In 2002, two years before the word "podcast" was coined, I stumbled across an iTunes station that sounded like an amateur talk radio show. A couple of friends got together each week, recorded an hour or more of their conversation, and posted it as The Great Radio Tiki Experiment. The show is long gone, butarchivesof it are still available. This obscure program was one of the earliest podcasts, and I was hooked.
Today the podcast market is so overrun with content that the only practical way to find shows you love, organize episodes you want to hear, and listen to them is to download a dedicated podcast app. Perhaps you're perfectly happy with the stock podcast player app that came on your phone, like Apple Podcasts or Google Podcasts. They're both absolutely fine, but if you listen to a lot of shows, you might want to upgrade to one of the apps listed below to get unique features.
Below are the best podcast players, along with some advice about how to pick the one that's going to best meet your listening needs.
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Best for Sideloading on iPhone
Castro
If you use the free version, Castro is an average podcast app for iPhone. However, if you upgrade to Castro Plus, you get the Sideload feature, which lets you upload any content you want to play to the podcast player, such as audiobooks, talks from conferences, and anything else you want. The rest of Castro's features are average, including a button that trims dead air from your listening experience, a voice booster setting, the ability to customize settings for each show in your feed, and a dark mode. I don't recommend the free version of this app; if you're interested in a Plus account, you can try it for a week before paying.
Castro is available on the App Store for free, and Castro Plus costs $4.99 per month, $29.99 per year, or $49.99 per year for up to six family members. It's for Apple devices only.
Best No-Subscription App for Android Devices
DoggCatcher
If you want to listen to podcasts on Android and you want to pay only once, as opposed to paying a monthly subscription, DoggCatcher is your best bet. This app has standard features, such as variable playback speeds, offline playback, customizable playlists, and automatic deletion of episodes you've played from your device. But the real selling point is that it's a reliable podcast player app that doesn't require a subscription for any special upsells, ad-removal, and so forth. Some users have complained that the app hasn't been updated in several years, and a few features are buggy, but I didn't experience any issues in testing.
DoggCatcher costs just $2.99 and is available onGoogle Play for Android devices.
Best No-Subscription App for Apple Devices
Downcast
4.5
Downcast is among the best podcast apps for iPhones and Macs. It also works with Apple Watches and CarPlay. You pay once for the app and own it forever with no subscription fees. It's easy to subscribe to podcasts on Downcast, whether you browse, search for them, or add them via a URL feed. Rich settings let you automatically start your favorite podcast a set number of seconds in or end them early, letting you bypass lengthy intros or closing ads. A list view contains shows that you've either subscribed to or downloaded, with details such as how many episodes are in your queue, when the most recent episode debuted, and an icon indicating if you are not subscribed to download the next release automatically. Downcast is an excellent choice if you're an Apple-only user and don't need a web console.
Downcast costs $2.99 for the iPhone version and $4.99 for macOS.
Downcast (for iPhone) Review
Best for Sharing Clips
Overcast
Overcast is for Apple devices only (iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Mac, Apple Vision) with a few unique features, the standout one being clip sharing. With clip sharing, you can tell a fellow podcast lover about a show you love by sending them an audio or video clip from an episode, up to one minute long. I also like that you can create playlists of podcast shows so that each new episode appears in the list (called Smart Playlist), as well as playlists of specific episodes you want to hear. The free version contains ads and has a few feature limitations but no showstoppers.
Overcast is free, or $9.99 per year for Premium. It's available for Apple devices.
Best Free Android App
Podcast Addict
Many readers of this article have commented that they swear by Podcast Addict, a free podcast player app for Android. Being free and uncomplicated are its selling points. In testing, I found the interface to be cluttered and the features light. For example, you can create one active playlist but not multiple custom playlists that automatically repopulate daily. So if you want a Morning News playlist that repopulates every morning and a separate Dog Walk playlist, you can't do that in Podcast Addict, but you can in most other podcast player apps. That said, does Podcast Addict work and is it free to use? Yes. But compared with other Android apps, it's not the most sophisticated.
Podcast Addict is free, and the Premium version costs $0.99 per month or $9.99 per year. It's available in the Google Play store for Android.
Best Free Podcast App, All Platforms
Pocket Casts
One of the most loved podcast player apps, Pocket Casts, is free for Android and iOS. It's also available on Amazon Echo, Apple CarPlay, Apple Watch, Android Auto, and other platforms, some of which are restricted to Plus and Patron members (macOS, Windows, web player). This app has a tidy interface and great features. It's easy to see what's on your subscription list and which episodes you've started but still need to finish. It has 0.1 increments for increasing or decreasing the audio speed, so you can gently adjust the pace. Paying members get access to some platforms that are off-limits to free users, as well as cloud storage and exclusive app icons and themes.
Pocket Casts is free, and the Plus version costs $39.99 per year. The Patron subscription level costs $99.99 per year and adds more cloud storage (100GB, whereas Plus members get 20GB), early access to features, and a few other perks. It's available onAndroid,iOS, macOS, the web, and Windows.
How to Choose a Podcast Player
Having tested around 25 podcast players, I've picked those that offer a great overall experience or something unique. Nearly all podcast apps have a few features in common. At their most basic, podcast players should let you subscribe to a show so that each new episode appears in your podcast feed automatically.
You should also be able to control how much content downloads to your device, either manually or by limiting the number of new episodes that download from each show. Some apps also let you set a limit on the amount of storage you're willing to use.
Any podcast app should let you sort your favorites by creating playlists, too. You might, for example, have a list of the shows you listen to every morning, a list of the shows you save for the weekend, a list for long car drives, and so on.
Most apps have an audio boost feature that automatically enriches human voices, and many but not all have a dead air trimmer that, when enabled, automatically snips out silences that are longer than a breath or two. You might also look for an app that gives you a good range of options for speeding up or slowing down the playback speed. For example, I have one show in my podcast feed that I listen to at 1 1/4x speed—any faster would make it hard for me to focus, but some podcast players jump right to 1 1/2x speed.
How Much Should You Spend on a Podcast Player App?
Many excellent podcast player apps are free. If you want one with that isn't free, you have two options. First, buy an app for a one-time price, like DoggCatcher for Android ($2.99) or Downcast for Apple devices ($2.99 for iPhone, $4.99 for Mac). With both of those apps, you pay once and own the app forever. Downcast is excellent (it's the podcast app I use the most) and DoggCatcher is very good, but the app hasn't been updated in years.
The second option is to pay for a subscription, where a good rate is $9.99 per year. Two apps in this list cost more than that: Castro ($29.99 per year) and Pocket Casts ($39.99 or $99.99 per year). Pocket Casts has a reputation for being an app with a loyal following who are happy to pay more to support the people who make the app. Castro started out similarly but had some hiccups in 2023 and was sold in January 2024 to a new owner. The new owner, Bluck Apps, says the price of the app won't go up "at this time." Bluck Apps also owns Aurelian Audio Podcast Player, which we have not evaluated.
Meg St-Esprit contributed to this article.
