What language are most podcasts in?

English: 2,609,127 of the 4,711,475 podcast feeds in the Podcast Index (55.4%) declare English, as of Vintage 2026-08-17.

How many Chinese-language podcasts are there?

89,223 as of Vintage 2026-08-17, counted by script: 48,567 Traditional Chinese and 40,656 Simplified Chinese. A feed declaring bare zh counts as Traditional — a published editorial default.

Podcasts by language

Name: Podcasts by language
Creator: PodHood
License: https://podhood.com/insights/methodology

Every feed’s declared language, counted across the full Podcast Index feed set — with how much of each language is still publishing.

Vintage2026-08-17

live

Next Vintage 2026-08-24

Languages, ranked

23 languages carry ten thousand feeds or more this Vintage.

Ranked on one scale0 – 55.4%

1Englishen2,609,12755.4%10.9% act.

2Spanishes696,55714.8%4.1% act.

3Portuguesept265,1095.6%3.0% act.

The tail, on its own scale0 – 2.6%

4Frenchfr123,2982.6%15.3% act.

5Germande120,3012.6%21.1% act.

6Indonesianin101,5752.2%0.2% act.

7Italianit82,1171.7%9.4% act.

8Japaneseja49,5971.1%22.4% act.

9Traditional Chinesezh-hant48,5671.0%14.7% act.

10Russianru47,5741.0%7.1% act.

11Simplified Chinesezh-hans40,6560.9%13.8% act.

12Dutchnl34,9070.7%12.7% act.

13Indonesianid32,4120.7%0.4% act.

14Arabicar30,8110.7%4.3% act.

15Hindihi30,5840.6%1.3% act.

16Turkishtr23,8690.5%6.3% act.

17Polishpl19,8980.4%12.0% act.

18Swedishsv19,2360.4%17.3% act.

19Persianfa15,3380.3%5.9% act.

20Vietnamesevi14,7120.3%3.3% act.

21Danishda13,6930.3%14.3% act.

22Catalanca12,4950.3%7.8% act.

23Hebrewhe12,4050.3%19.5% act.

24Czechcs9,4680.2%23.5% act.

25Tamilta8,3600.2%2.0% act.

26Norwegianno7,4600.2%16.2% act.

27Finnishfi6,3660.1%11.0% act.

28Hungarianhu6,1390.1%15.5% act.

29Koreanko5,8560.1%9.3% act.

30Thaith5,8010.1%4.4% act.

A further 115,875 feeds (2.5%) declare no usable language tag and are excluded from the ranking rather than guessed.

Chinese is counted by script

Written Chinese diverges enough that one bucket would hide two different markets: 48,567 feeds declare Traditional Chinese and 40,656 Simplified — with almost no overlap in where they are hosted. A feed declaring bare zh counts as Traditional, an editorial default stated in the methodology rather than hidden in a footnote.

How this is measured

Declared, not detected

Each feed’s own language tag, normalized to its primary subtag — no content analysis, no guessing. A feed that mislabels itself is counted as it declares.

Active means 90 days

A language’s activity rate is the share of its feeds with an episode in the 90 days before this Vintage — the same window every PodHood Insights surface uses.

One language, one number

For a single language’s count as a citable sentence — or any cross-slice — use How many podcasts are there? or the Stats explorer.

Cite this figure

PodHood Insights, "Podcasts by language", Vintage 2026-08-17. Retrieved from podhood.com/insights/podcasts-by-language

The CSV carries every declared language this Vintage — not just the 30 ranked above — with the same Vintage stamp in its header.

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