What Counts as a Good Podcast Download Number
A "good" podcast download number is not a single figure, it is a place on a curve. In the first seven days after an episode drops, 28 downloads beats half of all shows, 413 puts you in the top 10%, and 4,611 puts you in the top 1% (Buzzsprout, May 2026). The average Buzzsprout episode gets about 50. So the honest answer to "is my number good?" is: find your percentile, then judge it against your goal and your stage.
Most "what's a good download number" posts hand you one comforting average and stop. That is the least useful thing they could do, because the distribution is wildly lopsided, a handful of shows pull six figures while the typical episode pulls double digits. This page does the opposite. It gives you the whole curve, a rule for placing yourself on it, and the two measurement caveats that make most cross-show comparisons meaningless if you ignore them.
What is the average number of podcast downloads per episode?
The average Buzzsprout podcast gets about 50 downloads per episode, and the median episode gets 28 downloads in its first week (Buzzsprout). Established shows with a back catalogue run higher, a median around 469 downloads per episode (Podcast Marketing Trends 2025). Which figure applies to you hinges on one thing: new-episode first-week downloads, or all-time downloads per episode.
That distinction is the whole game, and it is where the internet's "average podcast downloads" numbers turn to mush. Two different things get called "downloads per episode":
- First-week downloads, how many times a new episode was downloaded in the seven days after release. This is the number Buzzsprout's percentile table measures, and it is the cleanest way to compare a fresh episode against the field.
- Lifetime downloads per episode, total downloads divided by episodes, which folds in months or years of back-catalogue listening. Older episodes have had longer to accumulate, so this number is always higher and always flattering.
When someone quotes "the average podcast gets X downloads," ask which one they mean. A new show comparing its first week to an established show's lifetime average is comparing a sprint time to a marathon time.
The download percentile curve: where does your show actually sit?
Your show sits wherever its first-week downloads land on Buzzsprout's percentile table: 28 puts you at the median, 101 at the top 25%, 413 at the top 10%, 1,012 at the top 5%, and 4,611 at the top 1% (Buzzsprout, May 2026). Buzzsprout updates these thresholds monthly, measured over the seven days after release. Match your number to the nearest row.
| Percentile | First-week downloads | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Top 50% (median) | 28+ | You beat half of all shows |
| Top 25% | 101+ | Upper quartile, solid, growing |
| Top 10% | 413+ | Genuinely strong; ad-viable for niche brands |
| Top 5% | 1,012+ | Top tier; meaningful audience |
| Top 1% | 4,611+ | Elite; the shows you have heard of start here |
Read the gaps, not just the numbers. The jump from the 50th to the 90th percentile is roughly 15x; from the 90th to the 99th, another 11x. The curve is not a gentle slope, it is a cliff at the top. That shape is why a single "average" misleads: the mean (about 50 on Buzzsprout) sits well above the median (28) because a small number of huge shows drag it upward. When a benchmark quotes an average without a median, it is quietly flattering the typical show.
The placement rule: take your last three or four full episodes, average their first-seven-day downloads, and find the nearest row above. That is your percentile floor. Use a multi-episode average, not your best episode, one breakout skews your read of where you actually live.
What is a good number for a new podcast?
For a brand-new show, clearing roughly 50 downloads per episode is a meaningful first milestone, Buzzsprout's own guidance is to beat that first and keep serving your audience, because it already places you in the top half (Buzzsprout; The Podcast Host). Anything in the low double digits in your first weeks is normal, not a failure.
Be skeptical of any precise "average first-30-day downloads for a new podcast" figure. The number you will see most, around 141 downloads in the first 30 days, traces to an older Libsyn-era estimate, not current data, and it is rarely attributed cleanly. Treat it as folklore, not a benchmark. The defensible new-show targets are the Buzzsprout ones above, because they are measured, dated, and refreshed monthly.
What matters more than the absolute number in month one is the trend across months two through six. A show that opens at 30 first-week downloads and reaches 90 by episode 20 is doing better than one that opened at 80 and flatlined. For where your show sits against the broader field of how many podcasts actually publish, see how many podcasts there are, most of the catalogue has gone quiet, so simply still releasing puts you ahead of the majority.
Established show vs new show: two different medians
An established show with a back catalogue should compare itself to a higher bar. The median established podcast pulls around 469 downloads per episode as of the most recent data, up about 10% year over year, with the median show getting roughly 1,246 downloads per month (Podcast Marketing Trends 2025). That report calculates downloads-per-episode by dividing a show's monthly downloads by the new episodes it released that month, so it captures recent performance, not lifetime totals padded by the archive.
One sobering trend sits inside that report: 2025 was the first year its median annual growth rate turned negative, the typical show ended the year smaller than it started, even as the dataset's overall median per-episode number ticked up. The split is starker on a month-over-month basis: the average monthly growth rate looked healthy at 97.3%, but the median was 1.3% (Podcast Marketing Trends 2025). Read that the way you read the download curve: a few fast-growing shows pull the average up while the typical show barely moves. If your downloads merely held steady this year, you did better than the middle of the field. The sample is small, 154 hosts who submitted a full twelve months of data, so treat it as directional, but the gap between the median percentage growth and the dataset's "center of gravity" has widened across all three years of the report.
