NPR, NYT Lead Podtrac's September 2025 Podcast Rankings

RADIO ONLINE | Tuesday, October 7, 2025 | 10:31am CT

Podtrac

Podtrac has released its September 2025 podcast industry rankings, highlighting audience and download growth across top U.S. shows and publishers.

NPR News Now continued its reign at No. 1, followed by The Daily from The New York Times and NPR's Up First. Fox News Hourly Update climbed one spot to No. 4, while Dateline NBC slipped to fifth.

Major movers included The Charlie Kirk Show, which jumped 28 places to No. 6, and Fantasy Footballers - Fantasy Football Podcast, up 25 spots to No. 9. The biggest leap came from Morbid, which surged 393 spots to No. 11, marking a standout rebound for the true-crime series from SiriusXM.

On the publisher side, the iHeart Audience Network held its commanding lead with nearly 68 million U.S. unique monthly listeners and 354 million streams/downloads, followed by iHeartPodcasts (32 million) and NPR Sales Network (21 million).

Acast ranked fourth and Libsyn rounded out the top five. Fox Audio Network placed eighth, bolstered by Fox News Hourly Update's performance. Meanwhile, Lemonada Media entered the list at No. 19 with 1.4 million monthly listeners.

Podtrac noted that seven U.S. ranking participants saw gains in unique monthly audiences during September, while 14 reported growth in downloads. Globally, four networks increased total streams, downloads, or views over the previous month.