Anchor hosts 40% of all podcasts and 15% of Apple's top-100 charts

Key findings

1. Anchor (Spotify for Creators) hosts 1,906,462 of the 4,711,475 feeds in the Podcast Index dump, 40.46%, and 213 of the 1,387 Apple top-100 chart shows we joined, 15.36%. Source: Podcastquery, September 2026.
2. Megaphone hosts 26,809 feeds, 0.57%, and 239 chart shows, 17.23%. Its chart share is higher than Anchor's on a feed share 71 times smaller.
3. Four hosts hold 53.78% of the 1,387 chart shows and 18 hosts hold 80% of them. Two hosts hold 52.43% of the 4,711,449 feeds that carry a host value.
4. Anchor tops four of the 18 storefront charts (Brazil at 47.92%, Poland at 53.68%, India at 20.00%, Korea at 17.78%) and sits under 5 shows in eight of them, including the United States and the United Kingdom.
5. 5.27% of Anchor feeds published an episode in the 90 days to 2026-08-16, against 33.94% of Megaphone feeds and 9.29% of all feeds.
6. 25.41% of Anchor feeds with at least one episode hold exactly one episode, against 2.32% of Megaphone feeds.
7. Anchor's share of feeds whose oldest episode falls in 2020 is 70.39%. Its share of feeds whose oldest episode falls in 2026 is 22.04%.

We expected Anchor to be behind the enterprise hosts on the charts, because free hosting fills up with small shows. We did not expect it to be behind Megaphone, which runs one feed for every 71 Anchor feeds and holds 239 chart shows to Anchor's 213.

Megaphone holds 17.23% of chart shows on 0.57% of feeds and Anchor holds 15.36% on 40.46%

Anchor is the largest host in the Podcast Index by a wide margin at 40.46% of feeds, and the second largest on the charts at 15.36% of chart shows. Megaphone is the 17th largest by feeds at 0.57% and the largest on the charts at 17.23%. Divide chart share by feed share and Megaphone reads 30.28, Anchor 0.38.

The 40.46% counts every feed in the index, live or abandoned. The 15.36% counts only shows that reached a top-100 chart. Megaphone sells hosting to publishers, and 33.94% of its feeds were active in the 90 days to 2026-08-16, against 5.27% of Anchor's.

Ranked by chart share, Megaphone leads with 239 shows and Anchor follows with 213

Megaphone holds 17.23% of the 1,387 chart shows on 0.57% of feeds. Anchor holds 15.36% on 40.46%. Acast holds 11.39% on 1.18%. Omny Studio holds 9.81% on 0.43%. Simplecast holds 4.90% on 0.44%. Spreaker holds 3.60% on 11.96%.

Below that, Libsyn holds 23 chart shows, 1.66%. Buzzsprout holds 11, 0.79%. Captivate and Audioboom hold 9 each, 0.65%. Podbean holds 8, 0.58%. RSS.com holds 5, 0.36%. Podigee holds 31, 2.23%. Transistor holds under 5 chart shows, so its share prints n/a. Podomatic holds 0 chart shows on 60,625 feeds and Castbox 0 on 51,149.

Two of the hosts with chart shows are broadcasters serving their own audio. files.bbci.co.uk holds 23 chart shows, 1.66%, and npr.org holds 5, 0.36%. We count them under their own domains rather than under whatever vendor sits behind them.

Four hosts hold 53.78% of chart shows and two hosts hold 52.43% of feeds

The 1,387 chart shows spread across 119 distinct hosts, and four of them hold half. Megaphone, Anchor, Acast and Omny Studio hold 746 shows between them, 53.78%. Eighteen hosts hold 80% of the chart shows.

The 4,711,449 feeds carrying a host value spread across 102,130 hosts, and Anchor plus Spreaker hold 2,470,063 of them, 52.43%. Fifteen hosts hold 80% of feeds.

Anchor tops 4 storefront charts and enterprise hosts run from 8.42% to 81.08%

Shares are of that storefront's joined shows.

In the United States chart, 97 shows joined, Megaphone is the top host at 30.93%, and Anchor sits under 5 shows, so its share prints n/a. In the United Kingdom, 98 shows joined, Megaphone is top at 36.73% and Anchor is again under 5. In Germany, 97 shows joined and Podigee leads at 31.96%. In France, 74 shows joined and Audiomeans leads at 41.89%. In Brazil, 96 shows joined and Anchor leads at 47.92%. In Japan, 97 shows joined, Megaphone leads at 48.45% and Anchor is second at 23.71%. In India all 100 shows joined and Anchor leads at 20.00%.

Enterprise hosts (Megaphone, Omny Studio, Acast, Simplecast, Audioboom, ART19, Podigee, Audiomeans, Prisa Audio) take 81.08% of the French chart and 8.42% of the Polish one. Creator hosts (Anchor, Buzzsprout, Spreaker, RSS.com, Podbean, Libsyn, Transistor, Captivate, Castbox, SoundCloud, iVoox) take 74.74% of the Polish chart and 8.16% of the British one. The two lists are fixed and do not cover every host, so they do not sum to 100%.

