The 10 Best Podcast Analytics Tools for 2026 (Honestly Compared)

Podcast analytics used to mean one number: downloads. Not any more. The best podcast analytics tools now track video views, listener retention, audience demographics and, if you run a B2B show, which companies are actually tuning in. The catch is that no single tool does all of it, and the market shifted properly when Spotify shut down Chartable at the end of 2024.

Below are ten tools worth your time in 2026, each one verified and honestly assessed. One of them, Insight Studio, is ours. We flag the bias when we get there. And if you would rather not build a measurement stack yourself, our podcast analytics service handles reporting and pipeline attribution for you.

First, what happened to Chartable?

A quick public service announcement. Chartable, for years the default third-party analytics tool for podcasters, no longer exists. Spotify acquired it in 2022 and shut it down in December 2024, folding its SmartLinks and SmartPromos features into Megaphone. If you are still hunting for your Chartable login, stop. It is gone.

The bad news is that there is no single like-for-like replacement. The good news is that between the platform dashboards, independent prefixes and specialist products below, you can rebuild everything Chartable did, and usually better. If your main need is podcast ad attribution, Podscribe has become the IAB-certified standard for brands and publishers, and it is worth a look alongside the tools in this list.

The best podcast analytics tools in 2026

1. Spotify for Creators

Spotify for Creators (formerly Spotify for Podcasters) is the free dashboard for everything happening on Spotify. It had a significant upgrade in June 2026: audience segments that separate first-time listeners from returning ones, day-by-day episode trend comparisons against your back catalogue, and full historical data going back to your first ever listener. Spotify also changed its play standard, so a play now only counts after 30 seconds of listening or viewing.

• Good: free, detailed, and covers both audio and video consumption on Spotify. The audience segments are genuinely useful for working out whether growth is coming from discovery or loyalty.
• Not so good: Spotify only. Your Apple, YouTube and everywhere-else audience is invisible here.
• Best for: everyone. If your show is on Spotify, there is no reason not to use it.

2. Apple Podcasts Connect

Apple Podcasts Connect is Apple's free equivalent, and its headline metric is one of the most honest in podcasting: engaged listeners, meaning people who played at least 20 minutes or 40 per cent of an episode. You also get followers, listeners, plays and time listened, with filters for episode, location, engagement and follow status.

• Good: engaged listeners cuts through vanity numbers. Follower trends tell you whether the show is compounding or coasting.
• Not so good: Apple only, and the dashboard is sparser than Spotify's.
• Best for: any show with a meaningful Apple audience, which is most of them.

3. YouTube Studio

If your podcast is on YouTube (every Earworm show is, since we work video-first), YouTube Studio holds the richest behavioural data of any platform. Watch time, average view duration, impressions and click-through rate, demographics, and audience retention graphs that show the exact moment viewers drop off an episode.

• Good: retention graphs are brutal and brilliant. No audio platform can tell you which minute of your episode lost the room.
• Not so good: it is built for video in general, not podcasts specifically, so benchmarks need interpreting with care.
• Best for: video podcasts. In 2026, that should be most podcasts.

4. Transistor

Transistor is a podcast host with unusually good analytics baked in. You get average downloads per episode at 7, 30, 60 and 90 days after publish, an episode comparison table you can export to CSV, breakdowns by app, device and country, and an analytics API. It also supports OP3 (more on that below), which says something about its attitude to open data.

• Good: the 7, 30, 60 and 90-day view is the fairest way to compare episodes published at different times.
• Not so good: you need to host with Transistor to get it, and download stats alone still cannot tell you who is listening.
• Best for: independent podcasters and small teams who want tidy analytics without adding extra tools.

5. Buzzsprout

Buzzsprout is another host whose stats punch above their weight. Its numbers are IAB-certified (Podcast Measurement Technical Guidelines 2.2), it counts one download per IP address per day to keep figures honest, and it includes an episode pacing chart comparing your four most recent episodes. Most usefully, it benchmarks your downloads against other Buzzsprout shows, so you know whether your numbers are actually good.

