Benecaster is a WordPress plugin for independent podcasters who are done paying platform fees on every subscriber payment. Private RSS feeds, per-tier episode scheduling, and full subscriber ownership — on infrastructure you control.
The Way It Works Now Is Broken.
If you’re monetizing your podcast through Patreon, you’re paying them 10% of every subscriber payment — before processing fees, before payout fees, before currency conversion. On $1,000/month in subscriber revenue, you’re handing Patreon somewhere between $120 and $150 before you see a dollar. Every month. Forever. And when your podcast grows, you pay more — not because you’re getting more from Patreon, but because their percentage compounds.
Then there’s Supercast. Independent podcasters chose Supercast to escape exactly this kind of platform dependency. In February 2026, Supercast was acquired by Red Seat Ventures, a division of Fox Corporation. The tool you chose to stay independent is now owned by a major media conglomerate.
Hosted solutions like Castos cap your private subscribers and charge overage fees when you exceed the limit. Your episode data, your subscriber relationships, and your feed URLs live on their servers. Move hosts, lose everything.
The common thread: you’re building your audience on someone else’s land.
Patreon takes 10% whether you have 50 subscribers or 5,000. The more successful your podcast, the more you pay — for the same platform you had on day one.
There’s a Better Model.
Benecaster runs on your WordPress site. Your subscriber data lives in your database. Your audio files stay with your hosting provider. When a subscriber signs up, they get a private RSS feed URL — unique to them — that delivers exactly the episodes their tier entitles them to, in exactly the podcast app they already use. In other words, you own your data.
No platform taking a cut. No corporate owner between you and your listeners. No overage fees when you hit a milestone you should be celebrating.
Your subscribers are yours. Take them anywhere, anytime, with no one’s permission.
Every subscriber gets their own private feed the moment they sign up — free tier included. When they upgrade, downgrade, pause, or cancel, the feed URL doesn’t change; only the episodes inside it do. They add it to their podcast app once and never think about it again.
Release episodes to premium subscribers first. Drop them to the free tier a week later. Block the public permanently. Set it per episode or apply show-wide defaults — and change your mind anytime without breaking existing feeds.
Subscriber geography, listening patterns, episode reach, churn rates — and how your show compares to benchmarks across the platform. Not just your numbers in isolation.
Simple to Set Up. Yours to Keep.
Benecaster runs as a WordPress plugin with a built-in membership system, so you can handle subscriptions and payments right inside Benecaster. Already running MemberPress, WooCommerce Subscriptions, Paid Memberships Pro, or Restrict Content Pro? Connect Benecaster to it instead. No new hosting, no new platform to learn.
Use Benecaster’s episode editor to set your audio URL, episode details, and per-tier release dates. Premium subscribers get it Tuesday. Everyone else gets it Friday. The public never gets it. Set show-wide defaults so most episodes just work — override per episode when you need to.
When a subscriber signs up, they receive a welcome email with their personal RSS feed URL and one-tap deep links to add it in Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Pocket Casts, Castro, and more. That URL is theirs for life — it never changes on a tier upgrade, downgrade, or renewal — and each feed refresh reflects their current membership automatically. From their perspective, it’s a normal podcast subscription. From yours, every feed access is authenticated and logged.
Benecaster’s plans are tiered by subscriber count, not by a percentage of your revenue. You cross a threshold once — a few dollars a month more — instead of paying 10% of every payment, forever. At Pro, growth is free. You own the subscriber relationships; if you ever want to switch membership plugins, move hosts, or take your audience elsewhere, the door is open.
Set different release dates for the same episode across different subscriber tiers. Early access for your top-tier subscribers. A delayed release for your free tier. A paywall for the public forever. This isn’t a workaround — it’s a first-class scheduling tool with a visual timeline, show-level defaults, and per-episode overrides. No other podcast platform or WordPress plugin offers this.
Every subscriber token, email address, feed access log, and billing relationship lives in your WordPress database. Export it anytime. Migrate to a different membership plugin without losing anything. Shut down your Patreon, close your Supercast account, and never ask anyone’s permission to talk to your own audience again. When you own the infrastructure, you own the relationship.
Most podcasters have no idea how their show’s subscriber retention, episode reach, or listening patterns compare to others. Benecaster anonymously aggregates statistics across all installs and surfaces the benchmarks back to you: your churn rate vs. the platform median, your geographic concentration, your episode reach percentile. It’s the kind of data that podcast networks keep to themselves. You get it because you’re running on shared infrastructure — without sharing anything about your subscribers individually.
Podcast apps hammer feeds. That’s how new episodes get discovered. Benecaster’s feed delivery is built for that load, so episodes reach subscribers quickly and your site stays responsive under polling from thousands of apps at once. At real scale you may still want more capable hosting — but you’ll be upgrading because your podcast is thriving, not because Benecaster forced the issue.
