Podcast PR has grown into a discipline with its own tools. Agencies that once kept a spreadsheet of a few dozen friendly hosts now run booking campaigns across hundreds of shows, sponsorship plans across dozens of networks and monitoring for many clients. The tool you choose shapes how fast your team works, what data you can show clients, and how much each placement costs to find.
This guide compares the main options PR and ad agencies evaluate in 2026. We focus on what each tool is designed for, the data it provides, and its published prices, with sources linked and checked as of October 2026. Where a price or feature is not published, we say so rather than guess. We build podsearch.org, one of the tools compared; we have held it to the same standard.
What PR teams actually need from a tool
Before comparing vendors, list the jobs. Most agency podcast work involves five:
- Discovery: finding shows by topic, audience, guest history and sponsor history.
- Qualification: checking activity, format, size signals and brand safety.
- Contact: finding the right person and route to pitch.
- Outreach and tracking: sending pitches, follow-ups and recording outcomes.
- Monitoring and reporting: knowing when a client appears or is mentioned, and showing results.
No single tool is best at all five. The useful question is which combination covers your jobs at a reasonable cost.
Rephonic
Rephonic positions itself as a podcast research and outreach platform. Its pricing page, checked on 2026-10-24, lists three web-app plans:
| Plan | Price (monthly billing) | Users | Searches/month | Campaigns | Connected inboxes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Light | $99/month | 1 | 100 | 3 | 1 |
| Standard | $149/month | 5 | 500 | 50 | 3 |
| Business | $299/month | 10 | Unlimited | Unlimited | 5 |
The page advertises yearly billing as "two months free" and lists exports on every plan, alerts, and concierge credits on Standard and Business. Its developers page separately lists an API at $299 a month including 10,000 requests, with data including audience estimates (downloads per episode, weekly downloads), listener demographics, contact details for hosts and publishers, transcripts with speaker identification, sponsor data and chart rankings.
Best for: teams that want audience estimates, contacts and outreach campaigns in one place. Consider: search and campaign quotas on the lower tiers, and that audience figures are modeled estimates; ask Rephonic how they are derived if your client reporting depends on them.
Podchaser
Podchaser is known for its podcast database of credits (hosts, guests, producers), ratings and reviews, and industry data products. We were unable to retrieve Podchaser's own pricing page when we checked, and G2's listing for the Podchaser API says the vendor has not provided pricing. We therefore list Podchaser pricing as not published and recommend requesting a quote.
Best for: credit and people data, such as which shows a person has appeared on, and teams that value a rich industry database. Consider: confirm pricing, seats, export limits and data-use terms with sales.
ListenNotes
ListenNotes is a long-running podcast search engine with a public website and the Listen API. Its API pricing page, checked on 2026-10-24, lists a Free plan ($0, 150 requests a month), Pro ($200 base for up to 5,000 requests, then $1.60, $1.30 and $1.10 per extra 1,000 at increasing volume) and Enterprise by quote. Pro and Enterprise list advanced data fields including RSS URL, email, Listen Score and global rank.
For agencies, ListenNotes is mainly relevant as a search engine for discovery and, with technical help, as an API for building internal tools. Its Listen Score, listed as an advanced field on paid API plans, is a proprietary popularity metric that can serve as a quick size signal.
Best for: fast show discovery and agencies with developers who want an API. Consider: we did not find outreach campaign features described on the API pricing page; plan to pair it with your own CRM or outreach tool.
Podcast Index
The Podcast Index is the open, community-run catalog of podcast RSS feeds, and the steward of the Podcast 2.0 namespace. It offers a free search website, a free API key (docs source) and a downloadable database. It is not a PR product, but it is the underlying open catalog many tools, including podsearch.org, are built on, and it is a reliable way to verify a show's feed.
Apple Podcasts and Spotify
The platforms themselves are useful free references. Apple Podcasts charts per country and category are the most widely cited public popularity signal, and Apple's Search API lets you look up shows (documented at about 20 calls per minute). Spotify's web player and charts show what is popular on Spotify. Neither provides outreach features or contact data, and both reflect a single platform.
A note on Chartable
Older tool roundups often list Chartable, which offered podcast analytics, charts tracking and attribution. Spotify announced on September 27, 2024 that it would sunset Chartable, and the service shut down on December 12, 2024 (RAIN News). If your reporting templates still reference Chartable data, they need a new source.
podsearch.org
podsearch.org is a full-text podcast search engine and data provider built on the Podcast Index catalog of about 4.7 million feeds, with around 3.2 million active feeds parsed into episodes.
- Discovery: free search at podsearch.org across episode titles, descriptions and, where feeds provide them, transcripts, with boolean operators, phrases, wildcards and field prefixes (
title:,episode:,desc:,content:). Browse covers 19 categories, Apple Podcasts charts per country, and new shows. - Freshness: feeds that send Podping notifications are re-polled within seconds to minutes; others are polled adaptively.
- Brand safety signal: an LLM classifier labels shows "likely AI-generated" only at 0.9 confidence or above; coverage is partial and on demand.
- Exports: datasets filtered by category, language, hosting platform, activity and episode count, with published contact emails where feeds include them. $0.10 per podcast under 1,000, $0.08 from 1,000, $0.05 from 5,000, $0.03 from 10,000, $60 minimum, one-time.
- API: ListenNotes-compatible, Free (150 requests/month), Pro $100/month (5,000 included, then $0.80/$0.65/$0.55 per 1,000), Enterprise at 50% of a ListenNotes Enterprise quote.
Best for: deep topic and guest discovery across episodes, fresh results for monitoring, and one-time exports without a subscription. Consider: podsearch.org does not estimate audience size or demographics, and does not include outreach campaign features.