What about Spotify and Apple, why don't their numbers appear?
They don't appear because neither publishes one. Apple is a directory, not a host, so it has no per-show download percentiles to share. Spotify (which absorbed Anchor) hosts an estimated half of all shows and keeps its download data private. So every "good downloads" benchmark you will read, including this one, is built on the minority of hosts that publish numbers.
This is the caveat almost every "good download number" article omits, and stating it is the point. The public benchmarks come from Buzzsprout (roughly 5% of all podcasts) and Libsyn (roughly 3%), per host market-share estimates compiled in our stats library. That means the percentile curve above reflects under 10% of the market, and it leans toward independent, hobbyist, and small-business shows, the kind that choose those hosts. Big network and celebrity shows often self-host or sit on Spotify, and they are largely invisible to it.
There is a second, subtler measurement trap: the window. Buzzsprout's percentiles count the first 7 days. Libsyn's monthly benchmark percentiles are most commonly reported on a 30-day window (its dashboard also breaks out 7-, 30-, and 90-day figures), and at least one third-party tracker cites a 45-day window, so the exact length is reported inconsistently. Either way it is longer than Buzzsprout's seven days, which means a Libsyn percentile will always look larger than a Buzzsprout one for the same episode, because the episode has had weeks longer to accumulate. Before you compare your downloads to any benchmark, confirm two things: which hosts it covers, and how many days it counts. Mismatch either and the comparison is noise.
So what is actually a "good" number for you?
Strip it down to four reference points and one rule.
- Beat 28 first-week downloads and you are in the top half of all shows. For a new podcast, this is the first real milestone.
- Clear ~50 downloads an episode to match the average and earn Buzzsprout's "you're past the starting line" mark.
- Reach 100+ and you are in the upper quartile, the point where the show is clearly finding an audience.
- 413+ is genuinely strong (top 10%) and the rough floor where niche-brand sponsorship becomes plausible.
The rule that matters more than any threshold: judge yourself against your own last three months, not against the 1%. The download curve is so top-heavy that comparing a new show to the elite tier is self-sabotage. A show climbing from 30 to 90 first-week downloads over six months is winning, even though it never touches a percentile that sounds impressive. Where downloads do not tell the whole story, engagement, shares, conversions, a small, loyal audience can be worth more than a large passive one, especially for a niche or B2B show.
And the fastest lever on the new-listener side of that curve is no longer the podcast app. Social-video clips now drive a meaningful share of how new audiences find shows, and watching has become the default discovery mode (see how the clipping economy actually works and video podcast statistics). Downloads measure who already found you; clips are how the next listeners do. For the wider picture of who is listening and where, the podcast statistics 2026 reference page and how many people listen to podcasts worldwide both sit alongside this one.
Methodology and how to cite this page
This page assembles published third-party benchmarks; it is not original QuickReel research. First-week percentile thresholds and the ~50-downloads average are from Buzzsprout's platform stats (May 2026, IAB 2.2-compliant, 7-day window, updated monthly). Per-episode and growth figures for established shows are from the Podcast Marketing Trends 2025 report (benchmarks from 154 hosts who submitted twelve months of download data). Host market-share estimates (Buzzsprout ~5%, Libsyn ~3%) are compiled in our stats library. Because the host coverage is under 10% of all podcasts and skews indie, every figure here should be read as an indie-leaning benchmark, not a market-wide truth. Buzzsprout updates monthly, so verify the live numbers before quoting an exact threshold.
Cite this page: Fischer, L. (2026). What Counts as a Good Podcast Download Number. QuickReel. Retrieved from https://quickreel.io/blog/podcast-download-statistics. For any individual statistic, cite the original source named beside it.
Frequently asked questions
What is a good number of downloads for a podcast episode? In the first seven days, 28 downloads beats half of all shows, 101 puts you in the top 25%, 413 in the top 10%, 1,012 in the top 5%, and 4,611 in the top 1% (Buzzsprout, May 2026). The average Buzzsprout episode gets about 50. "Good" depends on your stage, for a new show, clearing 50 is a real milestone.
What is the average number of podcast downloads per episode? About 50 for the average Buzzsprout show, with a first-week median of 28 (Buzzsprout). Established shows with back catalogues run higher, a median of roughly 469 downloads per episode (Podcast Marketing Trends 2025). The average sits above the median because a few large shows pull it upward.
How many downloads is the top 1% of podcasts? Around 4,611 downloads in the first seven days after release, as of May 2026 (Buzzsprout). That threshold shifts slightly month to month and reflects Buzzsprout-hosted shows, which are roughly 5% of all podcasts and skew toward independent shows.
Why don't Spotify or Apple publish download benchmarks? They simply don't. Spotify, which hosts an estimated half of all podcasts after acquiring Anchor, shares no public download-percentile data. So every benchmark comes from smaller hosts like Buzzsprout and Libsyn, which together cover under 10% of the market, a caveat most "good downloads" articles leave out.
Is 100 downloads per episode good? Yes, roughly 100 first-week downloads puts you in the top 25% of shows (Buzzsprout, May 2026), the point where a podcast is clearly finding its audience. For a new show that is a strong result; for an established show with a year of back catalogue, compare instead to the ~469 per-episode median (Podcast Marketing Trends 2025).