Podbean Pricing 2026: Plans, Fees, and Is It Worth It?
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Podbean costs $12 a month for one audio show if you pay for the year, or $17 month to month. For a single public podcast that just needs cheap, roomy hosting, that is one of the best deals going. The price climbs fast once you want video, a second show, or ads without a per-impression fee. Here is every plan and where each one stops making sense.
Key takeaways
- Podbean’s Unlimited Audio plan costs $12 a month billed yearly or $17 billed monthly, for one audio podcast with 1GB of new uploads a month.
- Podbean’s free Basic plan caps total storage at 5 hours (500MB) that never resets, and its RSS feed shows only the latest 20 episodes.
- Podbean’s dynamic ad insertion costs $1 CPM on every plan except Network, where it is free.
- Podbean refunds a first monthly plan or an annual payment only if you ask within 14 days.
- Podbean publishes no nonprofit or education discount, and its livestreaming service shut down in June 2026.
What does Podbean cost in 2026?
Five public tiers: a free Basic plan and four paid plans, from $12 to $99 a month on annual billing. Enterprise sits above that with a quote instead of a price. These numbers come from Podbean’s pricing page, checked September 24, 2026.
| Plan | Billed yearly | Billed monthly | Shows | New uploads | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Basic (free) | $0 | $0 | 1 | 5 hrs (500MB) total, ever | Testing the dashboard |
| Unlimited Audio | $12 | $17 | 1 audio | 1GB a month (about 16 hrs) | One audio show |
| Unlimited Plus | $29 | $39 | 2 audio or video | 10GB a month (160 hrs audio or 10 hrs video) | A video podcast |
| Network | $79 | $99 | Unlimited public | 40GB a month | Networks selling their own ads |
| Business | $99 | $129 | Unlimited private, 2 public | 40GB a month | Company and internal podcasts |
The annual discount runs 29 percent on Unlimited Audio, 25 percent on Plus, 20 percent on Network, and 23 percent on Business. Every paid plan comes with unlimited total storage, so the upload number is a monthly allowance for new files, not a ceiling on your catalog.
What do you get on each Podbean plan?
Basic, free: Podbean’s help center lists the limits the pricing page leaves out: 5 hours (500MB) of total storage that does not reset monthly, 100GB of bandwidth a month, a 100MB cap per file, MP3 and M4A only, and an RSS feed that shows your 20 latest episodes. The terms add one more catch. Podbean can run ads in a free-plan show and you get none of the revenue.
Unlimited Audio, $12 yearly or $17 monthly: This is the plan to look at. One audio podcast, 1GB of new uploads a month, unlimited storage, unmetered bandwidth, advanced stats, a customizable website with your own domain, one-click distribution to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Amazon Music, and every monetization tool. You also get 600 AI credits a month. At 600 credits per hour of AI audio cleanup, that is one hour a month.
Unlimited Plus, $29 yearly or $39 monthly: The step you take for video. It hosts two shows, audio or video, with 10GB of uploads a month and 2,400 AI credits. Unlimited Audio is audio only, per its own plan chart, so a video podcast starts here.
Network, $79 yearly or $99 monthly: Unlimited public audio and video shows, 40GB of uploads, network-level stats, a network station page, 50 team members, and live chat support. It is also the only plan where dynamic ad insertion is free. Bandwidth is a stated 3TB a month rather than unmetered, which is still three times the fair-use line on the cheaper plans, more on that below.
Business, $99 yearly or $129 monthly: The company-podcast plan. Unlimited private shows plus two public ones, 100 private members, SSO login, SOC 2 protection, unlimited team members, and Podbean’s Pro app for private listening. Anything bigger is Enterprise, priced on request.
What are the fees and catches to know?
The first is the channel count. Unlimited Audio covers one podcast and Unlimited Plus covers two. Podbean’s pricing FAQ says you can buy extra channels, but the price only appears at checkout, and a third show on Plus is where the math tips toward Network or another host. I lay out the per-show costs across hosts in the best podcast host for multiple shows.
