Earlier this year, I had created a science podcasts chart that looked at the weekly changes in rankings for the top Science podcasts in the US.
After creating the chart, I was curious to know how representative this category was compared to the other categories and the top podcasts overall. Is there a major difference in how often the top podcasts change? Are some categories easier to get into the top charts?
I scraped the top 25 podcasts across all 20 of Apple Podcasts’ US main charts every week for 8 weeks, then looked at how much each chart’s rankings moved week to week.
Something to note: Apple Podcasts has a “Top” chart that is the top podcasts across all categories. Then, it has 19 main categories, each with their own charts.
Key Findings
When looking at the top 25 podcasts in each category, there are several categories that change quite a bit each week, whereas others stay relatively stable. In the following chart, I compare the number of unique podcasts that charted in each category over the 8-week period.
As you can see in the chart, there are a few categories that are fairly stable, such as Comedy and News, that barely change. However, there are a few categories that change quite a bit each week, such as Society & Culture and True Crime.
Analysis
While it’s useful to see which categories are more or less volatile, let’s also dive a little deeper into the weekly changes of the most volatile categories as well as the most stable ones to see how they differ.
Overall Top Podcasts
Now, before we look at some of the weekly changes within a few categories, it’s useful to look at the top podcasts overall. The overall top podcasts are more volatile than almost all of the individual categories, except for Society & Culture and True Crime.
Most Volatile Categories
Let’s look at the weekly changes in two of the most volatile categories: Society & Culture and True Crime.
Most Stable Categories
Lastly, we can look at the weekly changes in the two most stable categories, Comedy and News.
What This Means for Podcasters
If you’re trying to launch a podcast and break into Apple’s charts, this data gives you a sense of where you actually stand a chance.
Society & Culture and True Crime had 45 different podcasts cycle through their top 25 over just 8 weeks. This higher amount of turnover suggests there’s room for other shows to break in, even if just for a week.
Comedy and News, however, only had 32 unique podcasts cycle through their top 25 over the same 8 weeks. So a small, stable group of incumbents dominates both charts.
Based on an analysis of Apple Podcasts chart data: Society & Culture and True Crime are the most volatile categories, with podcasts constantly breaking into their top 25 rankings. Comedy and News are the most stable, dominated by the same shows week after week.
The overall “Top” chart is also volatile as 44 unique podcasts cycled through it over those 8 weeks. That’s a lot of competition, but also a lot of movement. A good week can put you there, even briefly.
If you’re deciding where to launch or promote a podcast, the data says some charts have far more room to move than others.
About This Analysis
Here’s how I gathered and processed the chart data behind this piece, along with where the underlying data comes from.
Methodology
This covers how I collect and process the chart data week to week, plus a few limitations worth knowing about.
Data Collection
I scraped Apple Podcasts chart data every week using an automated pipeline where a headless browser clicked through to the full chart and then recorded each podcast’s rank, title, and Apple Podcasts ID.
This scraper ran every Sunday from April 19, 2026 to June 7, 2026 for a total of 8 weeks.
Data Processing
Once a week’s chart is collected, I grabbed the podcast’s RSS feed, using its Apple Podcasts ID, through Apple’s public iTunes Lookup API. I used the feed to pull its cover art for the bump charts. Not every podcast exposes a usable feed URL through Apple’s public catalog, so a few podcasts appear in the bump charts as a plain colored circle instead of cover art.
For each podcast, I track its rank across all 8 weeks.
The “unique podcasts per category” chart earlier in this piece counts how many distinct podcasts appeared anywhere in a category’s top 25 across all 8 weeks. A category with little turnover will land close to 25. A category where the top 25 completely refreshed every single week could show as many as 200 (25 podcasts × 8 weeks).
Limitations
- This analysis is for the US charts only. Apple Podcasts has unique charts for each country, which means that the week-to-week differences could be different for different countries.
- Snapshots are weekly, not daily. Apple Podcasts charts change daily; however, this analysis used weekly snapshots to zoom out on the weekly trends.
- The 8-week window is relatively short. A category’s volatility could look different over a different 8-week stretch or over a more long-term period.
Sources
All chart data comes from Apple Podcasts’ public charts pages at podcasts.apple.com/us/charts, scraped every Sunday from April 19 to June 7, 2026.
Podcast cover art was sourced from each podcast’s own RSS feed, with feed URLs resolved through Apple’s iTunes Lookup API.
Data
If you are interested in looking at the data or extending the analysis, the raw data for this analysis is available on Kaggle.