Castos vs Firstory

Castos is a paid podcast hosting service from Castos, headquartered in Wilmington, Delaware, United States. It provides an RSS feed and distributes podcasts to major directories. The service supports private podcasts and video podcasts, with advanced podcast analytics and monetization tools. Castos runs on the web, iOS and Android. There is no free plan, but a 14-day trial is listed. Pricing starts at $19/mo. Essentials costs $19 a month, billed monthly, and includes 10 transcripts per month and 100 private subscribers. Growth costs $49 a month with 25 transcripts, 250 private subscribers and up to five team members. Pro costs $99 a month with 100 transcripts, 500 private subscribers and up to 10 team members. Castos Premium costs $499 a month with unlimited transcripts and team members.

Firstory is a podcast hosting platform for creators who want to publish, distribute, promote, and monetize shows. Uploading audio and video together in one go lets creators publish both formats, then distribute to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, KKBOX, and more than 10 platforms. Distribution is one-click for Spotify, KKBOX, and Pocket Casts; several other directories require manual distribution. AI Studio can create transcripts, summaries, highlights, newsletter drafts, questions and answers, keywords, and topic tags after upload. Analytics cover plays, audience profiles, and episode performance, combining RSS data with official Spotify data. Daily Spotify charts and listener and follower metrics are limited to Pro and higher. Promotion tools include FLink, a link for listening platforms and social profiles, an automatically built show website, and an embeddable player. Monetization options include dynamic ads, donations, recurring subscriptions, and cross-platform memberships. The free plan allows one show and one AI content extraction episode per month. Paid plans start at $7/mo, with a 14-day trial; annual billing saves 22%.