Castos Pricing 2026: Plans, Fees, and Is It Worth It?
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Castos costs $19 a month for its Essentials plan, or $190 if you pay for the year, and that plan already includes unlimited shows, episodes, and downloads. For most podcasters that is the whole decision. Growth at $49 only earns its price if you want YouTube republishing or a private feed past 100 listeners, and Pro at $99 is a video plan. Here is what each tier buys, where the bill jumps without asking, and how it stacks up against Transistor, Captivate, and Buzzsprout.
Key takeaways
- Castos Essentials costs $19 a month or $190 a year and includes unlimited podcasts, episodes, and downloads.
- Castos Growth ($49 a month or $490 a year) is the cheapest Castos plan with YouTube republishing and the Castos mobile app for private listeners.
- Castos hosts uploaded video files only on its $99 Pro plan, and those video episodes reach Apple Podcasts but not Spotify.
- Castos moves a private podcast up a plan automatically on the 101st and 251st private subscriber, per its own pricing FAQ.
- Castos’s refund policy says it does not issue refunds unless a system malfunction caused a problem or the account was terminated without cause.
How much does Castos cost in 2026?
Three public plans, $19, $49, and $99 a month, plus a Castos Premium tier that starts at $499 a month for large organizations. Paying yearly gets you two months free, which works out to $15.83, $40.83, and $82.50 a month. There is no free plan, only a 14-day free trial. These prices come from Castos’s pricing page, checked September 25, 2026, and they match what our podcast hosting price tracker recorded in a browser the day before.
| Plan | Billed monthly | Billed yearly | Transcripts a month | Private subscribers | Team members |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Essentials | $19 | $190 ($15.83 a month) | 10 | Up to 100 | Just you |
| Growth | $49 | $490 ($40.83 a month) | 25 | Up to 250 | Up to 5 |
| Pro | $99 | $990 ($82.50 a month) | 100 | Up to 500 | Up to 10 |
| Castos Premium | From $499 | From $4,990 | Unlimited | Custom pricing | Unlimited |
Castos never prints the per-month annual figure. It shows the yearly total, so the $15.83 is $190 divided by 12. Every plan, Premium included, carries unlimited podcasts, episodes, and downloads, free migration from your old host, a podcast website with a custom domain, and automatic distribution to the directories.
What do you get on each Castos plan?
Essentials, $19 a month or $190 a year: The plan most people should buy. Unlimited shows and downloads, 10 AI transcripts a month, up to 100 private subscribers, listener analytics, the podcast website, and the Seriously Simple Podcasting plugin if you publish from WordPress. It is a one-person account, though. The feature table lists team members as “Just you,” so a co-host who needs a login pushes you to Growth.
Growth, $49 a month or $490 a year: Four things justify the jump. YouTube Republishing turns each audio episode into a video with a still background image and posts it to your channel. The Castos mobile app lets private subscribers listen in a dedicated iOS or Android app. Advanced analytics adds customizable reports and a Followers estimate. And you get up to five team members, a 1:1 onboarding call, 25 transcripts, and 250 private subscribers.
Pro, $99 a month or $990 a year: The only plan that hosts video files. Castos’s help center says uploading video episodes is exclusive to Pro, MP4 only. Pro also raises you to 100 transcripts, 500 private subscribers, and 10 team members, and adds priority support, a 100 percent uptime SLA, and pay by invoice or check.
Castos Premium, from $499 a month or $4,990 a year: Built for companies and big publishers. It adds single sign-on, custom contracts and invoices, unlimited transcripts, higher limits, and a dedicated account manager. You talk to sales to get a quote, and a solo podcaster has no reason to.
What are the catches in Castos pricing?
The big one is private subscribers, because Castos moves you up a plan without asking. Its plans and pricing FAQ says an Essentials account is upgraded to Growth on the 101st private subscriber, and a Growth account to Pro on the 251st. That is a $30 a month jump for one extra listener. Past 500, Castos bills $50 a month for every extra batch of 500. So a 1,000-person internal feed costs $149 a month on Castos. Transistor’s $99 plan covers 3,000.
Transcripts are the second. A credit covers one transcript, so 10 credits means 10 episodes a month, shared across every show in the account. The transcription FAQ adds three limits. Credits do not roll over, episodes over five hours cannot be transcribed, and replacing an episode’s file generates a new transcript and spends another credit. You cannot buy extra credits either. Castos only says to contact support.
