Chartable vs Podsights: what is left of each

Chartable vs Podsights is no longer a choice between two products. Spotify bought both companies in early 2022 (the acquisition announcement covers both deals) and retired both brands, so neither is something you can sign up for today. The difference that matters is what happened next: the Podsights job survived under a new name, and the Chartable job did not.

Podsights is now Spotify Ad Analytics, which is free and open to brands, agencies, and publishers. Chartable closed, and chartable.com returns a 301 redirect to megaphone.spotify.com. If you are reading this because an old article recommended one of them, this page tells you where to go instead.

What each one actually did

The two tools get mentioned in the same breath because Spotify bought them together, but they sat on opposite sides of the podcast business.

Chartable served publishers. It attached a prefix to your feed, counted downloads, tracked where your show sat in the Apple and Spotify charts, and ran SmartLinks that routed a single promotional URL to whichever app the listener used. A podcaster used Chartable to answer questions about their own show.

Podsights served advertisers. It measured whether a podcast ad produced a result on the advertiser's website, using a pixel on the advertiser's side rather than a prefix on the publisher's side. A brand used Podsights to answer whether the spend worked.

That split explains why only one of them survived. Spotify had an obvious place to put an advertiser measurement product. It had no particular reason to keep running a free publisher analytics service for shows hosted anywhere.

Where the Podsights job went

Spotify Ad Analytics is the continuation, and Spotify's Podsights transition guide says so directly. The Spotify Ad Analytics page describes it as a global measurement service that gives advertisers unified access to Spotify measurement services and analytics, available to brands, agencies, and publishers worldwide, operating in ten markets: Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, Spain, the UK, and the US.

The mechanism is the one Podsights built. The Spotify Pixel sits on the advertiser's site and connects conversions back to audio campaigns, and Spotify states it tracks conversions from audio campaigns wherever you are buying, on and off Spotify. Brand measurement runs through Spotify Brand Lift for ad recall, awareness, and consideration.

Spotify states there is no cost associated with using Spotify Ad Analytics. Publishers can activate attribution with the Spotify Pixel across an unlimited number of campaigns and impressions, and opt their podcasts into Advisor so advertisers can find them.

For a publisher, that last part is the useful bit. You can offer a sponsor pixel-based attribution without charging either side for the measurement layer, which is a reasonable thing to put in a media kit. Our podcast attribution explainer covers how pixel measurement reads in practice, and what a podcast attribution pixel is covers the mechanism.

Where the Chartable job went

Nowhere.

There is no Spotify product that replaces prefix-based download analytics for a show hosted outside Spotify. Spotify for Creators reports on Spotify listening, which is a different and much narrower question. Megaphone is a hosting and ad platform, not a free measurement prefix you bolt onto someone else's host.

So if you used Chartable for downloads across every app, or for SmartLinks, you are not switching products. You are rebuilding a capability. Chartable alternatives covers the options, and SmartLinks for podcasters covers how to replace that specific feature.

The data does not come with you

Chartable shut down and its data cannot be exported, and there is no import path from the Podsights brand either. Any replacement you install starts counting on the day you install it.

That is a reporting problem before it is a tooling problem. Your download history has a hole in it, and the honest way to handle that is to label it rather than paper over it. Record the install date of whatever you adopt, keep the old Chartable figures as a separate labelled series if you still have screenshots, and never splice the two into one trend line in a sponsor deck. A buyer who spots a stitched series stops trusting the whole page.

Who should do what now

If you are an advertiser or an agency, use Spotify Ad Analytics. It is the direct continuation of Podsights, it costs nothing, and the pixel works across campaigns you buy outside Spotify.

If you are a publisher who wants attribution to offer sponsors, activate the Spotify Pixel through the same product. It solves the sponsor-facing measurement question without a budget line.

If you are a podcaster who lost Chartable, you need a prefix analytics provider, and Spotify Ad Analytics is not it. Compare the options on what they measure rather than on brand familiarity. Chartable vs Podtrac and Chartable vs OP3 both walk through live replacements, and Podder vs Chartable covers what we built for the shows that landed here.

Switching means installing a prefix on your feed and starting a clean series, which takes minutes. Chartable is gone, and Podder is where a lot of its users landed. Install the prefix, verify one episode, and write down the date.