Cadence
How many episodes the team expects to publish each month. This is the multiplier on every recurring cost.
For a business podcast, the recurring cost per episode starts with internal production hours × loaded hourly rate, then adds outside production spend. Annual cost is that episode cost × publishing cadence. Use your own inputs below instead of borrowing a generic market average.
Calculate your workflowHow many episodes the team expects to publish each month. This is the multiplier on every recurring cost.
Research, scheduling, preparation, recording support, editing, review, publishing, distribution, and project management per episode.
The economic cost of the people supplying those hours. Keep the assumption explicit so an in-house comparison is auditable.
Recurring agency, editor, freelancer, studio, design, or other production spend that is not already captured in internal labor.
Fill in your actual workflow costs, then calculate. Zero is a valid input when your team does not carry that cost.
Count the labor and external spend that repeats for every episode: prep, recording support, editing, review, assets, publishing, and coordination.
Equipment, branding, feed migration, initial show design, or launch consulting can matter, but keep them separate or amortize them explicitly.
Advertising and paid promotion are acquisition costs, not production costs. Track them separately so a change in media budget does not distort episode economics.
Do not call an in-house workflow free because no vendor invoice arrived. If employees spend hours producing the show, the business is still consuming scarce operating capacity.
Start with the internal production hours required for one episode, multiply those hours by the loaded hourly cost of the people doing the work, then add external editing, design, studio, freelance, or agency spend attributable to that episode. Keep hosting, software, paid distribution, and one-time equipment separate when they are not already included.
Count the work the show actually consumes: guest research and scheduling, preparation, recording support, editing and review, approvals, artwork and clips, publishing, distribution, and project management. Use a loaded labor rate rather than salary alone if you want a realistic operating-cost comparison.
Frequency multiplies every recurring cost. Calculate the fully loaded cost of one episode, then multiply by the number of episodes you intend to publish during the year. A workflow that looks inexpensive per episode can become material when the cadence rises.
Keep one-time setup costs visible, but do not silently mix them into recurring cost unless you deliberately amortize them across a defined number of episodes. That makes comparisons between an in-house workflow, an agency, and a software-supported workflow easier to audit.
Compare the human time required, approval burden, speed from source to published episode, output quality, reuse into other content formats, and whether the workflow can sustain the intended cadence. A lower invoice is not automatically a lower operating cost if the team still supplies most of the production labor.
A three-episode pilot lets you test production effort, editorial review, guest supply, reuse, and audience response before committing to an indefinite cadence.
Build a 3-episode pilot