The short version: Recording and editing a podcast for free is easy, Audacity, GarageBand, Podcastle and Descript all have usable free tiers, but hosting is the bit that costs money once you have more than a handful of episodes. Use a free tool to make it, a free-tier host to publish it, and budget roughly £10 to £15 a month the moment you want unlimited episodes and real analytics.
Recording and editing: free and fine for most people
Nobody needs to spend money to make a podcast sound decent. Here's what's free and worth using:
- Audacity (desktop, Windows/Mac/Linux): completely free, open source, no watermark, no export limit. Clunky interface, steep-ish learning curve, but it does everything a beginner needs including noise reduction and multi-track editing.
- GarageBand (Mac and iOS only): free with every Apple device, simpler than Audacity, has decent built-in effects and a reasonable library of jingles.
- Podcastle: browser-based, records and transcribes, free plan gives you limited recording hours a month. I've written a full breakdown of what Podcastle's free plan gives you now it runs as async, worth reading before you commit time to building a workflow around it.
- Descript: free tier includes one hour of transcription a month and basic editing by deleting text (it deletes the matching audio). Brilliant for solo hosts who hate timeline editing, but the free hour disappears fast if you're recording long-form interviews.
Say you run a weekly 30-minute podcast interviewing small business owners about marketing. Audacity for recording and editing costs you nothing, forever, as long as you don't mind a learning curve over your first three or four episodes. That's the realistic starting point for most people, not a paid app.
Where free recording tools quietly stop being free
This is the part most "free podcast tools" roundups skip over: free recording software is free, but free AI-powered extras (transcription, voice cleanup, auto show notes) are the thing that gets metered and capped. Descript's one free hour a month sounds generous until you remember a single 45-minute interview eats it in one sitting. Podcastle's free hours work the same way. You will hit the ceiling within your first month if you record weekly.
The workaround most people don't think of: record in Audacity or GarageBand for free with no caps at all, and only use the AI transcription tools occasionally, for episodes where you specifically want searchable text or show notes, rather than running every single episode through them.
Hosting: the part that costs money
A lot of "free podcast" guides blur editing tools and hosting together, which causes real confusion. Hosting is a separate thing: it's the service that takes your finished audio file, generates your RSS feed, and distributes that feed to Spotify, Apple Podcasts and everywhere else. You cannot skip this step. Free editing software does not host your show.
Free and free-tier hosts worth knowing:
- Spotify for Podcasters (formerly Anchor): completely free, unlimited hosting, unlimited episodes, no catch on storage. The trade-off is you're locked into Spotify's ecosystem for some features and the analytics are basic.
- Buzzsprout free plan: free forever for your first 90 minutes of audio per month, after that episodes get taken down and you need to upgrade. Fine for a monthly show, tight for weekly.
- Podbean free plan: 5 hours of total storage, which sounds small but works if you keep episodes short and don't mind archiving older ones.
Worked example: say you run a monthly 40-minute podcast for your bookkeeping business. Buzzsprout's free 90 minutes a month covers two episodes comfortably, so you could stay on the free plan indefinitely as long as you don't go weekly. The moment you add a second show or go weekly, you're over the limit and paying £10 to £18 a month depending on the host.
Step by step: launching a podcast for £0
- Record in Audacity or GarageBand, no cost, no episode limit.
- Edit out filler words and long pauses yourself, or run the occasional episode through Descript's free hour if you want AI-assisted cutting.
- Export as an MP3, 128kbps is plenty for spoken word, keeps file size down.
- Upload to Spotify for Podcasters for unlimited free hosting and automatic distribution to Spotify.
- Submit your RSS feed manually to Apple Podcasts Connect, it's free and takes about ten minutes.
- Check your show also appears correctly if listeners find it through YouTube Music podcasts, since YouTube Music pulls in RSS feeds too and it's a platform people forget to check.
The uncomfortable bit nobody tells you
Free hosting almost always means you don't fully own your audience data. Spotify for Podcasters gives you free unlimited hosting, but your download numbers, listener locations and completion rates live inside Spotify's dashboard, not yours, and if you ever move hosts you lose historical analytics continuity. A lot of creators pick the free option, grow for a year, then discover they can't export real listener history when they want to pitch sponsors. If sponsorship or advertising is part of your plan from day one, it's worth paying £10 to £15 a month for a host like Buzzsprout or Captivate that gives you portable, exportable analytics from episode one, rather than treating "free" as free of trade-offs.
That's not a reason to avoid free hosting. It's a reason to decide upfront whether you're podcasting as a hobby or building something you'll eventually monetise, because the free tools are brilliant for the former and quietly limiting for the latter.
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Transcripts, show notes and other extras
If you want written transcripts for SEO or accessibility, check the free limits before you build a workflow around any tool. I covered this in detail when looking at whether NaturalReader is free and what its paid tiers add, which is relevant if you're using text-to-speech tools alongside your podcast for show notes or repurposed content. And if you were relying on Microsoft Copilot for any podcast-adjacent AI features, it's worth knowing what Microsoft retired from Copilot recently and what to save before you build a process around a feature that might disappear.
Repurposing your podcast episodes into a downloadable guide or checklist is also one of the simplest ways to turn listeners into email subscribers. If you haven't done that yet, there's a solid rundown of lead magnet tools for making a freebie that pairs well with podcast content, since your best episodes often make excellent lead magnet material once transcribed.
And if you're recording on a Mac and audio files are piling up, it's worth knowing how to find what's filling your Mac and free up storage, because raw podcast recordings and exported WAV files eat space fast, far faster than most people expect when they start recording regularly.
Frequently asked questions
Is it possible to make a whole podcast for free, start to finish?
Yes. Record in Audacity or GarageBand, host on Spotify for Podcasters, and submit your feed manually to Apple Podcasts. None of that costs anything, and there's no episode limit on that specific combination.
What's the real difference between a podcast creation tool and a podcast host?
The creation tool (Audacity, Descript, Podcastle) is where you record and edit the audio file. The host (Spotify for Podcasters, Buzzsprout, Podbean) stores that file, builds your RSS feed and distributes it to apps like Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You need both, and most free guides don't make that distinction clear.
Why do free hosting plans have storage or hour limits?
Hosting costs the provider money in server storage and bandwidth every time someone downloads an episode, so most hosts cap free plans by monthly upload minutes rather than total episode count, which is why a monthly show can stay free indefinitely while a weekly show hits the ceiling within two or three months.
Should I pay for podcast hosting from the start?
Only if sponsorship or monetisation is part of your plan. Paid hosts like Buzzsprout or Captivate, at roughly £10 to £18 a month, give you exportable analytics you own, which matters if you'll ever need to show listener numbers to an advertiser. For a hobby show, free hosting is fine.
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