Podcast hosting is, under the hood, file storage plus an XML feed — and Transistor charges $19–99/month for it, forever. Castport runs the whole thing on your own $5 VPS or desktop: upload an episode, get an Apple/Spotify-valid RSS feed, clean public pages, an embeddable player and privacy-safe download stats. $99 once, and your audio files are never held hostage.
This is the full pricing breakdown: what Transistor actually costs over one, two and three years, what Castport gives you for $99 paid once, and the honest cases where the subscription is still the right call.
What Transistor actually costs you
At $19/mo, one Transistor subscription adds up to $228 every year — $684 over a three-year window, for software you stop owning the day you cancel. Castport is $99 the day you buy it, and the meter never runs again.
| Castport | Transistor | |
|---|---|---|
| Sticker price | $99 once | $19/mo |
| Cost after 1 year | $99 | $228 |
| Cost after 2 years | $99 | $456 |
| Cost after 3 years | $99 | $684 |
Three years in, the gap is $585 — and every year after that adds another $228 to the subscription side of the ledger.
Castport vs Transistor, feature by feature
Price is only half the story — here's how the two line up on the things that decide day-to-day use:
| Castport | Transistor | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $99 once | $19–99/mo, forever |
| Cost over 3 years | $99 | $684–3,564 |
| Shows | Unlimited | 1 to unlimited depending on tier |
| Downloads | Unlimited | Metered on lower tiers |
| Your own domain | Yes, natively | Paid plan only |
| Audio files | Always yours, on your disk | Hosted on their infra |
| Podcasting 2.0 chapters | Built in | Limited |
| Source code | MIT, on GitHub | Closed |
What you get for $99, once
Upload episodes, get a valid RSS feed, public pages, embeddable player & download stats. Pay once. The highlights:
- ♾️ Unlimited shows & episodes — Each show gets its own artwork, iTunes category, language, explicit flag and custom feed slug. No per-show pricing tiers.
- 📡 Apple/Spotify-valid RSS — RSS 2.0 with the full itunes namespace, exact enclosure byte lengths, permanent GUIDs and valid pubDates — the details that actually get feeds rejected, done right.
- ⬆️ Streaming uploads — MP3 or M4A streamed straight to disk — no buffering 200 MB files in memory — with markdown show notes, episode/season numbers and per-episode artwork.
- 📖 Podcasting 2.0 chapters — A chapters editor (start time + title) that also emits the podcast:chapters JSON endpoint modern apps read.
Pays for itself in 5.2 months against Transistor Starter — or a month against Growth. Over 3 years you keep $585–3,465.
Switching is 3 steps
- Buy once on Whop. One-time $99 for the packaged installer (Windows desktop app + guided VPS deploy) with lifetime updates.
- Deploy and point your domain. docker compose up on a $5 VPS, put Caddy or nginx in front for TLS, and set BASE_URL to your real https:// domain.
- Upload and submit. Upload your first episode, then submit /feed/your-show.xml to Apple Podcasts Connect and Spotify for Podcasters. Done.
When paying Transistor is still the right call
Being straight about it: the subscription earns its keep in three situations. If your team is large enough that Transistor's collaboration features, permissions and admin controls are genuinely load-bearing; if your workflow is built on its integrations and leaving means rebuilding that plumbing; or if you have enterprise requirements — SSO, audit logs, SLAs, a vendor to call — that a pay-once app doesn't come with. Everyone else is paying $19/mo for a job that runs fine on hardware they already own.
If that's you, Castport is $99, once. For the deeper dive, read the Castport vs Transistor head-to-head or the full Transistor comparison.
Frequently asked questions
Is it really free on GitHub?
Yes — MIT source at github.com/bensblueprints/castport-mvp, always. $99 buys the packaged installer, guided deploy and lifetime updates.
Will Apple and Spotify actually accept the feed?
That's the part we sweated: exact enclosure byte counts (not estimates), permanent GUIDs, real probed audio durations, and proper HTTP Range support on audio — the exact details that get naive feeds rejected. Set BASE_URL to your real domain first; localhost feeds are rejected.
Who pays for the bandwidth?
You do — that's the honest trade-off of self-hosting. A $5 VPS comfortably serves a typical indie show; a genuinely huge audience is where Transistor's managed CDN infrastructure earns its monthly fee.
What about listener privacy?
Download stats hash IPs with a rotating daily salt, so you get unique-downloads-per-day trends without ever storing anything personal — and the data sits in your SQLite file, not a third party's dashboard.
How do backups work?
Copy three things: one SQLite file, the audio folder and the artwork folder. That's the entire state of the app.
More on Transistor pricing
Castport — product page, demo & full feature list · All OneTimeSuite pricing breakdowns
Try Castport — $99, once
Upload episodes, get a valid RSS feed, public pages, embeddable player & download stats. Pay once.