How much does Spotify pay podcasters in 2026?

Spotify doesn't pay podcasters a set amount per stream, per listener or per hour. It pays shows in the Spotify Partner Program from two streams of money, and lets you sell to your listeners on top:

There's no published rate for any of it. Spotify says it paid more than $100 million to podcasters and publishers in the first quarter of 2025 alone, ads and Partner Program together, and that after it lowered the program's bar in January 2026, total monthly payouts to enrolled shows rose by more than a third. What one show earns depends on how many people play it, where they are, whether they pay for Premium, and whether they watch or listen.

To apply, a show must meet all of these on the Monetize page in Spotify for Creators:

• Where it's open. The US, Canada, the UK, Australia, New Zealand and much of western and northern Europe, plus the 37 countries Spotify announced on September 17, 2026, which are now on its list (56 in all): among them Italy, Spain, Poland, Mexico, Brazil, Colombia and Chile. In 29 countries on the list, mostly smaller ones such as Luxembourg, Malta, Uruguay and the Caribbean countries, Spotify doesn't yet serve its ads to local listeners, but you still earn from its ads when your episodes are played elsewhere, and from Premium video.
• Hosted somewhere else? Spotify for Creators is the simple route. Spotify said in January 2026 that shows on Acast, Audioboom, Libsyn, Omny and Podigee would be able to publish video and join the program through their host; its help center says to ask your host whether it offers Spotify's monetization tools yet.
• After you apply, Spotify reviews your show against its monetization policies. Once approved, you set up Spotify Payouts with your bank and tax details, and two-step verification, required within 30 days once a show earns $1,000 or more in a month.
• To stay in, a show must publish an episode and earn at least $10 in every 6-month period. Pausing the program for more than 6 months in a row can get you removed.

“Audience” and “consumption hours” count on Spotify only. For the program, a stream is a play of 60 seconds or more, audio or video.

Ad revenue. Spotify sells ads through the Spotify Audience Network and inserts them into the ad breaks you choose, or that its automatic tool places (before, during and after an episode, at pauses and speaker changes). You get 50% of the revenue Spotify recognizes every time one plays, and they play in other podcast apps too: Spotify for Creators delivers ads into your episodes when they're downloaded elsewhere. No ad break, no ad revenue. A few limits:

• Ads play only when an advertiser wants your audience, so impressions aren't guaranteed.
• On Spotify, they play in the desktop, iPhone and Android apps, not the web player, smart speakers, cars or TVs.
• A break in the first 10 seconds may not play; you can also leave out ad categories you don't want.

Spotify for Creators shows your ads RPM: what you earned per 1,000 ad impressions over the last 30 days, after the split. It's the nearest thing to a rate Spotify gives, and it's yours alone.

Premium video revenue. This is the part that pays only for video. When a Premium member in an eligible country watches one of your video episodes, Spotify plays it without its inserted ads, and pays you from its own formula instead. Spotify says that formula may change and can weigh:

• how much qualifying time Premium members spend watching your video episodes;
• which country those members are registered in;
• how many unique Premium members watch, or have access to, an uninterrupted video;
• and how much eligible video all Premium members watch in those countries.

So it isn't a rate per view: it moves with your watch time, where your viewers are and how much video all Premium members watch. Audio episodes, and video watched by free users, earn from ads instead. Each video episode still needs an ad break, or it earns neither. Your own sponsor reads stay in for everyone, Premium members included.

Video is where Spotify is pushing: it says more than 500 million of its users have streamed a video podcast, and that video shows in the program have grown their consumption hours by more than 45% on average since it launched. Filming the show is covered in how to start a video podcast.

