An ordinary ad blocker can't stop podcast ads, because the ads are part of the audio you download. What works is a podcast app that knows where the ads are in each episode and jumps past them while you listen. Castria is one of those apps, and its ad-skipping is free.
Why ad blockers don't work on podcasts
Podcast ads come in two kinds, and both arrive inside the episode:
- Host-read sponsor segments. The host records them as part of the show, so they're in the file wherever you download it.
- Inserted ads. The podcast's hosting company stitches these into the audio file at the moment you download the episode. Two listeners can hear different ads in the same episode.
Either way, the show and its ads reach your phone as one audio file. There's no separate ad request for a blocker to stop.
Paying for a player doesn't fix it either. Spotify Premium still plays podcast ads, and YouTube Premium doesn't remove the sponsor segments creators record into their shows.
Your options
| Option | What you get | The catch |
|---|---|---|
| Fast-forward by hand | Works in any app, costs nothing | You overshoot, rewind, and pick up your phone every few minutes |
| Pay each show for an ad-free feed | No ads in that one show (Apple Podcasts Subscriptions, Patreon and similar) | You pay again for every show, and many shows don't offer one |
| Skip chapters | Overcast, Pocket Casts and Castro can skip chapters you untick | Only works when the publisher marks the ads as chapters, and few do |
| An app that skips ads automatically | The ads go by without you touching anything | Detection is good but not perfect |
Apps that skip podcast ads
- Castria is a full podcast app for iPhone, iPad, Android and the web, built around automatic ad-skipping. Ad-skipping is free. It plays the publisher's original file and skips over the ads; it never edits the audio.
- Single-purpose skippers such as Herd, Skipper and PodSkip on iPhone, PurerPodcasts, and STFUAI on Android. They do the skipping and little else, and most charge for it by subscription, one-off fee or number of shows.
- Services that cut the ads out, such as ZeroAds and the self-hosted Podly, rewrite your podcast feed so your usual app downloads edited copies of each episode with the ads removed.
The big general-purpose apps don't skip ads inside episodes: not Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Pocket Casts, Overcast, Castro or Snipd. Snipd's help pages say outright that its Premium plan won't remove ads in episodes.
How Castria skips ads
- It scans every episode and marks where each ad, sponsor read and break starts and ends.
- When playback reaches an ad, it skips it, and back-to-back ads go in one skip.
- You can press play straight away: it skips from the front of the episode while the rest is still being scanned.
- It lists every ad it found, with its type, a confidence score and a quote, so you can check its work and tap to hear any of them.
- Auto-skip is on by default. Turn it off in one tap, or leave in a sponsor you like.
- If it gets one wrong, you can report it from the episode in a couple of taps.
On the free plan, ads are found on your phone when you play an episode. Premium finds them on our servers before you download, which is faster, more accurate, and costs your phone no battery.
Is skipping ads fair to podcasters?
Castria downloads the publisher's complete, unaltered episode, the same file any podcast app downloads, and skips past the ads during playback. That's mechanically the same as fast-forwarding. We never edit the file or host a copy of it.
Questions
Does Castria skip ads inside Spotify or Apple Podcasts? No. Ad-skipping works for episodes you play in Castria. Most podcasts are published everywhere, so you can follow the same shows in Castria: search for them by name, or import an OPML file from an app that exports one.
Does it catch every ad? Not every one. That's why it shows you each ad it found and how sure it is, lets you skip by hand, and makes a miss quick to report.
Is it free? Ad-skipping is free on every plan. Premium is an optional subscription with a free trial. It adds server-side ad detection, 20 GB of cloud storage, smart playlists, CarPlay and an Apple Watch app.