On December 12, 2024, Chartable shut down for good. Spotify had acquired the company in 2022 and eventually retired it as a standalone product after folding parts of the business into its own ecosystem. For a lot of podcasters, that meant losing the tool they had relied on for chart tracking, SmartLinks, and campaign attribution.
If you used Chartable, the practical question now is not what happened. It is what you actually need to replace, and what can safely be left behind.
What Chartable actually did
Chartable was best known for three things:
- Chart tracking: monitoring your podcast's position on Apple Podcasts charts across countries and categories
- SmartLinks: trackable URLs that detected a listener's device and redirected to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or their preferred app
- Attribution: connecting downloads to specific marketing campaigns so you could measure which promotions actually drove listens
For many teams, Chartable was the default way to keep an eye on rankings and link performance. Once it disappeared, a lot of people realised how much of their workflow depended on one product.
What you lost, and what you probably did not realize you were missing
Here is the part worth saying out loud: Chartable was useful, but it was never a complete view of podcast performance. It leaned heavily on Apple Podcasts, updated charts daily rather than hourly, and left out things like keyword tracking, SEO analysis, and competitor monitoring.
Most users also lived with blind spots they had simply learned to accept. They did not know when the show picked up traction in countries they were not checking. They could not see which search terms were helping discovery. They had almost no structured view of what similar podcasts were doing.
Those gaps were always there. The shutdown just forced people to notice them.
Your options now
The podcast analytics landscape has changed since Chartable closed. Here is an honest look at what is available:
Free tools (limited)
Ausha Charts and mowPod let you browse current podcast charts for free. You search for a show, see where it ranks today, and that is basically the experience. No tracking over time, no alerts, no history. They are chart browsers, not full analytics tools.
OP3 (Open Podcast Prefix Project) provides free, open-source download analytics. It is transparent and privacy-respecting, but it only measures downloads. It does not help with rankings, reviews, or search visibility.
Podtrac offers free IAB-certified download measurement. It matters if advertisers require certified numbers, but it still tells you nothing about chart positions, reviews, or how listeners found the show.
Paid tools
Podkite offers a free tier for one podcast with Apple and Spotify chart tracking, plus SmartLinks. Paid plans go up to $50/month for 50 podcasts. It is a solid replacement if SmartLinks are important, though it does not cover SEO analysis or competitor monitoring.
Podgagement charges $9-19 per month per podcast and focuses on Apple Podcasts with engagement tools like voicemail collection. Interesting if listener interaction is central to your strategy, but expensive once you manage more than one show.
Podrover tracks reviews only, with no chart rankings, at $30/year per podcast. Affordable, but intentionally narrow.
The all-in-one option
Podstatus covers the most ground: chart tracking across Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and iVoox in 175 countries with hourly updates, plus review monitoring, keyword tracking, SEO analysis, competitor intelligence, YouTube analytics, OP3 download data, and PDF reports. Plans start at $5/month for up to 5 podcasts.
We wrote a detailed feature-by-feature comparison of what Chartable offered versus what Podstatus provides, including an honest list of what Podstatus does not replace (SmartLinks and download attribution).
What about SmartLinks?
SmartLinks were Chartable's most unique feature, and they are the hardest to replace. Currently, Podkite and Captivate (a podcast hosting platform) offer SmartLink alternatives. Podstatus does not offer SmartLinks.
If SmartLinks are core to your workflow, you may still want a dedicated tool for them. But if what you mainly miss is chart tracking and a way to keep tabs on performance, there are now better options than the old Chartable setup.
Three things to do today
1. Start tracking again. Every day without a tracker is a day of history you do not get back. Rankings, reviews, and search visibility are moving whether you record them or not.
2. Use the switch as an excuse to widen the view. Chart rankings matter, but they are only one layer. Reviews, search visibility, and competitive movement give you a much clearer sense of what is actually happening.
3. Do not overpay for the wrong category of product. Some tools charge per podcast and get expensive quickly. Others are priced for ad buyers or agencies, not for people tracking their own show.
If you want to see how Podstatus stacks up against every option in detail, read our complete Chartable alternative comparison. It includes feature tables, pricing breakdowns, and an honest list of what each tool does and does not do.
Chartable was useful for a long time. The upside of replacing it now is that you do not have to settle for the same limitations it had.