Benecaster sits between your membership plugin and your hosted audio — it doesn’t replace either. Keep MemberPress, WooCommerce, or whichever billing plugin you prefer. Keep Buzzsprout, Libsyn, Transistor, or S3. Keep your theme. Benecaster integrates, it doesn’t displace. And every significant action exposes hooks and filters, so developers can extend it cleanly — no forks, no workarounds.
Benecaster’s Launch plan is a real product, not a limited demo. Up to 10 paying subscribers, up to 250 total subscribers (paying + free), full built-in features, no platform fee, no time limit.
We do ask for a payment method when you sign up. It is not charged on Launch — it sits on file so that the day you outgrow 10 paying subscribers, upgrading is one click instead of a checkout.
When you hit 10 paying subscribers, you’re making at least $100/month if they’re paying $10 each. Patreon has already taken about $120 of that over the course of a year. Benecaster has taken nothing.
When you’re ready to add your 11th paying subscriber, you upgrade to Starter — $79/year. Not per month. Per year. That’s less than Patreon charges you in a year at 10 subscribers. Your card is already on file, so that upgrade is a single click.
| Your Subscriber Count | Your Annual Revenue (at $10/mo/sub) | What Patreon Costs You | What Benecaster Costs | You Save vs Patreon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10 subscribers | $1,200/year | ~$120/year | $0 (Launch) | $120/year |
| 50 subscribers | $6,000/year | ~$600/year | $79/year (Starter) | $521/year |
| 100 subscribers | $12,000/year | ~$1,200/year | $180/year (Growth, monthly) | $1,020/year |
| 250 subscribers | $30,000/year | ~$3,000/year | $149/year (Growth, annual) | $2,851/year |
| 500 subscribers | $60,000/year | ~$6,000/year | $300/year (Pro, monthly) | $5,700/year |
Patreon cost = 10% platform fee only; processing and payout fees are extra. Benecaster monthly pricing available; annual billing saves 17–33% depending on plan.
Patreon is now taking 10% of every subscription payment. If you’ve done the math and decided it’s time to leave, the hardest part isn’t the setup — it’s moving your subscribers without disrupting their experience.
Benecaster’s Migration Wizard imports your Patreon patron CSV, maps your tier names, creates subscriber accounts, generates private feed URLs, and sends your patrons a migration email sequence — all configurable, all trackable in a migration dashboard. A grace period (30, 60, or 90 days) gives patrons time to complete payment setup while keeping their access intact. No one loses their feed while they figure out the new process.
Not ready to move your existing subscribers? Benecaster can run alongside Patreon. Keep current patrons where they are, route new subscribers to Benecaster, and publish to both. Export your Patreon subscriber data into Benecaster periodically and your analytics reflect the full audience. You give up the fee savings on the existing base, but you eliminate the churn risk — and every new subscriber lives on infrastructure you own from day one.
Migration Wizard is included free with Growth, Pro, Multi-Show, and Studio. On Launch and Starter it is a $79 one-time add-on.
In February 2026, Supercast was acquired by Red Seat Ventures, a division of Fox Corporation. If you chose Supercast because you wanted to stay independent of big media platforms, that calculus has changed.
Your subscribers signed up for your podcast, not for Supercast. You can bring them with you to a platform you own outright — with no corporate owner one acquisition away from changing the terms.
Every plan includes the same built-in features. Plans differ in how many paying subscribers you can have and how many shows you can run, and Studio also bundles every add-on, priority support and the Migration + Setup Service. Add-ons are flat-rate across all plans — a Starter podcaster has access to the same tools as a Pro podcaster.
| Plan | Monthly | Annual | Paying Subscribers | Total Subscribers | Shows |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Launch | $0 | $0 | Up to 10 | Up to 250 | 1 |
| Starter | $9 | $79 | Up to 50 | Up to 500 | 1 |
| Growth | $15 | $149 | Up to 250 | Up to 2,500 | 1 |
| Pro | $25 | $249 | Unlimited | Unlimited | 1 |
| Multi-Show | $35 | $349 | Unlimited | Unlimited | Up to 3 |
| Studio | $149 | $1,199 | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited + all add-ons |
Annual billing saves 17–33% depending on plan.
See Full Pricing and Plan Comparison → Already Running a Large Show? See the Studio Tier →
Questions about plans or add-ons? See the Full FAQ →
Start on Launch with up to 10 paying subscribers, for $0. No platform fee. No one between you and your listeners. When you’re ready to add your 11th paying subscriber, Starter is $79/year — less than Patreon takes in a year at 10 subscribers.
Start on Launch Today Buy a Paid Plan → Talk to Us About Migrating Your Subscribers →
30-day money-back guarantee on new paid plan purchases. Renewals and upgrade charges are not covered.