Podcast prices confuse buyers for a simple reason: a hosting plan costs about the price of lunch, while a managed show can cost more than a salary. As a full-service podcast production agency, we get asked about cost first, so we gathered what the public numbers say.
We’ve added our own pricing and some arithmetic, including your team’s hours, since staff time is a real cost even when no invoice arrives. Use the three bills to build a budget you can defend.
A B2B podcast comes with three bills
Most cost guides give you one number, and that number hides the part that hurts. A B2B podcast really comes with three bills:
- Production: Recording, editing, hosting, show notes and clips.
- People: Strategy, guest work, approvals and the hours your own team spends.
- Promotion: Anything that gets the show in front of buyers, such as LinkedIn spend or newsletter slots.
Agency quotes usually cover the first bill and part of the second. Your own payroll covers the rest, so a budget that counts only the quote will miss by a wide margin.
That changes the in-house math. Doing it yourself often costs more than it looks, because staff time is a cost even when no invoice arrives, and as the people section below shows, it adds up fast.
What the published numbers say
Three recent cost guides give the clearest picture: MillionPodcasts, Content Allies and Podmuse. Most price ranges in these guides are the authors’ estimates. Treat them as ranges to test, not quotes.
| Approach | Monthly range reported | Where it comes from | What it usually covers |
| Self produced | About $10 to $155 | MillionPodcasts | Hosting and optional software; your time is extra |
| In house team | $1,000 to $8,000 | MillionPodcasts and Content Allies | Salaries, tools and a part or full time manager |
| Outsourced editing | From about $500 | Podmuse, citing Content Allies | Editing support; little strategy |
| Full service agency | $2,000 to $10,000+, or up to $20,000+ | Podmuse; Content Allies | Strategy, guests, production and repurposing |
Why is the agency range so wide? Scope. A video show with guest booking costs more than an audio show on a monthly plan, yet both get the same label.
Single items are easier to trust. MillionPodcasts puts a working microphone setup at about $375 to $495, and hosting runs about $10 to $100 a month. Those costs are small next to people costs.
What Resonate charges
Our full service engagements run from $2,100 to $6,500 a month, a range we’ve held since we started. Your quote depends on episode count, whether you add video and how much guest work you want us to carry.
Over twelve months, that range works out to $25,200 to $78,000. That’s our own arithmetic, and it assumes no change in scope. Plan for at least twelve months, because early months go into building your show.
Publish four episodes a month? The same range works out to about $525 to $1,625 an episode, again by our arithmetic. It’s handy for comparing against an editing only quote, which excludes strategy and launch.
Price alone is a weak reason to pick a vendor. Our questions to ask a podcast agency will help you compare scope, and our top agencies compared by model shows how other firms are built.
The people bill is the one nobody sees
MillionPodcasts cites the Independent Podcaster Report 2025, from Alitu and The Podcast Host. It found that 41% of publishing creators say one episode takes six hours or more, and another 13% said more than ten. Publish weekly at six hours and that’s about 24 hours a month, or 288 hours a year.
Content Allies gives $50,000 to $90,000 or more a year for a full time podcast manager. MillionPodcasts says benefits, payroll tax and overhead add 25 to 40 percent on top. By our arithmetic, that makes a loaded cost of roughly $62,500 to $126,000 or more a year for one person.
Few B2B companies hire a full time person for one show. They hand it to a marketer who already has a full day. The cost shows up as slower campaigns, late episodes and a show that stops at episode eight.
Count your own hours before you compare quotes. Say three people spend two hours each on every episode: an outsourced scope that removes four of those hours is worth real money. Also note what stays with you, such as approving guests and sharing episodes with sales.
Wondering which tasks sit inside a package? Read what full service production includes. If editing is the only piece you need, start with our guide to podcast editing.
Setup costs and running costs
Spending falls into three buckets: one-time setup, monthly running costs and promotion.
- Setup: Microphone, headphones, cover art, music license and any brand work. MillionPodcasts estimates a working audio kit at $375 to $495, and about $645 to $865 with an interface and a music license.
- Running: Hosting, editing, show notes, clips and any paid promotion. Hosting is a small line, as our guide to the best podcast hosting shows.
- Promotion: LinkedIn promotion is reported at $500 to $5,000 a month, paid social at $300 to $2,000, and newsletter or podcast placements at $200 to $3,000 a campaign.
One more cost deserves a line: rework. A show that starts without a clear audience or format often gets re-recorded, re-edited or relaunched. Each round costs production time and listener trust, so a few hours on a brief before you record is the cheapest insurance in your budget.
MillionPodcasts reports outsourced video editing at $40 to $300 or more per episode, or about $30 a month for an editing app in house. Adding video? Ask whether the quote includes clips or only the full episode.
