You can embed a Pocket Casts player on your own website so visitors can play your podcast without leaving the page. The player works with any Pocket Casts share link, and sites that support embeds (such as WordPress) turn the link into a player automatically. Since late September 2026, the player only loads an audio episode when a visitor presses Play. That makes the download numbers your podcast host reports from the embed much lower than before, and more accurate.
There is no separate embed code to copy. You add the player by pasting a Pocket Casts share link into your site’s editor:
- Get the share link for your podcast or for a single episode using Share > Copy link in Pocket Casts. See Sharing Podcasts, Episodes, and Clips for where to find it on each platform. The link starts with
https://pca.st/. - Paste the link on a line of its own in your site’s editor. In the WordPress block editor, you can also add the Pocket Casts embed block and paste the link into it.
- Publish or update the page. The link is shown as a Pocket Casts player.
This works on WordPress sites and on other website builders and platforms that support oEmbed (automatic embeds from a pasted link). If your platform shows the link as plain text instead of a player, it does not support Pocket Casts embeds.
- Episode player (from an episode link): the episode artwork, title, podcast name and date, with Play, skip back and forward 15 seconds, a scrubber, and the episode length. Visitors can also open the episode notes and share the episode.
- Podcast player (from a podcast link): the podcast artwork, title and author, with a list of the 5 latest episodes. Pressing Play starts the newest episode, and visitors can pick another episode from the list.
The player’s background color is set automatically from your podcast artwork. There are no settings for theme, color, or autoplay.
To start an episode player at a set point, add #t= and the time to the end of the episode link, for example #t=1m30s, #t=1:30, or #t=90 (seconds). The player shows that time straight away and starts from it when the visitor presses Play. Start times work with episode links only, not podcast links.
The Pocket Casts player only requests your episode’s audio file when a visitor presses Play. Simply loading a page that contains the player does not download anything from your podcast host. This means your host counts real listens from the embed, not page views.
Before late September 2026, the player loaded the audio file as soon as the page opened, whether or not anyone listened. Podcast hosts counted each of those page loads as a download, which inflated the numbers and did not follow industry measurement guidelines for podcast downloads. If you embedded the player before then, the downloads your host reports from Pocket Casts’ web player (sometimes listed as “PocketCasts.com” or “Web Players”) will now be much lower. The drop can be large, over 90% in some cases. The lower number is the accurate one. It does not mean the player is broken or that you have lost listeners.
Nothing changes for visitors. The player looks the same before Play is pressed: the episode length and any start time are shown without loading the audio, and playback starts as soon as Play is pressed.
Note: Downloads from people listening in the Pocket Casts apps are not affected. Only the website player changed.
Video episodes work differently. An embedded video episode still starts loading the video when the page opens, so your host may count those page loads. In a podcast player, video episodes in the list don’t play inside the player. Selecting one opens the episode in Pocket Casts in a new tab.
Since late September 2026, the embedded player only downloads an audio episode when someone presses Play. Before that, every page view counted as a download in your host’s stats. Your new, lower numbers reflect people who actually listened. You don’t need to change or replace the player.
No. Each time a visitor presses Play, the player requests the audio file from your host as normal, and your host counts it. If your host shows no downloads at all from the embed even after people have played episodes, contact our support team with a link to the page where the player is embedded.
You don’t need one. Paste your podcast or episode share link into your site’s editor and it turns into a player automatically. See Adding the player to your website above.
No. The player’s size is set automatically by your site when it embeds the link, its colors come from your podcast artwork, and it does not autoplay. You can set an episode’s start time. See Starting an episode at a specific time.
