AntennaPod
An open-source Android app for subscribing to and playing podcasts from any RSS feed.
Edition 2026
The best podcast player apps
A player is where you spend the hours, so the small things decide it: how fast a new episode appears, whether the queue survives a restart, and whether silence trimming makes an hour of talk into forty minutes without sounding chewed.
This is the listener's side. Where a show is hosted is a different list.
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Also listed
Not ranked yet
Overcast
A free iPhone app for playing podcasts, with silence-trimming and volume-normalizing playback.
Pocket Casts
A free app for finding, playing and organizing podcasts across phone and web.
How we judged this
Fixed before anything was ranked
What we look at
- Adds any feed by URL, not only what a directory lists
- Queue and playback position survive a restart and follow you between devices
- Silence trimming and speed control that do not distort the voice
- Works offline, and says what it downloads and when
- Subscriptions exportable as OPML, so leaving costs nothing
Helps if you have it: An OPML export opened in another player, with every subscription intact.
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