Castro vs Podverse

Castro is a podcast player for Apple devices, centered on a queue for adding, reordering, and automatically playing episodes. Queued episodes download over Wi-Fi, and users can listen offline, read episode transcripts, and sync across devices. Playback speeds are adjustable from 0.8x to 3x; Trim Silence can shorten total listening time by 10–20% without changing audio quality. Other listening tools include private feeds, podcast chapters, episode sharing, and per-podcast settings for auto-queue, audio filters, playback speed, and intro skipping. Users can import their own audio by adding files to iCloud Drive. Castro has a CarPlay app, while Apple Watch users can control playback and browse the queue. The listed platforms are iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and Apple Watch. The free plan is available, and Castro Plus adds advanced playback, sideloading, Night Mode, custom icons, and more. Listed subscriptions include $3.99 per month, $9.99 per month billed quarterly, $24.99 per year, and family subscriptions at $39.99 per year. Castro directs questions to [email protected].

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.