How Many Podcasts Are There in 2027? Total vs Active Shows, Sourced

The number of podcasts is about 3.8 to 4.7 million feeds as of October 2026, depending on the index: Listen Notes counts 3.82 million and Podcast Index 4.74 million. Only about 465,000 shows published an episode in the last 90 days, so roughly one podcast in ten is active. Spotify reports 7 million titles, a catalog figure that includes dormant shows.

Most pages ranking for this question quote one undated number. Every figure below names the organization that counted it and the date it was taken. No one has counted 2027 podcasts yet, because 2027 hasn’t started; this page uses the newest counts available on October 14, 2026, and will be updated as they change. For the wider picture (listeners, platforms, ad revenue), see our podcast statistics hub.

How many podcasts are there in total?

The total number of podcasts sits between about 3.8 million and 7 million, and the spread comes from what each source counts. Directories that crawl open RSS feeds report 3.8 to 4.7 million. Spotify’s own catalog figure is higher because it counts every title on its platform, live or not.

Source	What it counts	Figure	Date
Podcast Index	Podcast feeds in its open index	4,741,510	October 14, 2026
Listen Notes	Podcasts in its search database, after removing dead and junk feeds	3,823,287	October 14, 2026
Spotify	Podcast titles available on Spotify	7 million	About page, last updated August 2026
Apple Podcasts	Apple doesn’t publish a current catalog total	Not published	n/a

Podcast Index is a free, open directory that many podcast apps use for search. Its figures come from the public counts file behind its stats page. Listen Notes is a podcast search engine that sells its database; it says it uses scripts and human moderators to keep out deleted feeds, test clips, PDF-only feeds and AI-generated audio, which is why its total is lower.

How many active podcasts are there?

About 465,000 podcasts are active if “active” means a new episode in the last 90 days, according to Podcast Index’s counts for October 14, 2026. That’s 9.8% of the 4.74 million feeds in its index. Ninety days is the longest window Podcast Index reports, and a show that publishes monthly still clears it.

Shorter windows shrink the field quickly. The table shows how many feeds in Podcast Index published at least one new episode within each window.

Published a new episode in the last…	Podcasts (Podcast Index, Oct 14, 2026)	Share of all feeds
3 days	111,884	2.4%
7 days	198,379	4.2%
14 days	272,715	5.8%
30 days	340,807	7.2%
60 days	414,488	8.7%
90 days	465,447	9.8%

Listen Notes uses a calendar-year test instead. In its October 14, 2026 update, 567,678 podcasts had a latest episode dated 2026, about 14.8% of its database. That figure is higher than the 90-day count because it includes shows that published in January and then stopped.

So the honest answer to “how many active podcasts are there” is about 465,000 to 568,000, depending on the window. Fewer than 200,000 published anything in the past week.

Why do podcast counts disagree?

Podcast counts disagree because each source answers a slightly different question. None of the numbers above is wrong; they measure different things.

• Feeds versus titles. Podcast Index and Listen Notes count RSS feeds. Spotify counts titles on its platform, which can include shows that never had a public feed.
• Dead feeds. A podcast stays listed long after its host stops. Listen Notes logs “dead” podcasts each year (35,462 in 2025) and says other directories inflate totals by keeping feeds that were deleted long ago.
• Test shows from free hosts. More than half of the podcasts Listen Notes tracks, 2,013,466 of them, are hosted on anchor.fm, the address used by Spotify’s free hosting service. Free hosting makes it easy to publish a one-episode experiment that is never continued.
• AI-generated feeds. Listen Notes flagged 3,040 AI-generated fake podcasts in September 2026 alone, against 8,848 new podcasts added to its database that month. A directory that doesn’t filter them counts them.
• YouTube-only shows. A video podcast that lives only on YouTube has no RSS feed, so RSS-based indexes miss it. None of the totals above fully counts YouTube podcasts.
• The date. Every count moves daily. A number without a date can’t be compared with anything.

How many podcasts are on Spotify and Apple Podcasts?

Spotify says it has 7 million podcast titles, on its About page, which was last updated in August 2026. Spotify doesn’t break that down into active and inactive shows, so treat it as the size of the library, not the number of shows still publishing.

Apple doesn’t publish a current count of shows in Apple Podcasts on its newsroom or on Apple Podcasts for Creators. Figures you see quoted for Apple come from third-party trackers, not from Apple. Treat any “Apple has X million podcasts” claim as an estimate unless it links to an Apple page.

How many new podcasts launch each year?

About 211,000 new podcasts launched in 2025, according to Listen Notes, a fifth of the 2020 peak. The table uses its October 14, 2026 update; the 2026 figure covers January to mid-October only.

Year	New podcasts (Listen Notes)
2019	335,021
2020	1,020,468
2021	751,503
2022	252,828
2023	237,449
2024	201,182
2025	211,038
2026 (to Oct 14)	116,258

Launches have been flat at 200,000 to 250,000 a year since 2022. New podcasts added to Listen Notes each month fell from 20,249 in January 2026 to 8,848 in September. Our podcast trends for 2027 covers what is behind that slowdown, including the rise of AI-generated feeds.

How many podcasts are there by country and language?

The United States accounts for about 2.41 million of the 3.82 million podcasts in Listen Notes, roughly 63%, as of October 14, 2026. English is the main language of about 2.32 million. Brazil (209,362), Indonesia (145,579) and Germany (114,735) follow the U.S. by region.

By genre, Business is the third-largest category with 472,666 podcasts, behind Society and Culture (690,134) and Education (621,913). Real estate shows sit inside Business, and no public index publishes a reliable real estate count. These are totals, not active shows, and the region and genre tags come from what each feed declares about itself.

One host’s numbers give a sense of scale from the inside. Buzzsprout, a large podcast host, reports 111,813 active podcasts on its own platform for September 2026, using its own definition of active. That is one company’s customers, not the market.

What does the number of podcasts mean if you start a real estate show?

The number of podcasts matters less than the number of active shows covering your market, and that number is usually tiny. Four million total feeds sounds crowded. About 465,000 active shows worldwide, spread across every topic and language, leaves very few publishing regularly about homes in one city.

Run the same check for your own market:

• Search your city and county name plus “real estate,” “homes” and “living in” on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and YouTube.
• Note each show’s latest episode date and drop anything older than 90 days.
• Note the format of the survivors: market updates, interviews, investing or brokerage promotion.
• Pick the format nobody local is doing well, and the publishing schedule you can keep for a year.

If the check shows an open lane and you’d rather have the launch done for you, look at the Icons Launchpad podcast package, from $497 one time. Before you commit, check two benchmarks: what average podcast listeners per episode really look like, and the average podcast episode length for shows like the one you’re planning.