Only one of the 18 SaaS-focused podcasts we analyzed actually publishes its sponsorship pricing. One. That pricing opacity makes budgeting a guessing game, unless you know exactly which shows match your buyer and what they're worth. Here are 10 ranked shows, what you can expect to pay, and who each is actually built for.
1. Profitable Founder Podcast, Best for SaaS Founders at every stage
The Profitable Founder Podcast is a weekly show where bootstrapped SaaS founders making between $100K and $10M a year break down exactly what moved the needle. Host Florian Darroman interviews real operators, not talking heads, and the audience is tight: founders at every stage who are actively working toward $100K.
That specificity is the entire value proposition for a sponsor. Most SaaS podcasts attract a wide mix of developers, marketers, and curious listeners who may never buy your tool. Here, the person listening is the decision-maker, the buyer, and often the entire team. No procurement chain. No evaluation committee. They hear about a product that fits their problem and they sign up that week on their own card.
The show also runs a private mastermind called the Profitable Founder Club, where founders at every stage help each other reach $100K. That community layer means sponsor messages don't just live in an episode, they circulate inside a tight peer group of people actively spending on SaaS tools.
For brands targeting bootstrapped operators at this specific MRR range, the audience fit here is cleaner than anything else on this list. Sponsorship details are available directly at profitablefounder.xyz.
The caveat: this is a niche show. If you need raw impression volume in the hundreds of thousands, look further down this list. But if your product solves a real problem for a founder at $10K MRR, the qualified reach here outperforms a show with ten times the downloads and a diluted audience.
2. The SaaS Podcast, Best for Pre-Seed to Series B SaaS Operators
The SaaS Podcast, hosted by Omer Khan, has 487+ episodes and has been publishing since 2014. It reaches 15,000+ B2B SaaS founders across audio, YouTube, and a newsletter. That newsletter reach matters when a sponsor package includes newsletter placements.
The audience spans pre-seed to Series B, with 55% from the US and Canada, 28% from Europe, and 8% from Australia and New Zealand. At that stage, the buyer is typically the person listening. No six-month procurement cycle. Omer writes and reads every ad himself, so the delivery feels like a genuine recommendation from someone the audience has trusted for over a decade.
One thing worth knowing: ads are dynamically inserted across all 487+ episodes. That back-catalog reach means your campaign hits listeners discovering episodes from years ago, not just this month's four releases. Video sponsorships are embedded directly in the episode and never swapped out, so they compound over time.
Packages are structured in three tiers, podcast plus newsletter, full platform sponsorship, and exclusive sponsorship, and packages start at $4,500 per month, with discounts for three-month or longer commitments. That's the only publicly disclosed minimum spend we found across the 18 shows we researched. Monthly impression commitments vary by package tier.
The audience definition is broader than Profitable Founder Podcast's laser focus on bootstrapped operators at a specific MRR. If your product serves a wide range of SaaS stages, that's a feature. If you need to reach only founders at a specific revenue level, consider whether the audience spread matches your ICP.
3. Lenny's Podcast, Best for Reaching Senior SaaS Operators at Scale
Lenny Rachitsky's podcast pulls around 440,000 listeners per episode, per Podchaser's 2026 estimates. The audience skews toward software engineers, investment managers, and senior operators, people who run product, growth, and marketing at established SaaS companies. Episodes run 90+ minutes and go deep on specific operating decisions at companies like Stripe, Notion, Linear, and Figma.
For a SaaS sponsor, that audience profile means you're reaching people who already have budget, already have a stack, and are actively evaluating whether to upgrade or switch. They're not early-stage tinkerers. They're senior buyers evaluating tools that solve real operational problems at scale.
Pricing isn't public. But with 440,000 listeners and a CPM range of $25 to $55 for business and technology podcasts, a single mid-roll host-read could run $11,000 to $24,000 per episode before any package negotiation. Expect multi-month minimums at this scale.