• Memberships. On October 20, 2026, Podcast Subscriptions became Memberships, rolling out in 34 countries (the US, Canada, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Singapore and 27 more in Europe), for shows hosted on Spotify for Creators or Megaphone. You set up to 3 tiers with their own prices and benefits: bonus or member-only video episodes, fewer ads, extended or early episodes. Premium listeners can get a 7-day free trial if you turn it on. You keep 90%: a 10% platform fee covers processing, currency and payout fees, and taxes come off where the law requires. Shows created from October 20 need 3 episodes, 100 listeners or viewers and 100 hours on Spotify in 30 days; shows that already used Subscriptions stay eligible, and members moved over from them keep a 5.5% processing fee plus currency fees until they cancel.
• Creator Sponsorships. Partner Program members can add, swap or schedule host-read sponsor segments in video episodes without re-editing them: up to 2 per episode, not in the first 30 seconds. Spotify charges no fee and you keep 100% of the deal. You still find and sell the sponsor yourself.
• Subscriptions you already sell elsewhere. Through Spotify Open Access, members of a paid show on a partner platform such as Patreon or Supporting Cast can listen on Spotify; that platform handles the payments.
• Tips: none. Spotify's Listener Support, which took recurring donations from listeners, ended on January 2, 2025.

For every other way a show earns, from host-read ads sold through your host to live shows, see how to make money podcasting.

Partner Program earnings go through Spotify Payouts, and only to a bank account for now:

• The first payout waits 30 days from when you enroll. In Spotify's own example, you join on March 5, the wait ends around April 5, too late for April's payout cycle, so your first payout comes in the second half of May, covering March 5 to April 30.
• After that, monthly, in the last two working weeks of each month, after fees and taxes. You can't change the date.
• Minimums: $10 to a local bank account, $100 by wire. Below that, it carries over until you reach it.
• Arrival: within 7 business days of the payout date, with an email when it's sent.

Membership earnings are paid separately, through Stripe, on a rolling 30-day schedule once at least 30 days have passed since your first earnings and you're owed at least $10. Your monthly Partner Program snapshot, on the Monetize page, updates in the first week of each month with last month's earnings.

Spotify publishes no rates, so here's the arithmetic for one made-up month of a US show in the Partner Program. Every number below is an assumption, chosen to show how the pieces add up, not a figure for what shows earn.

The sponsor and the members, the two you sell yourself, do most of the work at this size. Ads and Premium video grow with your audience: double the people watching and both roughly double, with the rest depending on where they are and whether they pay for Premium. Your real ads RPM and Premium video revenue show in Spotify for Creators after your first full month.

Most video podcasts publish on both, and they pay differently:

Spotify's bar is lower: 2,000 hours in a month against YouTube's 4,000 in a year plus 1,000 subscribers, and its ads follow your episodes into other apps. YouTube asks more to get in, then pays a share of ads on every long video, old episodes included. The same recorded episode can earn on both, so the real question is where your listeners are. What YouTube views pay is in how much YouTube pays, and you can try your own numbers in the YouTube money calculator.

Everything Spotify pays scales with the people playing your show, and podcasts are hard to discover: an episode reaches people who already follow it. A clip reaches people who don't. TikTok, Reels and Shorts show clips by what people watch, so a minute of your best story puts the show in front of strangers every day. The full plan is in how to grow a podcast with clips, and the other channels in how to promote a podcast.

• Use Spotify's own Clips too. Spotify for Creators takes one clip per episode, 15 to 90 seconds, as an MP4 or MOV. It shows on your show page and may be recommended in Spotify's Home and Podcast feeds, so the week's best vertical clip works there too.
• Audio-only show? The free audiogram maker turns a moment into a video with your cover, a moving waveform and captions, on your device.
• Make clips loud enough. A quiet clip loses people in a loud feed. The free video volume booster measures a clip's loudness in LUFS and brings it to the level you pick: -14 LUFS, the level Spotify plays at and a common choice for social video, or -16 for a podcast, with a limiter so it gets louder without distorting. It runs in your browser, and nothing is uploaded.

By hand, a week of clips means watching the episode again for the moments, cutting each one, reframing two or three people into a vertical frame and captioning every word. That's the part Clyper does. Paste the episode's YouTube link or upload the video (MP4, MOV, WebM or MKV, up to 4 GB and 4 hours). It reads the transcript to find the moments that stand on their own, cuts each on whole sentences, scores each clip's hook, frames whoever's talking and switches as the speaker changes, and captions every word in one of 5 styles. You choose how many clips you want, up to 30 from an hour-long episode (60 credits), and download 1080 × 1920 MP4s with no watermark. More in podcast clips with Clyper.