← Podcast Sponsorship Rate Calculator
A podcast with 40,000 people subscribed in a podcast app is not a 40,000-download show, and a sponsor's ad-ops team knows the difference even if the pitch doesn't say so. This calculator prices off downloads in an episode's first 7 days for the same reason every marketplace and rate card does: it's the number that measures who actually received the ad, not who once tapped follow.
Open this example on the calculator
A subscriber or follower count is a standing total that only grows: everyone who ever subscribed stays counted, including people who stopped listening months ago, downgraded their queue, or never opened the app again. A 7-day download count is a fresh measurement, taken every episode, of how many people actually requested that specific episode's audio file in a defined window after it went live. One rises forever; the other tells you what happened this week.
Sponsors pay for the second number, because it's the one that describes who was actually served the ad. Podcast ad marketplaces and network rate cards are built on it, and so is the industry's own measurement standard: the IAB Podcast Measurement Technical Guidelines, which define the download window as the 7 days following an episode's release -- widely referred to as the IAB/Podtrac methodology. A number quoted any other way (since release with no cutoff, over 30 or 90 days, or a subscriber count standing in for either) is measuring something else, and a buyer whose own systems report 7-day downloads has no way to compare it.
Take a business-niche show with a host-read mid-roll slot, 40,000 total subscribers across podcast apps, and 10,000 downloads in a typical episode's first 7 days -- a plausible gap, since plenty of subscribers stop listening without unsubscribing. Pricing the same mid-roll spot off each number gives two very different asks:
| Priced off | Count used | Mid-roll range |
|---|---|---|
| 7-day downloads (correct) | 10,000 | $300–$450 |
| Total app subscribers (wrong) | 40,000 | $1,200–$1,800 |
That's a 4x overask for identical inventory -- not because the download-based number is conservative, but because the subscriber count was never a measure of who receives a given episode's ad in the first place. A sponsor's ad-ops team, pricing by their own downloads-based benchmarks, won't negotiate that gap down; they'll read the pitch as unmeasured and move to a show whose numbers already match how the industry buys.
Because a sponsor is paying for a spot that actually got served, not a standing audience that may or may not still be listening. Podcast ad marketplaces and network rate cards price against downloads within the first 7 days of an episode going live -- the industry-standard IAB/Podtrac measurement window -- rather than a subscriber or follower count, which includes anyone who subscribed once and stopped listening, and never shrinks even as a show's real audience does.
A request for the episode's audio file, deduplicated by your hosting platform's analytics, counted from the moment the episode goes live through the following 7 days. That window is the IAB Podcast Measurement Technical Guidelines' own definition, which is why sponsors' ad-ops teams already expect a number measured this way -- a total quoted over 30 or 90 days, or since the episode's release with no cutoff, is a different, larger, and non-comparable figure.
On this calculator's own numbers: a business-niche, host-read show with 40,000 total app subscribers but 10,000 real downloads in an episode's first 7 days should price a mid-roll at $300-$450. Quoting off the subscriber count instead -- treating 40,000 as the reach -- prices the same spot at $1,200-$1,800, a 4x overask. A sponsor's ad-ops team, who already measures by 7-day downloads, will not read that as an aggressive opener; they will read it as a number that does not match their own data and move to the next show.
Your hosting platform's own analytics dashboard -- Spotify for Podcasters, Apple Podcasts Connect, Libsyn, Buzzsprout, and most other hosts all report downloads by episode with a rolling window you can set to 7 days. That is the number to enter here, not a lifetime download total, not an RSS subscriber count, and not app-reported "followers", each of which measures something a sponsor is not paying for.