Ask about ownership, too. Whatever you spend, you should own your feed, your raw audio and your files. Switching agencies later is cheap when you own them and expensive when you don’t, so ask any agency, including us, to put this in writing.
Promotion is optional, but we’d still plan for it. A show with no distribution plan depends on people finding it by chance. Even a small monthly amount aimed at your target accounts changes who hears your first ten episodes.
Many companies also forget the time cost of launch. Our launch guide says three to five episodes can be recorded in two or three weeks when people show up, which is real work before the first listener arrives. See how long a B2B launch takes for how those weeks are spent.
Podcast cost per episode: why published ranges swing so wide
Published per-episode figures differ by a factor of thirty. ThePod.fm’s 2026 guide puts production at $500 to $15,000 per episode and monthly budgets at $1,500 to $45,000. These are vendor figures with no stated method.
The spread comes from scope. The same guide lists editing at $300 to $7,000 and hosting at $15 to $100 a month. A simple audio cleanup sits at the low end, and a multi-guest video cut with motion graphics sits near the top.
Video is the biggest swing. Sweet Fish Media says video usually costs more because it adds cameras, lighting and video editing, and ThePod.fm cites Rise25 for a 30% to 50% rise. Treat that as a rough guide at best.
Splitting a quote into the three bills makes it easier to judge. Ask a vendor which bill each line covers, because production without strategy or promotion isn’t the full cost of a working B2B show.
Podcast pricing and contract terms: what cost guides skip
There’s a second layer a price range can’t show: the contract. Three more cost guides give detailed ranges, and none spells out who owns the RSS feed or what the minimum term is.
Sweet Fish Media’s guide calls its own pricing customized and says most of its clients spend $5,000 to $12,000 a month on an ongoing video program. It calls internal labor often the largest hidden cost but gives no dollar figure for that labor. A British guide from B2B Better says in-house shows usually stall for lack of time and a clear commercial objective, and gives no hours or salary.
The people bill fills that gap. Count your team’s hours per episode and multiply them by your own pay rates.
When you ask any agency for pricing, get four things in writing:
- The monthly fee and what episodes, video and clips it covers.
- The minimum term and how you cancel.
- Who owns the feed, raw audio and guest contacts.
- What you pay if you leave early or want files handed over.
An agency that quotes only a monthly number is selling a price, not a scope. Compare scopes.
Three budget mistakes
The first mistake is the editing-only plan. It looks like a bargain, but nobody owns the strategy, so episodes ship without a purpose. You save on the invoice and lose it in results.
The second is funding a short launch. You fund three months, see little and stop. We see early signals within three to six months, but we wouldn’t trust any cost per customer before about twelve.
The third is leaving salaries uncounted. Staff hours never make it into the budget, so the show looks cheap on paper, and when the person running it leaves or gets busy, the show stops.
Each mistake starts the same way: someone picked a number first and a goal second. Flip the order. Write the goal, estimate the hours, then ask what it takes to hit the goal with a team you can sustain.
The budget behind all three was set for a launch when it should have been set for a program. A podcast is a repeated effort, and the cost makes sense only if you can stay with it.
How to test whether the cost makes sense
Work backward from one customer. Take your annual podcast spend and divide it by the first year value of an average new customer. The answer is how many customers your show must influence to break even.
| Annual spend | If an average new customer is worth $10,000 | If worth $50,000 | If worth $100,000 |
| $25,200 | 3 customers | 1 customer | 1 customer |
| $50,000 | 5 customers | 1 customer | 1 customer |
| $78,000 | 8 customers | 2 customers | 1 customer |
The table rounds up, and it assumes the show influenced the whole value of each customer, which rarely happens. Use it as a floor for how hard your show must work, not as a forecast.
The measure we’d watch is a sales call where the prospect mentioned the show. To set up tracking, start with pipeline and closed deals. Our post If You Need ROI by Month Two, Do Not Start a Podcast covers when to expect each result.
Timing matters too. We find growth builds slowly, and older episodes start outperforming newer ones around months nine to twelve. A show judged at month four hasn’t had time to work, and cancelling then means paying for the build-up without the payoff.
What we can’t tell you
We can’t name your final price. Quotes depend on scope, and we didn’t collect quotes from other agencies. The ranges here come from three public guides, and most don’t name a source for each figure.
We can’t predict your return, either. We can show you the break even math and the timing our guides describe. Whether your show reaches your buyers depends on your guests, your topic and your follow through.
Prices and plans change, so confirm every figure before you budget. Want a quote built around your goals? See our podcast production services and our podcast management service.
Conclusion
Count all three bills (production, people and promotion), plan for twelve months, and judge the show by customers influenced instead of downloads.
Want a quote built around your goals? Book a call and bring your numbers.
