Best podcast analytics tools

Podcast stats can show you how many people listen to each episode, what apps people use (Apple Podcasts, Spotify), and what your most popular episode is. Analyzing this data can help you better understand your podcast's listeners.

The 5 best tools for getting analytics on your podcast:

Your podcast hosting platform: for an overview of listener trends use a podcast host that provides stats on downloads, listens, streams from all listening apps (Transistor.fm does this).
Apple Podcasts Connect: Apple provides additional data on folks listening to your podcast using their podcast app. You can access these by logging into Podcasts Connect.
Spotify for Podcasters: Spotify's dashboard will give you demographic information on your listeners: age, gender, plus all your streams.
Google Podcasts: you can get additional data on your podcast's performance on Google's Podcast Manager.
Chartable: want to track your podcast's performance on all the charts? Chartable provides a breakdown of Apple, Spotify, plus global charts by country.

Analytics on your podcast hosting platform

Most podcast hosting companies provide podcast stats for their users.

For example, on Transistor's "Analytics" page, you can see a variety of high-level stats:

Chart: see podcast stats for subscribers and listener trends over time

Average downloads per episode

If you're interested in how many listens a typical episode gets, Transistor will show you the average downloads for the first 7, 30, 60, or 90 days once an episode is published.

(A common question from podcast advertisers is: "How many downloads does a typical episode get in the first month?").

How many people subscribe to your podcast?

There's really no way for a podcast host to know exactly how many people are subscribed to your show. Why? There are numerous podcast players (Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pocket Casts). Most of them don't share subscriber numbers.

However, on Transistor, we estimate the number, based on how many downloads each episode gets in the first 24 hours.

See your most popular episodes

Transistor allows you to filter your episodes by popularity.

One trend we've noticed is that a big guest can drive a lot of downloads. For example, in April 2019 we had a huge spike in listeners. That was the month we released this episode with Taylor Otwell. Taylor has a large audience, and he brought us a lot of new listeners.

In fact, if you look at this download breakdown, you can see our most popular episodes came from interviews:

Our conversation with Jason Fried, founder of Basecamp, is our second most popular episode.

After that, our podcast's trailer has the most downloads.

Interestingly, "How to find a cofounder" is quite popular as well. My guess is folks are finding this episode when searching those keywords on Google, Apple, and Spotify.

What podcast listening apps do people use?

In this chart, you can see which podcast apps most of your listens come from; Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, etc.

Chart: what are the most popular podcast player apps?

Where do our listeners live?

Transistor provides a map, so you can visualize where your listeners live.

How can I see a map of my podcast listeners?

We also show you a table view (which you can export as a CSV).

Table: what percentage of my podcast listeners live in the USA, UK, Canada, or Australia?

Want better podcast stats for your shows?

Try Transistor for free

Podcast stats from Apple, Spotify, Google

In addition to Transistor's built-in stats, you can also see analytics inside Apple Podcast Connect, Spotify's Dashboard, and more.

Apple Podcasts' analytics

In Apple's Spring 2022 release, podcast analytics got a refresh. They now show you how many people have clicked "follow" on your podcast inside their app: