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Podfade: one in four abandoned podcasts stopped after a single episode
Podcastquery, 2026-11-02 · Full lists as CSV, $29
Most podcasts stop early. Of the 3.6 million shows in the Podcast Index that have not published in a year, a quarter stopped after their first episode. The median abandoned show has 5 episodes.
| Stopped after | Abandoned shows | Share | Cumulative |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 episode | 890,027 | 24.5% | 24.5% |
| 2 or 3 episodes | 568,868 | 15.7% | 40.2% |
| 4 to 7 episodes | 730,809 | 20.1% | 60.3% |
| 8 to 10 episodes | 313,379 | 8.6% | 68.9% |
| 11 to 20 episodes | 468,494 | 12.9% | 81.8% |
| 21 to 100 episodes | 533,280 | 14.7% | 96.5% |
| More than 100 | 125,801 | 3.5% | 100% |
We used the Podcast Index feed dump of 16 August 2026 (4,711,475 feeds). We dropped 270,076 Buzzsprout feeds, because the dump's episode count is unreliable for that host, 93,682 feeds with no episodes and 31,488 with no date for their newest episode. That leaves 4,316,229 shows. A show counts as abandoned when its newest episode is more than 365 days older than the dump: 3,630,658 shows, 84.1% of the total.
The episode count is the number of items the feed carries today. A feed that deletes old episodes looks shorter than the show was.
No cliff at episode 7
Podcasters often say most shows die at episode 7. The dump does not show a drop there. The number of abandoned shows falls steadily with each extra episode: 253,363 stopped at 4, 198,393 at 5, 155,009 at 6, 124,044 at 7 and 105,864 at 8. The biggest single exit is after episode 1, and it is more than three times the next one.
There is a bump at 10: 117,266 shows against 90,249 at 9. We traced it to feeds that keep only their last 10 items. FeedBurner has 5,413 abandoned feeds with exactly 10 items and 1,045 with 9; WordPress.com has 1,393 and 112. Some of the "by episode 10" share are shows that published more.
Active shows look different. Of the 389,063 shows that published in the 90 days before the dump, 4.0% have one episode, 19.7% have 10 or fewer, and the median is 52.
The 2020 class
We grouped shows by the year of their oldest episode. 997,635 shows started in 2020, 2.75 times the 2019 class. Of the 2020 class, 2.3% published in the 90 days before the dump. 27.3% have one episode and 63.3% have 7 or fewer.
| First episode | Shows | 1 episode | 7 or fewer | Active in last 90 days |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017 | 146,972 | 12.4% | 51.4% | 4.3% |
| 2018 | 220,674 | 18.7% | 53.1% | 4.1% |
| 2019 | 362,689 | 20.0% | 54.0% | 3.7% |
| 2020 | 997,635 | 27.3% | 63.3% | 2.3% |
| 2021 | 729,499 | 24.1% | 60.3% | 3.1% |
| 2022 | 328,011 | 16.7% | 46.3% | 7.5% |
| 2023 | 276,871 | 18.8% | 44.4% | 11.4% |
| 2024 | 269,746 | 24.1% | 48.8% | 16.9% |
Shows from 2017 to 2019 survive at about 4% after seven to nine years. The 2020 and 2021 classes are below that after five years.
Free hosts, short shows
Where a show was hosted says a lot about how early it stopped. Among abandoned shows on Libsyn, a paid host, 4.4% have one episode and 27.4% have 10 or fewer. On Anchor (now Spotify for Creators), free, the figures are 27.7% and 72.3%, across 1,704,993 abandoned shows.
| Host | Abandoned shows | 1 episode | 10 or fewer |
|---|---|---|---|
| anchor.fm | 1,704,993 | 27.7% | 72.3% |
| spreaker.com | 429,494 | 16.8% | 76.4% |
| ivoox.com | 174,158 | 4.6% | 52.4% |
| soundcloud.com | 170,906 | 7.3% | 72.2% |
| rss.com | 131,789 | 71.6% | 87.8% |
| podbean.com | 67,535 | 13.4% | 56.7% |
| castbox.fm | 49,803 | 50.6% | 84.1% |
| libsyn.com | 41,728 | 4.4% | 27.4% |
| acast.com | 35,470 | 8.7% | 47.9% |
| redcircle.com | 22,894 | 18.3% | 55.8% |
RSS.com, Castbox and Hubhopper (56.9%) have the most one-episode feeds. We did not check how many of those are a trailer or a test upload rather than a first real episode.
The full tables, with every episode count from 1 to 100 and every host with 5,000 or more abandoned shows, are in the dataset files.
Full lists as CSV
| List | Rows | |
|---|---|---|
| Religion & Spirituality podcasts | 40,093 | |
| Society & Culture podcasts | 36,736 | |
| Business podcasts | 36,099 | |
| Education podcasts | 33,523 | |
| Health & Fitness podcasts | 22,270 |
Podcasts with a contact email. Author, website, Apple Podcasts link, feed, language, episode count and latest episode date. $29 one-time per list, download right after payment.
Dataset
by_start_year.csv, stopped_by_episode_count.csv, stopped_by_host.csv, README.md, METHOD.md
Cite this
Podcastquery, Podfade: one in four abandoned podcasts stopped after a single episode, 2026-11-02, https://podcastquery.com/research/podfade.