Only 10 Top Podcasts Have Video? Not So Fast.
A stat is circulating on LinkedIn and in newsletters stating that only 10 out of the top 200 podcasts have video. The implication being that 95% of podcasters aren’t doing video.
It’s a comforting number if you’ve been skeptical of the video push, and an alarming one if you just spent money building a studio.
The only problem is the stat is out of context. It doesn’t mean only 10 of the top 200 podcasts have video. It actually comes from reporting that only 10 of the top 200 were offering video on Apple Podcasts. That’s a very different thing. Apple has only been pushing video for a relatively short time, so adoption there is still in the early days. That number is likely to rise
But it got me wondering: How many top podcasts actually do have video? Let’s dig in.
What the Charts Show
I took Apple Podcasts’ current U.S. Top 200 podcasts, Top 100 and Edison Podcast Metrics’ Top 50 for Q1 2026 and checked whether each show publishes full episodes on video. Here is the Apple Top 100 and Edison’s Top 50:
Full-episode video, YouTube as the baseline. Apple “unresolved” = Several shows have spotty video footprints. Edison “unresolved” = Fresh Air and SmartLess, both partial. We went and checked, but not infallible.
As far as we can tell, 66% of Apple’s Top 200, 77% of the top 100 and 84% of Edison’s Top 50 are publishing full episodes on video.
Why the two charts differ
The Apple Podcasts chart reflects how quickly a show is gaining momentum, based on factors like new followers, episode engagement, and completion rates. That’s why the chart can include some shows that are unfamiliar even to people who follow the industry closely and possibly a factor as to why its share of podcasts with video is lower than Edison’s chart.
Edison gives us a different view, based on survey data about what podcasts people are actually consuming. And 84% of those shows have video.
Different charts, same takeaway: most top podcasts have video.
The holdouts aren’t holding out
Only six shows in the Edison 50 are genuinely audio-only:
● The Daily (The New York Times)
● Up First (NPR)
● Planet Money (NPR)
● Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me! (NPR)
● This American Life
● Freakonomics Radio
Most come from public radio, and while the Times has video on other shows, The Daily stays audio. Two more sit at the margin: Fresh Air records one interview a week for YouTube but not the full feed, and SmartLess has a YouTube presence built on clips and post-show chats rather than complete episodes.
These are highly produced shows where video may not add much to the experience. Not every show needs or should use video. The line isn’t between creators who believe in audio and those who don’t. It’s between shows where video adds something and shows where it may not.
Is video working?
I want to be careful here. Publishing video doesn’t mean it’s working for all podcasts. Some are better at it than others. And plenty of shows are chopping full episodes into clips. The economics are still murky, and I’ve written before about the opportunities and challenges of podcasting’s liquid content era.
Nor does this mean every podcast should do video, or that video works equally well for every show.
It means we’ve moved past the question of whether podcasting is adopting video. It is.