The honest caveat is that 440,000 listeners is a double-edged number. The reach is enormous, but the audience is broad enough that a significant portion may not be your exact buyer. If you're targeting specifically bootstrapped founders, check whether the audience's senior-operator skew fits your ICP before committing to a high five-figure monthly spend. For a detailed breakdown of what a per-episode cost actually looks like at different show sizes, the SaaS podcast advertising cost per episode guide breaks it down format by format.
4. Marketing Against the Grain, Best for SaaS Marketing & Growth Teams
Kipp Bodnar and Kieran Flanagan host this show from inside HubSpot's marketing org, which means every episode is grounded in actual operating decisions at one of the most-studied B2B marketing functions in the industry. The audience runs about 433,000 listeners per episode, with a demographic snapshot that includes marketing managers, CEOs, and software engineers, exactly the buying committee for a SaaS marketing tool.
The format is two practitioners walking through a specific tactic, trend, or operational tradeoff. No interview warm-up, no guest biography. Just two people who run large marketing programs trading real takes. For a SaaS brand targeting marketing and growth buyers, the content alignment is tight.
Pricing isn't disclosed publicly. At that audience size, rates are available on request and will reflect the show's scale and reach. Advertising inquiries go through a media sales process rather than a direct founder conversation.
If your ICP is a VP of Marketing or Head of Growth at a growth-stage SaaS company, this show's listener occupations match closely. If you're trying to reach bootstrapped founders or early-stage operators, the audience skews too senior and too marketing-function-specific to be the right first bet. When negotiating deals at this scale, applying the kind of structured approach covered in resources on negotiation techniques for remote sales teams can help you hold your position on pricing and package scope.
5. Marketing School, Best for High-Volume SaaS Brand Awareness
Neil Patel and Eric Siu publish a new episode every single day. At roughly 845,000 listeners per episode, the largest audience on this list, Marketing School is the right pick if your primary goal is raw brand awareness across a marketing-adjacent audience. Daily 10-minute episodes covering one tactic: SEO, paid acquisition, email, content, conversion optimization.
The listener profile includes marketing managers, bloggers, marketing coordinators, and social media specialists. The gender split is roughly 50/50, and the audience is globally distributed. For a SaaS tool that serves marketing teams broadly, the reach is hard to argue with.
What you're giving up is specificity. With 845,000 listeners and a wide occupational spread, a meaningful portion of the audience is not a SaaS buyer. The daily format also means your ad runs once and moves on, there's no 90-minute conversation building context around your brand. For SaaS tools with broad market appeal and awareness-stage goals, that trade-off works. For tools solving a specific founder problem, you'll get more qualified reach per dollar on a smaller, better-matched show.
At this scale, expect package minimums and multi-month commitments. Pricing is available on request through Patel and Siu's media channels.
6. The Startup Ideas Podcast, Best for SaaS Founders and CEOs
Greg Isenberg's show pulls around 153,000 listeners per episode and skews heavily toward founders, directors, CEOs, and principals. Isenberg was a former advisor to Reddit and TikTok, and the show focuses on building and validating business ideas, which means the audience is full of people actively building companies, not just managing teams inside them.
That founder-and-CEO concentration is the main reason this show earns a spot for SaaS sponsorships. The listener is often earlier-stage, actively evaluating tools for a company they're building right now. For SaaS products that help founders move fast, no-code tools, analytics, payment infrastructure, hiring, the audience intent is high.
Publishing twice weekly and distributed across Apple, Spotify, YouTube, and social channels, the show has meaningful cross-platform reach beyond the core podcast feed. Pricing is not public, and rates vary depending on package and placement. Expect direct outreach to Greg Isenberg's team for media kit and package details.
One thing to flag: the show's content is broad enough to attract both SaaS founders and general entrepreneurs. If your product is specifically for software businesses rather than founders at large, confirm the listener breakdown before committing budget.
