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What does your podcast actually cost to operate?

Count the internal hours, loaded team cost, external production spend, and recurring software you already carry. The result is your current operating model — not a benchmark and not a sales estimate.

Your current workflow

Put your own production numbers on the table.

Nothing here assumes what a podcast “should” cost. Enter the labor, vendor, and software costs your team actually carries.

Analytics receives only coarse cost/time buckets, not your exact inputs.

Current-cost model

Your operating cost will appear here.

Fill in your actual workflow costs, then calculate. Zero is a valid input when your team does not carry that cost.

Annual operating cost
Cost per episode
Internal production time per year
What to include

Count the work people usually forget.

Internal labor

Guest research, prep, scheduling, recording support, review, publishing, promotion, and stakeholder coordination.

External production

Agency retainers, freelance editors, studio fees, artwork, audio engineering, or per-episode production charges.

Software

Recording, hosting, transcription, clipping, review, project management, and other recurring tools.

Time capacity

The hours your team spends operating the show are capacity even when they never appear on a vendor invoice.

Next decision

Cost is useful when it changes the operating plan.

Once you know the current cost, map three real conversations and see whether the editorial value is worth operating the workflow at all.

Build the 3-episode pilot
Something worth listening to
mato
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