The second is “unmetered.” Podbean’s pricing page says unlimited and unmetered plans fall under a fair usage policy, and the Podcaster Master Terms put a number on it: 1,000GB of bandwidth a month on Unlimited Audio and Plus. An hour-long episode at 128 kbps is about 58MB, so that is roughly 17,000 full downloads a month before Podbean asks you to move to Network or slows your downloads. Most shows never get close. A breakout show can.
The third is the upload allowance. A weekly one-hour show uses about 250MB a month, a quarter of the 1GB on Unlimited Audio. A daily one-hour show uploads about 1.7GB, which puts you on Unlimited Plus at $29, not $12. Podbean’s own math is 1GB for 16 hours of audio.
And the free plan is a one-way door. Once you pay, you cannot go back to Basic. Cancel a paid plan and the account closes at the end of the billing cycle unless you pick another paid plan.
How much does Podbean charge for ads and monetization?
Podbean gives you three ways to earn on every paid plan, and one of them carries a fee. The Ads Marketplace is free to join and pays you 70 percent of the net ad revenue Podbean collects, per its monetization terms. Apple Podcasts subscriptions run from the dashboard. And PodAds, Podbean’s dynamic ad insertion, lets you drop your own pre-roll, mid-roll, and post-roll spots, from an MP3 or a VAST tag, into old and new episodes.
That insertion tool is where the fee lives. It costs $1 CPM, a dollar per thousand impressions it serves, on Unlimited Audio, Plus, and Business. Network is the only plan where it is free. A show serving one mid-roll to 5,000 listeners a month pays $5 on top of the plan, a small bill until the audience grows. The cheapest podcast host with dynamic ad insertion sets that meter against hosts that include it outright.
PodAds has two limits. PodAds inserts audio only, with no video ads and no insertion into video episodes. And Podbean’s help center says ads from PodAds and the Marketplace are not delivered to listeners in the EU, the UK, Norway, Switzerland, Iceland, or Liechtenstein. Your European listeners still get the episode, just without the ad. For a show with a big European audience, that is a lot of unsold inventory.
Patron, Podbean’s listener-pledge program, still has a live page, but the pricing page no longer lists it with the plan features, and the page does not publish Podbean’s cut. Check the current fee in your dashboard before you build a membership on it.
Does Podbean still include livestreaming?
No. Podbean stopped new livestreams on May 18, 2026, and shut the service down on June 18, and no plan on today’s pricing page includes it. The old livestream page now returns a 404. Recordings stayed in the Media Manager, and hosting was not touched. If going live mattered to your show, you now need a separate tool, and Podbean alternatives after the livestream cut covers where streamers went.
Does Podbean offer nonprofit or education pricing?
Not publicly. Podbean has landing pages for nonprofits and schools, but neither page nor the pricing page states a discount, and the only discount in the pricing FAQ is annual billing. A church or charity pays the same $12 or $17 as anyone else. If a discount matters, Captivate publishes one: 25 percent off every plan for registered charities, nonprofits, educational organizations, and students, applied by support after signup. My guide to podcast hosts for churches and nonprofits compares the options.
How do you cancel Podbean, and can you get a refund?
Podbean has two ways to leave, and they behave differently. Turning off auto-renewal keeps the account live until the paid period ends. Go to Manage account, click Close your account, then Continue to cancel, then I still want to cancel, and click the “cancel the auto-renew subscription” link at the bottom of that page. Closing the account outright, the button those same steps lead to, deactivates it immediately and permanently. Paid through PayPal? Cancel the subscription in PayPal too.
Either way, the clock is short. Once a plan expires, the feed stops updating and Podbean permanently deletes the content 30 days later. So set your redirect to the new host before you touch any of this. The steps are in how to move off Podbean without losing subscribers. Podbean also offers an Archive Plan that keeps a finished show and its download counts online for a yearly fee it does not publish. You request it by support ticket.