• Good: the benchmarking. Knowing where 500 downloads puts you is half the battle.
• Not so good: as with Transistor, the analytics are tied to hosting. Switching hosts for stats alone rarely makes sense.
• Best for: newer podcasters who want context, not just a graph that goes up or down.

6. OP3

OP3, the Open Podcast Prefix Project, is a free, open-source analytics service built by John Spurlock. You add a short prefix to your episode URLs and it measures downloads independently of your host, with a public stats page, full data exports and an open API. It has been running since September 2022 and measures millions of downloads a month across thousands of shows.

• Good: free, transparent and fully auditable. The entire codebase is public. It is the perfect neutral second opinion on your host's numbers.
• Not so good: stats pages are public by default, which some brands will not love, and it measures downloads only, with no audience intelligence.
• Best for: anyone who values independent, host-agnostic download numbers and open data.

7. Podtrac

Podtrac is one of the oldest names in podcast measurement. Its free, prefix-based measurement is IAB-certified, and it has published the industry's longest-running rankings of top publishers and podcasts since 2016. Its global ranking now includes YouTube viewership alongside audio, which was an industry first.

• Good: credibility. Podtrac numbers are the ones advertisers and networks recognise, so they carry weight in sponsorship conversations.
• Not so good: the product feels its age in places, and the free tier is about measurement rather than deep audience insight.
• Best for: publishers and networks that need industry-standard figures to show advertisers.

8. CoHost

CoHost, built by the Canadian podcast agency Quill, is a prefix-based analytics tool with a clear B2B focus. Its B2B Analytics feature identifies the companies listening to your show, with firmographics such as company size, industry and revenue. Because it works through a prefix added to your RSS feed, you can keep your existing hosting provider.

• Good: company-level listener data is a genuine differentiator. For B2B marketers, "which accounts are listening" beats "how many downloads" every time.
• Not so good: it is a paid product aimed at brands and agencies, so it is overkill for hobby shows.
• Best for: B2B brands that want their podcast metrics to speak the language of pipeline.

9. Insight Studio (by Earworm)

Full disclosure: Insight Studio is Earworm's own audience intelligence product, so read this entry with that in mind. We built it because our clients kept asking the same question: is the podcast actually working? It combines B2B audience data, paid media attribution and shareable dashboards, so marketing teams can see the professional audience behind the play counts and connect promotion spend to results. It is the reporting layer behind shows like The CFO Playbook, the show we produce for Soldo.

• Good: B2B audience data, paid attribution and reporting in one place, with dashboards you can share straight to leadership.
• Not so good: it is designed for B2B shows rather than hobbyists, and it is ours, so weigh our opinion accordingly.
• Best for: B2B marketing teams that need to prove podcast ROI to a CFO rather than admire download charts.

10. Podder

Podder positions itself squarely as a Chartable alternative. It offers AI-assisted analytics, audience demographics enrichment, competitor analysis, review tracking and customisable reports that agencies can brand as their own.

• Good: competitor analysis and white-label reporting are handy for agencies and networks managing several shows at once.
• Not so good: much of its audience data comes from enrichment and modelling, so sanity-check it against your first-party numbers.
• Best for: agencies and networks that want branded, client-ready reports without building them by hand.

How to choose your podcast measurement stack

Do not pick one tool. Pick a small stack:

• Platform dashboards. Spotify for Creators, Apple Podcasts Connect and YouTube Studio are free and always on. Use all three.
• One source of truth for downloads. Either your host's analytics (Transistor, Buzzsprout) or an independent prefix (OP3, Podtrac). Agree the number everyone reports.
• Audience intelligence, if you are B2B. Add company-level data (CoHost, Insight Studio) so the show connects to revenue rather than stopping at reach.

Then report trends, not totals. A show growing 10 per cent month on month on 800 downloads is in far better shape than a flat one on 5,000. And if your show is video-first, treat YouTube retention as your quality metric, because it is the closest thing podcasting has to an honest editor.

Or let us do the measuring

Earworm is a B2B video podcast agency. Every show we produce ships with measurement built in: YouTube, audio and clip performance in one view, plus pipeline attribution through Insight Studio. Explore our podcast analytics service, or book a call and we will show you what your show's data should look like.