7. Perpetual Traffic, Best for SaaS Paid Acquisition Teams
Ralph Burns runs Tier 11, a performance marketing agency managing $200M+ in annual ad spend across B2B SaaS, DTC, and lead-gen clients. The show reflects that operational depth. At 150,000 listeners per episode, the Perpetual Traffic audience is primarily marketing managers, marketing coordinators, and principals who run paid acquisition programs on Google Ads, Meta, LinkedIn, and TikTok.
For a SaaS brand whose growth motion includes a meaningful paid-acquisition component, this is the most operationally specific show on this list for that use case. The listener is not just interested in paid ads, they run them at scale and are actively looking for tools and partners that make campaigns more efficient.
One thing the research confirms: CPM rates for B2B business and technology shows run $22 to $55 for host-read placements, meaning a single mid-roll on a 150,000-download episode is priced at a meaningful premium. The audience fit for paid-acquisition SaaS tools is strong enough to justify that premium over a general-interest show at the same size.
The caveat: this show is not for founder-focused SaaS brands. If your ICP is a bootstrapped founder managing their own growth, the audience here is marketing managers at companies with real ad budgets, a different buyer profile entirely. Match your ICP before spending.
8. Social Media Marketing Podcast, Best for SaaS Tools Targeting SMB Owners
Michael Stelzner has been publishing the Social Media Marketing Podcast weekly since 2012, and at 123,000 listeners per episode, the audience is primarily principals, CEOs, marketing coordinators, directors, and founders, with a heavy SMB skew. The show is one of the most established in the marketing podcast space.
For SaaS tools that help small business owners manage social media, marketing automation, content production, or customer engagement, this is a strong audience match. The listener is typically a business owner who wears multiple hats and is actively looking for tools that save time or generate more leads.
No public pricing is available. Rates vary by placement and package; contact the show directly for current sponsorship options. The show's longevity and established trust with its audience are real assets for a sponsor. The tradeoff is that the audience skews toward social media practitioners rather than SaaS builders, so software tools targeting developers or technical founders may find lower conversion rates here than on a more technically-focused show.
9. The Dave Gerhardt Show, Best for B2B SaaS Brand Positioning
Dave Gerhardt was Drift's CMO during their highest-growth years, then Privy's CMO, and built Exit Five into a large B2B SaaS marketing community. The show runs about 22,000 listeners per episode, the smallest audience on this list outside Breaking B2B, but the listener profile is exceptionally specific: CEOs, software engineers, bloggers, and journalists who think seriously about B2B marketing strategy.
The Exit Five community is the real multiplier here. A sponsorship on The Dave Gerhardt Show doesn't just reach podcast listeners. It puts your brand inside the conversation of a B2B SaaS marketing community whose members talk to each other constantly. That community context changes the value calculation significantly compared to a standalone podcast buy.
At 22,000 listeners per episode, the audience's seniority and community amplification mean the actual value per impression runs higher than raw download numbers suggest. For brands focused on category positioning and B2B SaaS brand building, this show punches above its download count. Pricing is available on request.
10. Breaking B2B, Best for Niche SaaS Brands With Tight Budgets
Sam Dunning's Breaking B2B is the smallest show on this list at roughly 3,400 listeners per episode. The audience is journalists, directors, social media specialists, software engineers, and managers, a B2B-specific mix that skews toward people building and running B2B marketing programs.
The size is the point. For a SaaS brand with a limited test budget, a mid-roll on Breaking B2B is priced at the lower end of the market given the show's audience size, a fraction of what the larger shows charge. That makes it a real option for founders who want to test podcast sponsorship as a channel before committing to a larger buy.
The audience is not passive. Listeners of niche B2B shows typically have completion rates well above the general podcast average, and the show's pure-play B2B SaaS marketing focus means the listener is already primed for the kind of tools a SaaS brand would pitch. If you're a bootstrapped SaaS founder trying to get sponsors for a SaaS podcast yourself, studying how Sam structures his sponsorship conversations is worth your time.