5.27% of Anchor feeds are active and 25.41% hold a single episode

100,428 of Anchor's 1,906,462 feeds published an episode in the 90 days to 2026-08-16, 5.27%. The all-feed figure is 9.29%, 437,693 of 4,711,475. Megaphone is at 33.94%, Podigee at 40.89%, Audiomeans at 41.57%, Libsyn at 24.70% and Buzzsprout at 18.01%. Of the 1,387 chart shows, 1,254 are active, 90.41%.

481,013 of the 1,893,153 Anchor feeds with at least one episode hold exactly one, 25.41%. On Acast that share is 7.46%, on Libsyn 3.24% and on Megaphone 2.32%. The median episode count across the 1,387 chart shows is 274. Anchor's median episode count is 5 and Megaphone's is 41.

Anchor's 40.46% is mostly two years of signups. It holds 70.39% of feeds whose oldest episode falls in 2020 and 68.19% of 2021. On feeds whose oldest episode falls in 2026 it holds 22.04%, below its 2018 share of 31.06%.

The caveat, from METHOD.md: "The start year is the year of the oldest episode still in the feed, not the year the show launched. Feeds that drop old episodes read as younger than they are."

Two pages quote Anchor at 55.8% and 55% without a denominator, our count gives 40.46%

Sci-Tech Today, last updated 2026-08-27, writes: "Anchor FM, a Spotify subsidiary, dominates podcast hosting with a 55.8% market share" (https://www.sci-tech-today.com/stats/podcast-statistics/). The page gives no denominator, no method and no source. Learning Revolution, last updated 2026-06-06, writes: "Spotify's Anchor hosts 55% of all global podcasts (2025)" (https://www.learningrevolution.net/podcast-stats/), again with no denominator or source. Our figure for the same idea is 40.46% of 4,711,475 feeds, and how many podcasts exist sets that denominator out.

Livewire Labs, published 2026-09-01 for August 2026, puts Spotify for Creators at 16.2% and Megaphone at 3.2% (https://livewire.io/podcast-hosts-by-episode-share/). That is a share of about 2.5 million episodes published in one month, attributed by media file URL, with 3.02% of episodes unattributed. Livewire counts episodes published in one month; we count feeds, so the two figures measure different things.

Amplifi Media, published 2022-08-21, wrote: "12% of podcasts have been updated in the last 90 days. Of the 4 million titles in Podcast Index, 12% are fresh in the last 90 days" (https://www.amplifimedia.com/blogstein-1/lyspqop3ylro9a2t7y2de820uwkgwx). Same source and same 90-day window as ours, four years earlier. Our 2026-08-16 dump gives 437,693 of 4,711,475 active, 9.29%.

The join keeps 1,387 of 1,479 chart ids, 93.78%

We fetched 18 storefront files of 100 shows each, 1,800 slots. No slot was dropped for a non-numeric id. Those 1,800 slots collapse to 1,479 distinct itunesIds, because a show that charts in several storefronts is counted once. 1,387 of those ids match a row in the 2026-08-16 dump, 93.78%. The 92 that do not are shows Apple lists whose feed the dump does not carry, or carries without that itunesId; the dump is three weeks older than the charts, so a show that entered the index after 2026-08-16 cannot join. All 1,387 joined rows carry a host value, so no row was dropped at that step.

France is the weakest join at 74 of 100, and those 26 missing ids are the largest single block of unjoined shows. India is the only storefront where all 100 joined.

Method: 4,711,475 feeds, 18 charts, 1,387 joined shows

The full write-up is on /method. Host is the registrable domain of the feed URL, so npr.org and files.bbci.co.uk count under themselves even if a vendor serves the audio underneath, and a white-label domain counts as its own host. An alias map folds spotify.com, spotify.link, podcasters.spotify.com and creators.spotify.com into anchor.fm.

Every chart share here is a share of the 1,387 joined shows, not of the 1,479 chart ids and not of the 1,800 slots. A storefront is Apple's store, not the show's country of origin, so a US show charting in Ireland counts in the ie row. episodeCount is capped at 1,000 in the dump for recently refreshed feeds, so any median at or near 1,000 is a floor; 179 of the 1,387 chart shows sit at the cap. Buzzsprout episode counts are unreliable in this dump, so its median prints n/a. Cells under 5 print "<5" and their shares print "n/a".

As a sanity check, our 4,711,475 feeds sit 16,145 below the 4,727,620 on podcastindex.org/stats read 2026-09-06, 0.34% low, the direction we expect from a dump three weeks older than the live counter.

Dataset

The rows behind every table are published at /static/data/anchor-hosts-40-percent-of-podcasts-15-percent-of-apple-charts/ as hosts.csv, 72 platform rows with feeds, feed share, active count, active share, chart shows, chart share, ratio and median episodes; storefronts.csv, 18 rows with the joined count, top host, Anchor count and the enterprise and creator shares; and chart_shows.csv, one row for each of the 1,387 joined shows with its itunesId, title, host, storefront count, episode count, oldest year, category and explicit flag. README.md names every column and denominator and METHOD.md holds the join, the alias map, the definitions and the limits. Data: CC BY 4.0, Podcastquery, September 2026. Next to any number here, cite: Source: Podcastquery, September 2026.