Castbox vs Podverse

Castbox is a podcast app for discovering and listening to shows. It is available on iOS, Android and web, as well as PWA, Amazon Alexa, Apple CarPlay, Android Auto and Apple Watch. Its recommendation engine uses artificial intelligence to help listeners find podcasts, and automated transcription and indexing power In-Audio Search. Listeners can download episodes for offline listening, follow private feeds, sync across devices, comment and share. Creators can use Creator Studio analytics for subscribers, streams and downloads; Castbox also offers free audio upload and storage, plus free web hosting for up to 5 podcasts or channels. The Free plan costs nothing and limits listeners to 100 channel subscriptions. Castbox says it uses safeguards for user data but cannot guarantee fully secure internet transmissions. Users can request account and personal data deletion through the app or by emailing support.

Podverse is an open-source podcast manager for the web, iOS, Android, and F-Droid. It supports audio and video podcasts, livestream playback, offline downloads, private feeds, and custom RSS feeds, with OPML import and export. Podcasting 2.0 features include chapters, cross-app comments, and episode transcripts, while Value-for-Value listening supports Boostagrams. Apple CarPlay is available in Free and Premium. Free costs nothing and includes podcast subscriptions, video and livestream playback, CarPlay, Podcasting 2.0 features, and screen-reader accessibility. Premium costs $18 a year after three months free and adds cross-device sync, notifications, clips, playlists, listener-profile subscriptions, and episode history. Podverse software is provided under the AGPLv3 license. The project states official support for iOS 14–16 and Android 11–13. Podcast audio and video load from podcasters’ public servers rather than being hosted by Podverse. Clips can be any length, but dynamic ads may make their timestamps inaccurate.