The average podcast episode is 26 minutes long.

Methodology

Source

719,350episodes from the WhichPodcast catalogue, ingested from Apple Podcasts, Listen Notes and direct RSS feeds. We use `audio_length_sec` as published in each feed's enclosure metadata.

Filters

Episodes with missing duration are excluded. Episodes with durations ≤ 0 seconds or > 10 hours are excluded as obvious feed-metadata errors. We use median rather than mean as the headline statistic because the long-form interview tail (multi-hour episodes) pulls the mean upwards.

Genre attribution

Each podcast carries one or more Apple-Podcasts category IDs. We attribute each of its episodes to all of its categories — a long-form interview show tagged with both Business and Comedy contributes to both genre averages. We require a minimum of 200 episodes per genre before showing stats, to avoid noisy small samples.

Year attribution

Episodes are attributed to the calendar year of their publication date (pub_date_ms). Years with fewer than 100 episodes in our index are excluded so the trend line doesn't whip around on tiny samples — typically the very early years of podcasting and the current calendar year if read mid-way through.

Known limitations

• YouTube-only podcasts are not in scope. Our index is built from RSS feeds.
• Popular podcasts are over-represented. Catalogue is sourced from Apple top charts and Listen Notes, so high-listener-score shows dominate. This is the relevant sample for most editorial framing (“what are popular podcasts like”) but it is not a representative sample of every podcast that has ever existed.
• English-language over-representation.
• Self-reported durations. We trust the duration field as it appears in the RSS enclosure. We don't re-encode or measure the audio.

Update cadence

Page regenerates daily. Current data slice computed on 16 May 2026.