Podcast Revenue Calculator
Estimate your podcast ad revenue based on downloads per episode, CPM rate, and publishing frequency.
Plan your podcasting income.
Podcast advertising is sold on CPM (Cost Per Mille): advertisers pay a fixed rate per 1,000 downloads.
Ad revenue per episode = (Downloads ÷ 1,000) × CPM
Monthly revenue = Episode revenue × Episodes per month
Enter your COMBINED CPM
Most shows sell more than one slot per episode, and each slot has its own rate. The CPM field above takes the total across all the slots you sell, so add them together first.
| Slot | Length | Typical CPM |
|---|---|---|
| Pre-roll | 15 to 30 seconds | $15 to $25 |
| Mid-roll | 60 seconds | $25 to $45 |
| Post-roll | 15 to 30 seconds | $10 to $20 |
Mid-roll is the valuable one, because a listener who has stayed that long is unlikely to drop out. Host-read advertisements carry a premium of roughly 20 to 40% over dynamically inserted ones, since the endorsement is the product.
Rates drift year to year and vary enormously by category, so treat the table as shape rather than a quote. Business, finance and technology shows sit well above these figures; general entertainment sits below.
Worked example: a weekly show with 8,000 downloads an episode
Selling all three slots at $20, $35 and $15 gives a combined CPM of $70, which is the figure to enter.
- Episode revenue: (8,000 ÷ 1,000) × $70 = $560
- Four episodes a month: $2,240
- Over a year: $26,880
Download benchmarks
- Under 1,000 an episode: hard to sell on CPM at all. Direct sponsorship or listener support is more realistic.
- 3,000 to 5,000: the range where individual sponsors start taking calls.
- 10,000 and up: mainstream ad networks will represent you.
- 50,000 and up: premium rates and tiered sponsorship packages.
The other income streams
CPM advertising is rarely the whole picture, and for smaller shows it is rarely even the largest part. Listener support through Patreon or similar typically runs $3 to $15 a month from the small fraction of listeners who convert, which at a 1 to 3% conversion rate can outperform advertising well below 10,000 downloads. Affiliate codes, live events, and courses all tend to beat CPM at small scale, because they monetise the depth of the relationship rather than the size of the audience.
How we build and check this calculator
This calculator runs entirely in your browser, so the numbers you enter stay on your device. The math behind it is written by hand and tested against worked examples and standard references before the page goes live.
SuperGlobalCalculator is independently built and maintained. See how we build and verify our calculators.