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.
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.
Each subscriber gets a unique, authenticated RSS URL. Their podcast app polls it like any other feed. To them, it’s invisible. To you, it’s complete control.
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 alongside your existing membership plugin — MemberPress, WooCommerce Subscriptions, Paid Memberships Pro, or Restrict Content Pro. Connect the two in minutes. No new hosting, no new accounts, nothing to migrate.
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. From their perspective, it’s a normal podcast subscription. From yours, every feed access is authenticated and logged.
Whether you have 50 subscribers or 5,000, your Benecaster plan cost doesn’t change. You own the subscriber relationships. If you ever want to switch membership plugins, move hosts, or take your audience somewhere else entirely — the data is yours and 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.
Benecaster caches podcast feeds by tier, not by subscriber. A show with 2,000 subscribers across 4 tiers stores 4 cached documents — not 2,000. Feed requests with a warm cache are lighter than a standard WordPress page load. Add Redis or Memcached through your host and cache reads drop to pure memory — no database involved. The architecture is designed so that going from 50 subscribers to 5,000 doesn’t require a hosting upgrade just to keep feeds fast.
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 without touching core.
Benecaster’s free tier is a real product, not a crippled demo. Up to 10 paying subscribers, up to 250 total subscribers (paying + free), full core features, no credit card required, no platform fee, no time limit.
When you hit 10 paying subscribers, you’re making at least $100/month if they’re paying $10 each. Patreon has already taken about $132 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 half a year at 10 subscribers. You add your payment method at that point, not before.
| Your subscriber count | What Patreon costs you (at $10/mo/sub) | What Benecaster costs | You keep |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10 subscribers | ~$132/year | $0 (free tier) | $132/year |
| 50 subscribers | ~$660/year | $79/year (Starter) | $581/year |
| 100 subscribers | ~$1,320/year | $180/year (Growth, monthly) | $1,140/year |
| 250 subscribers | ~$3,000/year | $149/year (Growth, annual) | $2,851/year |
| 500 subscribers | ~$6,000/year | $300/year (Pro, monthly) | $5,700/year |
Patreon cost = 10% platform fee + estimated 2–5% processing. Benecaster monthly pricing available; annual saves ~30%.
Patreon raised their platform fee to 10% in August 2025. 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.
Migration Wizard is included free with Growth, Pro, Multi-Show, and Studio. Available as a one-time add-on for Starter.
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 audience is not tied to Supercast. Your subscriber list can move. And the infrastructure that replaces Supercast can be something you own outright, with no corporate owner one acquisition away from changing the terms.
Every plan includes the same full feature set. The only difference is how many paying subscribers you can have and how many shows you can run. 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/mo | $79/yr | Up to 50 | Up to 500 | 1 |
| Growth | $15/mo | $149/yr | Up to 250 | Up to 2,500 | 1 |
| Pro | $25/mo | $249/yr | Unlimited | Unlimited | 1 |
| Multi-Show | $35/mo | $349/yr | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Studio | $149/mo | $1,199/yr | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited + all add-ons |
Annual billing saves approximately two months versus monthly.
See full pricing and plan comparison → Already running a large show? See the Studio tier →
Start free with up to 10 paying subscribers. No credit card required. 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 a month of Patreon fees at 10 subscribers.
Start free today Talk to us about migrating your subscribers →
30-day money-back guarantee on all paid plans.