Then the add-on and the video fine print. The AI Assistant, which writes titles, show notes, and social posts from a transcript, costs $10 a month on every plan. On an annual plan it still bills monthly, and canceling it revokes unused credits with no refund. YouTube Republishing does not separate your shows either. If you host two podcasts, every episode from both goes to the one connected channel. And a Pro video episode will not play on Spotify, which Castos’s own help doc says only accepts video hosted on Spotify.
Can you make money with ads on Castos?
Yes, two ways, and neither costs extra. Castos Campaigns, included on every paid plan, inserts your own pre-roll and post-roll audio across the episodes you pick, on a date range, without touching the original files. That covers a sponsor read you sold yourself or a promo for your newsletter. What it does not offer is mid-roll placement.
Castos Ads is the other route, where Castos fills the slots with its own advertisers. The Castos Ads FAQ sets the limits. You request access from a paid plan and it is typically granted within 14 days. Ads run pre-roll and post-roll only, on MP3 audio only, never on video, and never on Spotify. Payouts go through PayPal 45 days after each month ends, once you pass $10. The FAQ does not state the revenue split. If mid-roll ads you sell yourself matter, the cheapest hosts with dynamic ad insertion is the better shortlist.
Does Castos have a free trial?
Yes, 14 days, and the pricing page says no credit card is required. The signup form backs that up: it asks for a name, an email, and a password, nothing else. Castos’s help center says the trial gives you every feature of the plan you picked, and you can change plans mid-trial without shortening it.
What happens on day 15 is where Castos’s own pages disagree. The pricing page FAQ says that if you do not upgrade, Castos freezes the account and your feed and episodes go offline to listeners. The help center’s pricing FAQ says your subscription “will automatically begin unless you cancel.” So we let a trial run out in August 2026, started without entering a card, to see which is true. Nothing was charged. The trial simply ended, and the next email from Castos offered 20% off any plan to keep the test show alive, with the trial episodes still waiting in the dashboard for an upgrade. In practice, a no-card trial freezes rather than bills. The terms of service, updated December 1, 2025, also describe trials that take a payment method at signup, so if you ever add a card during a trial, check your billing settings before day 14.
Has Castos changed its prices?
Yes, once, and then it undid it. Archived copies of Castos’s pricing page in the Wayback Machine show $19, $49, and $99 a month through September 26, 2023, with monthly download caps of 20,000, 75,000, and 200,000. By the November 21, 2023 snapshot, Starter had been renamed Essentials and every plan cost about 50 percent more: $29, $69, and $149 a month, or $290, $690, and $1,490 a year. Premium moved from $499 to $699. In exchange, the download caps were gone.
The higher prices were still up on January 3, 2024. By April 18, 2024, they were back to $19, $49, and $99, and Castos kept the unlimited downloads and the Essentials name. The archive has no October 2023 capture and none from February or March 2024, so the exact switch dates sit inside those gaps. Castos has not published a reason, and we are not guessing at one. Prices have not moved since, through the last archived capture in July 2026 and our own checks this week.
Castos’s terms of service allow fee changes at any time, taking effect at the end of your current billing cycle, with what they call reasonable prior notice. Annual billing locks your price for the year, which is one more reason to prefer it. The full change log, with the snapshot for every row, is on the price tracker, and the raw files are on our Data page.
How does Castos pricing compare to Transistor, Captivate, and Buzzsprout?
On matching billing, Castos is the only one of the four whose yearly plan caps nothing. Transistor charges the same $190, $490, and $990 a year but meters downloads. Captivate costs a little more on annual billing and meters downloads too. Buzzsprout is $10 a year cheaper at the entry level, for one show with a fixed pool of upload hours. Competitor prices come from each host’s pricing page, checked September 24 and 25, 2026.
| Entry plan | Billed monthly | Billed yearly | Shows | The limit that sets the price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Castos Essentials | $19 | $190 | Unlimited | None on downloads. 100 private subscribers |
| Transistor Starter | $19 | $190 | Unlimited | 20,000 downloads a month. 50 private subscribers |
| Captivate Personal | $19 | $204 ($17 a month) | Unlimited | 30,000 downloads a month |
| Buzzsprout Audio | $18 | $180 ($15 a month) | 1 | 6 upload hours a month, or 72 a year on annual |
The middle tiers tell the same story. Castos Growth is $490 a year with unlimited downloads, against $490 for Transistor Professional at 100,000 downloads and $528 for Captivate Professional at 150,000. Castos Pro at $990 compares with $990 for Transistor Business at 250,000 downloads and $1,080 for Captivate Business at 300,000.
