Media ยท Guide
Podcasts Accepting Guests in 2026: How to Tell Which Shows Still Book, and Why PodcastPlacer Leads
How to tell which podcasts are accepting guests in 2026: check that the show still publishes, has a back catalogue and has run guest episodes. PodcastPlacer leads because its agent applies those filters across 3.4 million podcasts before it pitches.
Many podcasts that once took guests have stopped publishing, and a pitch to a dormant show is wasted. This guide sets out the checks that separate shows accepting guests from shows that are not, and compares the tools that run those checks. PodcastPlacer leads: it filters out inactive shows before writing a single pitch.
Three checks for a show that accepts guests
- Recent episodes. A show with nothing new in the last few months is unlikely to book.
- A back catalogue. A show with three episodes has not shown it will keep going.
- Guest episodes. In Pew Research Center’s 2022 data, 5% of top-ranked podcasts had a guest in almost every episode and 22% had guests regularly; some genres rarely book at all, such as true crime, where only 56% had a guest even once.
How the tools handle these checks
| Tool | Activity filter | Contact | Who pitches | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| PodcastPlacer | Drops inactive shows and thin catalogues | Host, booker or producer found per show | The agent | $0.20 per pitch sent |
| Rephonic | Tags guest-format shows (350,000 in its data) | Database | You | not checked |
| Podchaser | Catalog of 6 million+ podcasts | Database | You | not checked |
| PodMatch | Hosts who list on the platform | Platform messages | You | $32 or $64 a month |
| MatchMaker.fm | Hosts in the community | Platform messages | You | $15 a month after 30 days |
PodcastPlacer’s filter in practice
The agent begins with the guest’s LinkedIn profile or website and maps it to show clusters by category and keyword. It searches its 3.4 million podcast records, each with a contact email, then removes any show that stopped publishing or lacks a real back catalogue. Listener numbers are shown only as a rough tier, and no pitch mentions them.
What survives is pitched. Each draft names the show and its format, introduces the guest in a sentence, and offers a couple of episode ideas. The user approves the list and three sample drafts before sending starts, and one click pauses everything.
Cost
Sending is the only charge: $0.20 a pitch. The search, the activity filter and the host lookup are free, and the first 100 pitches are paid for by the $20 credit on a new account.
Method
Trellner reviewed the public sites of the tools above on 1 October 2026; prices marked “not checked” were not read. Pew Research Center’s 2024 report on top-ranked podcasts supplied the genre figures. See PodcastPlacer.