Refunds come with 14-day windows. A monthly plan is refundable only on your first purchase, the upgrade from free, and only if you ask within 14 days. An annual plan is refundable within 14 days of the payment. After that, fees are non-refundable, and canceling midway earns no partial refund. Refunds take 10 to 14 business days, and anything bought in the iPhone or Android app goes through Apple or Google instead. Annual subscribers get a reminder email 30 days before renewal.
Checked against Podbean’s Podcaster Master Terms (updated March 18, 2026) and help center, September 2026.
Is Podbean worth it?
For one public audio show, yes. Unlimited Audio at $12 a month billed yearly is the cheapest paid plan I would recommend, and the storage model is the easiest to live with: no hour meter, no expiring episodes, and a catalog that can grow forever. A weekly one-hour show costs $144 for the year on Podbean, against $180 on Buzzsprout’s annual Audio plan and $204 on Captivate’s Personal plan. Over a year, that is $36 less than Buzzsprout and $60 less than Captivate.
It stops being a bargain in three places. Video pushes you to $29. A third show pushes you toward $79. And ads carry a $1 CPM meter unless you are on Network, with nothing reaching European listeners at all. Add a dashboard that feels busier than Buzzsprout’s and a year in which Podbean cut livestreaming and fenced off European ads, and the case gets narrower than the sticker suggests. Buzzsprout vs Podbean puts the two billing models side by side.
Which Podbean plan should you buy, or should you pick another host?
One audio show, no video, ads not a priority: buy Unlimited Audio on annual billing and stop shopping. See Podbean’s plans. Pay monthly only if you are not sure the show will last a year, since $17 against $12 is $60 a year for flexibility. Skip Basic for anything you plan to keep, because 5 hours of lifetime storage, by Podbean’s own count, is about five hour-long episodes.
Selling your own ads? Captivate’s $17 Personal plan, billed yearly, includes dynamic insertion with no per-impression fee, 30,000 downloads a month, and unlimited shows. Start a free Captivate trial. The downside: that price needs annual billing and there is no free plan. Captivate’s full pricing has the ladder.
Running three or more shows? Transistor puts unlimited podcasts on its $19 Starter plan with 20,000 downloads a month, far below Podbean’s $79 Network rate for a cluster of small shows. Start a Transistor trial. The downside: its ad insertion waits for the $49 Professional plan. Transistor’s pricing guide covers the rest.
First show, and you want the easiest dashboard? Buzzsprout’s Audio plan is $15 a month billed yearly, with a 72-hour upload pool for the year and the friendliest setup in the category. Start with Buzzsprout. The downside: it costs a little more than Podbean and meters upload hours. Still deciding from scratch? Start with how to choose a podcast host, or see the cheapest podcast hosting options.
FAQ
What is Podbean pricing per month? $17 a month for Unlimited Audio, $39 for Unlimited Plus, $99 for Network, and $129 for Business on monthly billing. Paying yearly drops those to $12, $29, $79, and $99 a month.
Is Podbean free? There is a free Basic plan, but it holds only 5 hours (500MB) of audio in total, the storage never resets, and Podbean can run its own ads in your show without paying you. It works for a test, not a catalog.
Is there Podbean nonprofit pricing? No published discount. Podbean’s nonprofit and education pages list no special pricing, so you pay the standard rates. Captivate is the host that publishes a 25 percent nonprofit and education discount.
What is Podbean Pro pricing? Podbean Pro is the name on its enterprise platform and on the private-listening app bundled with the Business plan. Business is the highest public price, $99 a month billed yearly or $129 monthly. Enterprise setups above it are quoted, not listed.
Can I get a refund from Podbean? Only inside 14 days. A first monthly plan is refundable within 14 days of ordering, and an annual payment within 14 days of the charge. After that, there are no refunds, including for the rest of a cycle you cancel partway through.
