Pocket Casts

Pocket Casts is one of the most feature-complete podcast apps in the category and, since 2022, one of the most surprising open-source releases: the full iOS and Android apps live on GitHub under the Mozilla Public Licence 2.0.

Origins

Pocket Casts was founded in 2010 by Russell Ivanovic and Philip Simpson under the Shifty Jelly banner, an Adelaide-based Australian independent team. The first version shipped on 27 January 2011, and it was one of the first genuinely good Android podcast apps, quickly earning a reputation as the go-to power-user pick. The iOS version arrived later, and Pocket Casts spent most of the 2010s as a paid-once cross-platform app that competed on quality against Apple Podcasts and the boutique iOS players.

Two acquisitions

In May 2018, a consortium of public radio organisations (NPR, WNYC Studios, WBEZ Chicago, and This American Life) bought Pocket Casts. It was a rare instance of listener-side infrastructure being owned by the same institutions producing the shows. The consortium sold it on to Automattic (the WordPress.com company) in 2021, with Russell and Philip staying on to keep leading the project. Automattic's stewardship has been notably light-touch: no forced sign-in, no aggressive telemetry, and in 2022 the striking move of making the Pocket Casts iOS and Android apps free and open source under MPL 2.0.

What it does

Pocket Casts is the app to reach for if you want the fullest feature set on both iOS and Android from one team, synced through a single account across devices. Cross-device sync is genuinely reliable, the Watch and CarPlay apps are polished, and it has the deepest set of filtering options in the category (custom filters for downloaded, unplayed, in-progress, starred, and more). Subscription lists import and export as OPML. Nothing about your library is locked to the app. Pocket Casts is also a member of the Podcast Standards Project coalition, one of the industry-side groups keeping the open-podcasting spec conversation honest.

Where you get it

iOS App Store, Google Play, Windows, macOS, and a web player, all sharing one account. The core app is free; a Plus tier (~$39.99/yr) adds cross-device sync of listening history and priority support. Enterprise-scale hosting and syncing servers cost money, and Plus is how they get paid for.

Current stance

Actively developed by a small team inside Automattic, open source on GitHub, and one of the few apps in this directory backed by a company big enough to keep servers up for a decade. If you want an app that runs everywhere and plays open RSS full stop, with source code you can audit if you want to, this is the choice. If you want the same ethos in a smaller, less commercial package, look at AntennaPod on Android or Podverse on iOS.