Which podcast hosts do AI assistants name?
Seventeen podcast-hosting platforms, eight questions podcasters actually ask, every major AI assistant — same questions for every brand, measured from the same answers. No affiliate links, no sponsored placement; just who the AI assistants name when someone asks where to put their show.
Measured 11 September 2026 · 8 questions × ChatGPT, Claude, Grok, Perplexity, AI Overviews · 33 usable answers · Δ = movement larger than the run-to-run noise
These are counts from that run, not ratings of the companies. Ask a different question, on a different day, on a different AI assistant, and the numbers move — that movement is the subject, which is why the questions are published in full below and the index is re-run rather than fixed.
Spotify for Creators
creators.spotify.com
21 of 33 answers · 64%
Buzzsprout
buzzsprout.com
23 of 33 answers · 70%
Transistor
transistor.fm
21 of 33 answers · 64%
Exactly what the AI assistants were asked
- 1.“What's the best podcast hosting platform for a beginner?”
- 2.“What's the best podcast hosting for a business or branded podcast?”
- 3.“Which podcast host has the best analytics?”
- 4.“What's the cheapest reliable podcast hosting with unlimited episodes?”
- 5.“Which podcast hosting platform is best for growing an audience?”
- 6.“Which podcast host should I migrate to from Spotify for Creators?”
- 7.“Which podcast host is best for monetization and dynamic ad insertion?”
- 8.“Which podcast hosting platforms have a good free plan?”
How this is measured
Every question above is asked once on each AI assistant in the same pass, and every listed brand is measured from the same set of answers — no brand gets different questions, a different day, or a second try. A brand counts as named when the answer uses its name (or a listed alias) or its domain; position is the order of first mention among listed brands within an answer; cited means the AI assistant listed the brand’s own site as a source.
Nobody pays to be listed and nobody can pay to rank. Think a brand is missing? Email [email protected] and it joins the next refresh.
What these numbers are, exactly. Each figure is a count of how many of the questions above named that brand, on the AI assistants listed, on the date of the run. It is not a rating of the product, a measure of quality, popularity or price, and not a claim about what any AI assistant will say next. These models are not deterministic and their answers shift with wording, timing and AI assistant: a brand named in 15 of 39 answers here may be named in 25 of 39 next month without anything about the brand having changed. That movement is what the index exists to record, which is why it is re-run rather than fixed.
If we got it wrong. A record of a run is either accurate or it is not, so we keep the answers behind every number. If you think a count misreads what an AI assistant actually said — a missed alias, a name matched in the wrong place, a brand measured against the wrong domain — write to us and we will check it against the stored answers and correct the run if the error is ours. What we will not do is change a number because someone dislikes it; that is the same commitment as nobody being able to pay to rank.
On this list — or missing from it? The free audit runs the same measurement on your own domain: which questions name you, which name a rival instead, and what to change. Two minutes, no account.
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