WhichPodcast Research · September 2026

Which podcast genres have too many shows? The answer is not the one everybody repeats.

We took every classified show in the WhichPodcast index, 40,487of them, and measured each genre’s share of the catalogue against its share of monthly search demand. Where a genre holds more of the shelf than it holds of the attention, it is oversupplied. Where the reverse is true, there is room.

30

genres measured

40,487

shows analysed

Religion

most oversupplied

Horror

widest supply gap

Key findings

  1. 1.Religion is the most oversupplied genre in the index, holding 5.2% of the shows against 0.31% of the search demand. That is a saturation index of 16.69.
  2. 2.True Crime is undersupplied, which contradicts the received wisdom. It draws 4,600 US searches a month, more than any genre except History, from just 1,675 shows. It also has one of the highest quit rates in the index: 22.2% of true crime shows have not published in 90 days.
  3. 3.Business is oversupplied at an index of 2.77, but it ranks 6 of 30, not first. The genres ahead of it are quieter and less discussed.
  4. 4.Crypto has the highest podfade rate of any genre: 29.2% of its shows have gone 90 days without an episode. Supply figures that count dormant feeds overstate real competition.
  5. 5.12 of 30 genres are undersupplied and 9 are oversupplied on this measure. The gaps sit in Politics, Storytelling, Finance, Film & TV.

The map

Each point is a genre. Points above the dashed parity line have more search demand than shows.

UndersuppliedBalancedOversupplied
Podcast supply share against search demand share, by genre0%5%10%15%20%0%2%4%6%8%10%12%14%supply = demandShare of indexed shows (supply)Share of US search volume (demand)ReligionSociety & CultureEducationHealthTechnologyBusinessSportsSelf-improvementGamingNewsAutomotiveParentingFictionMusicComedyCryptoLawInterviewsPoliticsStorytellingFinanceFilm & TVRelationshipsScienceFoodTravelTrue CrimeAIHistoryHorror

Hover a genre for its numbers. Points above the dashed line have more search demand than shows.

Every genre, ranked

Sorted from most oversupplied to widest gap. The saturation index is share of supply divided by share of demand, so 1.00 means the two match exactly.

GenreShowsActive 90dUS searches/moSaturationPodfade
Religion2,1051,77310016.697.3%
Society & Culture2,8502,23020011.3015.1%
Education4,0263,0264007.9815.4%
Health2,9312,2506003.8713%
Technology1,3038883502.9519%
Business4,1883,3601,2002.7712.6%
Sports5,5864,6571,7002.618.4%
Self-improvement2,0841,6247002.3614.9%
Gaming1,2751,0766001.688.1%
News1,5761,3249001.397.9%
Automotive2171471501.1510.4%
Parenting5794764501.0213.9%
Fiction8256557000.9314.7%
Music1,1487821,0000.9116%
Comedy2,2361,7432,0000.8910.7%
Crypto1971022000.7829.2%
Law2311982500.7310%
Interviews2181642500.6914.1%
Politics7845601,2000.5211.3%
Storytelling3792946000.5016%
Finance4903718000.499.3%
Film & TV144802500.4624.5%
Relationships5044061,0000.4014%
Science8155571,7000.3819.3%
Food5504241,3000.3416.9%
Travel2161505000.3426.1%
True Crime1,6751,1314,6000.2922.2%
AI2541661,2000.1718.6%
History9836675,9000.1316.2%
Horror118751,3000.0725.7%

Method, and what it cannot tell you

Supply
A count of shows by primary genre across the WhichPodcast index. The index holds 41,456 podcasts; 41,357 carry a genre label, and 40,487sit in this study once the catch-all “other” bucket is removed. Each show is counted once, under one primary genre. Figures come straight from the database and move as the index grows.
Demand
Monthly search volume for one head term per genre, always the plain “[genre] podcasts” phrase so that no genre benefits from a hand-picked long tail. Source: Ahrefs Keywords Explorer, monthly search volume, United States, pulled 2026-09-09. Total across all 30 terms is 32,100 searches a month.
Podfade
The share of shows whose most recent episode is more than 90 days old. Computed only across the 36,947 shows that carry a last episode date. The rest are excluded rather than assumed active.
What this cannot tell you
  • This is our index, not the whole medium. 40,487 shows is a large sample but it is a sample, weighted towards English-language podcasts. Shares here are shares of this catalogue, not of every podcast in existence.
  • Search volume is not listening. It measures people looking for a genre of show. It is a proxy for discovery intent, not for downloads, listening hours, or advertising revenue, and it should not be quoted as any of those.
  • There is no UK cut of this study. Country resolves to the United Kingdom on 12 rows out of 41,456, so a UK supply breakdown is not possible and none is offered. UK search volume exists on the demand side only.
  • One genre per show flattens things. A history podcast about sport is filed once. Shows straddling two genres are undercounted in the second.
  • A gap is not automatically an opportunity. Some genres are thin because they are hard to make well or hard to monetise, not because nobody thought of it.

Get the data

The full table above is available as a CSV under a CC BY 4.0 licence, including supply share, demand share, saturation index and podfade rate for all 30 genres. Free to reuse with attribution.

Download CSV

Cite this report

Free to cite, quote, and embed. Recommended citation:

WhichPodcast (2026). Podcast Genre Saturation, September 2026.
Supply: WhichPodcast index of 40,487 classified shows.
Demand: Ahrefs Keywords Explorer, monthly search volume, US, 2026-09-09.
https://whichpodcast.com/research/genre-saturation

Writing about podcast trends?

Happy to run a specific cut, explain the method, or answer questions about what the numbers do and do not support. Email zaq@lengmedia.com.

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