Side-by-side
| Job | Rephonic | Podchaser | ListenNotes | podsearch.org |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Discovery by topic | Yes (searches quota by plan) | Yes | Yes | Yes, full-text across episodes |
| Search inside transcripts | Transcripts listed in API data | Not verified | Transcripts on paid API plans | Where feeds publish transcripts |
| Audience estimates | Yes, modeled | Not verified | Listen Score (proprietary) | No |
| Contacts | Yes | Not verified | Email field on paid API plans | Published feed emails in exports |
| Outreach campaigns | Yes | Not verified | Not verified | No |
| Published entry price | $99/month app | Not published | Free website; API from $0 | Free search; exports from $60 one-time |
"Not verified" means we could not confirm the feature from a public page as of October 2026, not that it does not exist.
How to build an efficient stack
Most agencies do not need the most expensive tool for every job. A common efficient stack:
- Free discovery first. Use full-text search to find candidate shows by topic, guest history and sponsor mentions. It is fast and costs nothing per search.
- Export the universe. For recurring categories, buy a one-time dataset export of active shows with contacts and activity fields, and keep it in your CRM keyed on the RSS feed URL.
- Enrich the top tier. For the shows that matter most, use a subscription tool's audience estimates or ask hosts directly for statistics.
- Run outreach in your CRM or a dedicated outreach tool, so history lives with the client account.
- Monitor with search alerts. Scripted or saved searches for client names, sorted by date, catch new appearances and mentions.
Cost example
An agency booking 10 clients a quarter in business and technology:
| Approach | Approximate cost |
|---|---|
| Rephonic Standard for 5 users | $149/month, $447 per quarter |
| podsearch.org export of 5,000 active business and tech shows | $250 one-time ($0.05 × 5,000) |
| podsearch.org search for discovery | Free |
| Optional podsearch.org API Pro for monitoring scripts | $100/month |
Some agencies use a subscription tool alone; others use exports and free search alone; many combine them. The right answer depends on how much you rely on audience estimates and built-in outreach features.
Choosing by agency type
The right stack depends heavily on what kind of podcast work your agency does most.
Boutique booking agencies. A small team booking a handful of experts on many shows spends most of its time on discovery and host research. Free full-text search covers discovery, a one-time export per specialty gives you contacts and activity fields, and a simple CRM tracks pitches. A subscription becomes worthwhile when clients start demanding audience numbers in every report.
Full-service PR firms. Podcasts are one channel among many, used by account teams with varying expertise. Ease of use and shared workflows matter more than raw search power, which favors all-in-one platforms with seats for every account lead. Supplement with deep search for niche briefs the platform's quotas or filters do not cover.
Media buying and ad agencies. Sponsorship work depends on size signals, brand safety and sponsor history. Search descriptions for sponsor language and competitor brands, use charts for the head of the market, ask shows for hosting statistics, and use modeled estimates only as a first filter. Exports of active shows by category give planners a universe to score.
In-house communications teams. Usually a small number of spokespeople and a few target audiences. A saved query library, a quarterly export and date-sorted search alerts for executives' names often cover the job without a subscription.
Agencies building their own tools. Teams with a developer can script discovery and monitoring against an API. A ListenNotes-compatible API lets you build once and choose the provider on price; podsearch.org's Pro plan is $100 a month with 5,000 requests included.
Whichever type you are, revisit the decision once a year. Prices, quotas and features change, and the cheapest stack that meets your clients' reporting needs is usually different from the one you started with.
Evaluating any tool: a checklist
Run the same test on every tool before you buy:
- Recall test. Pick three niche briefs you have worked on. Does the tool find the shows you eventually booked?
- Freshness test. Search for a show that published today. Is the new episode there?
- Accuracy test. Open 20 random results' RSS feeds. Do titles, activity and contact details match?
- Estimate transparency. For any audience number, ask how it is modeled and how it compares with hosting statistics shared by shows.
- Export terms. Can you export, how much, and can you keep the data after you cancel?
- Seat economics. How many people need access, and what does each seat cost?
Questions to ask any vendor
Before signing, ask each vendor the same questions in writing: where the catalog comes from and how often it is refreshed; how audience figures are modeled, if offered; what happens to exported data when you cancel; how many seats and searches are included and what overage costs; and whether there is a trial on your own briefs. Clear answers to these questions are a good sign regardless of the product.
Frequently asked questions
Which podcast PR tool is best?
It depends on your jobs. Rephonic bundles audience estimates, contacts and outreach; Podchaser is strong on credits and people data; ListenNotes and podsearch.org are strong on search and API access. Many agencies combine a search tool with a subscription tool or their own CRM.
Is there a free podcast research tool?
Free search is available on podsearch.org, the Podcast Index and ListenNotes' website, and Apple Podcasts charts are public. Contact data and audience estimates usually require paid products.
Do any tools show real listener numbers?
Feeds do not publish listener numbers. Some tools publish modeled estimates or proprietary scores. For buying decisions, ask shows for their hosting-platform statistics.
What happened to Chartable?
Spotify sunset Chartable; the service shut down on December 12, 2024.
Can I buy a podcast contact list without a subscription?
Yes. podsearch.org sells one-time CSV exports filtered by category, language, activity and other fields, including published feed contact emails where available, from a $60 minimum.
Summary
Podcast PR tools fall into three groups: research-and-outreach platforms such as Rephonic, industry databases such as Podchaser, and search engines and data providers such as ListenNotes, the Podcast Index and podsearch.org. Match tools to jobs, test recall, freshness and accuracy on your own briefs, treat audience numbers as estimates, and combine free search and one-time exports with subscriptions only where they earn their cost.