, device and platform, and partial and total plays.
Price: Podcast hosting plans start from $12/month and they offer a free statistics package.
Features:
- Retention data: Blubrry offers a clear view of complete and partial plays for each podcast episode, allowing podcasters to understand audience engagement. They analyze play and download data to pinpoint when and where listeners drop off.
- Geolocation: Blubrry provides detailed geolocation data, revealing where listeners are and the types of devices they use.
- Apps and devices: Podcasters can discover which apps their audience uses to listen to their shows and get insights into listener habits and preferences.
- Episode comparison: Users can easily see differences in listener behavior across episodes, with the option to compare the three most recent episodes with standard stats.
- Average daily plays: This feature tracks show growth by averaging daily plays over your last 12 episodes.
5. Castos
Castos' podcast hosting and analytics platform offers a variety of features catering to traditional podcasts, internal podcasts, and private podcasts alike.
Trusted by brands like Fossil, Instacart, and the London Stock Exchange, the analytics solution reliably tracks podcast performance insights, such as top episodes, listener behavior, demography, and more.
Price: Packages start from $19/month
Features:
- Total listens by podcast: Castos allows users to filter data by individual podcasts, select custom date ranges, and identify top-performing episodes.
- Browsers and apps analytics: Castos provides podcast insights into whether listeners use mobile or desktop devices and whether they prefer apps or browsers.
- True Fans Metric: Castos features a proprietary "Follower" metric to identify the most loyal listeners. It also reveals the types of devices listeners use, enabling podcasters to customize their messaging and explore unique partnership opportunities.
- Audience geolocation: Castos offers geolocation data, helping podcasters understand where their audience is located.
6. Spotify for Podcasters
Spotify for Podcasters is a free platform that helps podcasters distribute, grow, and monetize their show. They have various advanced analytics data and advertising tools catered to beginners, pros, and everyone in between.
Price: Free
Features:
- Play count: See how your show's reach is growing over time
- Demographic insights: Understand who your listeners are and cater to their interests
- Audience retention: View how long people listen to your show and where they drop off
- Q&A and polls: Get feedback directly from your loyal listeners
CoHost Tip: If you're looking for the top podcast stats to track on Spotify, check out our complete list.
7. Transistor
Transistor is a podcast hosting platform and analytics tool that helps podcasters submit and distribute their shows to major platforms like Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Serving over 26,000 podcasts, Transistor caters to a diverse range of customers, including independent podcasters, small businesses, and large enterprise companies.
Price: Packages start from $19/month
Features:
- Average downloads per episode: Transistor tracks the performance of podcast episodes over different time frames (7, 30, 60, and 90 days after release).
- Subscriber count: Transistor provides an estimate of podcast subscribers, calculated from the average downloads within the first 24 hours of the last three episodes.
- Episode breakdown: Podcasters can sort episodes by popularity. This feature allows for easy comparison and can be exported as a CSV file for use in Excel, Google Sheets, or Apple Numbers.
- Podcast player insights and listener devices: Transistor provides data on which listening apps, such as Apple Podcasts or Spotify, listeners prefer. They also show the types of devices and operating systems listeners use, including desktop, mobile, smartwatches, and smart speakers.
- Listener Map: Transistor offers a geographic breakdown of listeners, showing which countries, and in some cases states or provinces, listeners are from.
8. Simplecast
For more than a decade, Simplecast has been a premier provider of podcast publishing, distribution, analytics, and monetization tools. Catering to both large networks and independent creators, Simplecast offers a robust platform equipped with enterprise-level features.
Price: The basic plan starts at $15/month
Features:
- All-time total downloads
- Downloads today / in the last 7 days / Previous 7 days
- Unique listeners for the last 7 days
- Downloads by location
- Popular times of day
- Top episodes and listening methods
9. Podtrac
Podtrac is a podcast analytics platform designed to help creators understand and grow their audience. Serving podcasters, advertisers, agencies, and industry professionals, Podtrac is a widely trusted advanced podcast analytics tool.
Price: Podtrac has a free plan and a "Grow your Show" plan available for $20/month
Features:
- Podcast traffic measurement: Podtrac's tools cater to various needs regarding show growth and performance tracking. Users can monitor day-to-day growth through the Key Metrics report, gain quick insights into overall performance, and delve into detailed daily episode-level download data.
- Podcast audience demographics: Podtrac's demographic survey enables the collection of numerous insightful data points about the audience. This data is then conveniently displayed on the user's dashboard, providing valuable insights into the demographics of podcast listeners.
- Podcast rankings: Podtrac offers two free monthly Podcast Industry Rankings: the Top 20 Podcasts and the Top 20 Podcast Publishers. Additionally, users can purchase rankings of top podcasts by category.
10. Ausha
Ausha is a comprehensive podcast analytics solution and podcast hosting site designed to inform creators, agencies, brands, and networks about their podcast's performance. Their intuitive interface
Price: Independant pricing plans start at $15/month. Ausha also has three different enterprise plans available.
Features:
- Location insights: Ausha provides three levels of location data, allowing users to see where their audience is tuning in from on a country, state, and city level.
- Audience device analysis: Users can track audience behavior by device type, whether listeners are using mobile devices, desktops, speakers, or other platforms.
- Audience source tracking: Ausha enables users to identify the apps through which listeners access their content, such as Spotify or Apple Podcasts.
- Comparison tool: Podcasters can use Ausha's comparison tool to analyze how their episodes perform relative to previous ones.
- Transcriptions: Ausha offers AI-powered transcription services that convert speech to text in 99 languages. These transcriptions automatically update the podcast's RSS feed and website.
Which podcast analytics tool is right for you?
When it comes to choosing a podcast analytics platform, there is no one-size-fits-all.
When selecting the best fit for your show, consider the following questions:
- What podcast metrics do they offer?
- Is the platform scalable alongside my show?
- What does their client cloud look like? Do their users fit my profile?
- Are their podcast analytics IAB-certified?
- Do I need to switch my hosting provider in order to access the podcast analytics I want?
The best podcast analytics tools on the market today are continuously improving the size and accuracy of their datasets, while simultaneously making it easier for advertisers and podcasters to apply the insights and grow their audiences.
If you’re interested in learning more about podcast analytics and CoHost's platform, reach out to our team.
.webp)