Where Castos loses is everything else those prices buy. Transistor gives 500 private subscribers at $49 and 3,000 at $99, against 250 and 500 on Castos, per Transistor’s plan breakdown. Captivate includes dynamic ad insertion on every plan, per Captivate’s pricing. And a first-time solo show pays less on Buzzsprout’s Audio plan. Castos wins when traffic is the variable you cannot predict.
How do you cancel Castos, and can you get a refund?
Cancel from the dashboard: click your account avatar, then Account Settings, then the Billing tab, then Cancel Account. Per Castos’s cancellation guide, the account stays active until the end of the billing cycle. Use that time. Set a 301 redirect on your feed to the new host, download your episodes, and only then let it lapse. Three months after cancellation, Castos removes your podcast and episode files from its servers. How to switch podcast hosts without losing subscribers covers the redirect step by step.
Refunds are close to nonexistent. Castos’s refund policy says it does not issue refunds unless a system malfunction caused a problem or the account was terminated without cause. The terms add that there are no refunds for partial months, plan changes, or unused months on an open account, and that other requests are case by case. A downgrade leaves a credit toward future bills, not cash. Anyone paying $190 upfront should use the full trial first.
Billing has its own quirks. Castos takes Visa, Mastercard, Discover, and American Express, and its payments policy says it does not accept PayPal for subscriptions. The pricing FAQ offers invoice and purchase-order billing on annual Growth and Pro plans, although the feature table lists invoice payment from Pro up. Nonprofits and religious organizations can ask for a discount, but Castos does not publish the rate.
Checked against Castos’s pricing page, refund and payments policies, terms of service (updated December 1, 2025), and help center, September 25, 2026.
Is Castos worth it?
For a show or a small network whose downloads could spike, yes. Essentials at $190 a year never charges more because an episode took off, and no other host in this comparison promises that at the entry price. It also suits WordPress publishers, since the Seriously Simple Podcasting plugin comes from Castos itself, and small private feeds under 100 people.
It is a weaker deal in three spots. The private-subscriber auto-upgrades turn a growing internal feed into a $49 or $99 bill quickly. Video hosting costs $99 and still misses Spotify. And the ad tools stop at pre-roll and post-roll. Add a refund policy that gives you almost nothing back, and the trial is doing a lot of work. Use it properly.
Which Castos plan should you buy?
Buy Essentials on annual billing unless one of the Growth features below is a must-have. Paying yearly saves $38 on Essentials, $98 on Growth, and $198 on Pro, against 12 monthly payments. Start a 14-day Castos trial. The downside: it is a one-login account, and 10 transcripts a month runs out fast for a daily show.
Move to Growth if you want every episode on YouTube automatically, a private feed of 101 to 250 people, the mobile app for those listeners, or a teammate with a login. Pro is for one job: hosting video files. If you only want a YouTube presence, Growth’s republishing already covers it. Our guide to podcast hosts that auto-distribute to YouTube compares the options.
Running a private feed that will pass a few hundred people? Transistor’s $49 plan holds 500 private subscribers and its $99 plan holds 3,000. Start a Transistor trial. The downside: it meters downloads, starting at 20,000 a month. The best host for a private or internal podcast runs the numbers.
Selling your own mid-roll ads? Captivate’s $17 Personal plan, billed yearly, includes dynamic insertion and unlimited shows. Try Captivate free. The downside: it caps you at 30,000 downloads a month. First show, one feed, tight budget? Buzzsprout is $180 a year, with the trade-off of metered upload hours. Still weighing it all? Start with how to choose a podcast host.
FAQ
How much is Castos per month? $19 for Essentials, $49 for Growth, and $99 for Pro on monthly billing. Yearly billing is $190, $490, and $990, about $15.83, $40.83, and $82.50 a month. Castos Premium starts at $499 a month.
Is Castos free? No. There is no free plan, only a 14-day free trial that the pricing page says needs no credit card. Castos’s pricing FAQ says a trial account that is not upgraded gets frozen, and our own no-card trial in August 2026 ended without a charge.
Does Castos limit downloads? No. Every plan includes unlimited downloads, episodes, and podcasts. Castos capped downloads at 20,000, 75,000, and 200,000 a month until late 2023 and has not capped them since.
What happens if I go over my private subscriber limit on Castos? Castos upgrades you automatically, from Essentials to Growth on the 101st subscriber and from Growth to Pro on the 251st. Past 500, it adds $50 a month for each extra batch of 500.
Can I get a refund from Castos? Rarely. Its refund policy covers only a system malfunction or an account terminated without cause, and the terms rule out refunds for partial or unused months. Cancel before renewal instead, and the account runs to the end of the period you paid for.