The honest limitation: 3,400 listeners per episode means low absolute reach. Breaking B2B works as an entry point or a test vehicle, not a primary channel for a brand needing significant impression volume.
SaaS Podcast Sponsorship Pricing Models Compared
No podcast in our 18-show sample disclosed CPM rates. Only one showed a minimum spend. That makes pricing opacity the norm in this market, not the exception. Here's how the major models actually work and when each makes sense for a SaaS brand.
| Pricing Model | How It Works | Best For | SaaS Consideration |
|---|---|---|---|
| CPM (Cost per Mille) | You pay per 1,000 downloads. Mid-roll host-read typically $25–$55 for B2B shows. | Shows with verified download data and consistent episode counts | Easy to compare across shows. Demand IAB-certified numbers before agreeing. |
| Flat-Rate Per Episode | Fixed price regardless of exact download count. Common on smaller or niche shows. | Bootstrapped founders testing the channel; shows under 5,000 downloads | Protects budget when downloads fluctuate. Easier to model ROI upfront. |
| Package / Platform | Multi-slot deal bundling podcast, newsletter, and sometimes video. The SaaS Podcast starts at $4,500/month. | Brands wanting cross-channel reach without managing multiple relationships | Best value when back-catalog insertion is included. Confirm impression guarantees in writing. |
| Performance (CPA/CPL) | You pay only when a listener converts — redeems a code, signs up, or books a demo. | Shows with deep host trust and proven conversion history | Low risk for sponsors, but shifts all performance pressure onto the host. Hosts often decline pure CPA. |
| Revenue Share | Both sides split revenue from leads or sales the show drives. | Long-term partnerships where the host has direct influence on buying decisions | Requires clear attribution. Works well for SaaS with trackable free-trial flows. |
| Barter / Value-in-Kind | Sponsor provides product access in exchange for ad reads. No cash changes hands. | Early-stage SaaS brands with tight budgets; shows willing to test a new tool | Good for proof-of-concept before a paid campaign. Define the exchange value clearly upfront. |
The median audience across the 15 shows with reported numbers is 24,000 listeners per episode. But the average is 152,147, inflated by outliers like Marketing School at 845,000. That gap matters because CPM math on an average-sized show looks very different from CPM math on an outlier. Always work from per-episode download numbers, not market averages.
For a deeper comparison of what different ad formats cost across show sizes, the SaaS podcast advertising rates comparison covers six buying options side by side.
What to Look for When Buying SaaS Podcast Sponsorships
Audience fit beats audience size. A niche show with 3,000 of your exact buyers can outperform a 300,000-listener show where 95% of the audience will never buy your product. The question isn't "how many listeners?" It's "how many of these listeners match my ICP?"
Here's what to check before you commit budget:
- Listener occupations and seniority. Ask for demographic data. Is the audience founders, marketers, developers, or a general mix? A show that can say "78% of our listeners are company founders" is more valuable to a founder-tool than a show that says "we have a large marketing audience."
- Episode completion rate. Top B2B podcasts see 60% to 70% episode completion. A show with 10,000 downloads and a 70% completion rate delivers more effective impressions than one with 25,000 downloads and 30% completion. Always ask for this number.
- Host-read vs. pre-recorded. Host-read ads consistently outperform announcer-read ads in conversion studies. For a SaaS product that requires trust, anything touching a buyer's data, workflow, or budget, the host's endorsement is the point. Don't trade it for a cheaper pre-recorded slot.
- Back-catalog insertion. Dynamic ad insertion means your campaign can run across hundreds of back episodes, not just new releases. The SaaS Podcast's 487+ episodes in active rotation is a real multiplier. Confirm whether back-catalog is included or costs extra.
- Attribution setup before you sign. Use a unique promo code, a vanity URL, or UTM parameters tied to your CRM. Pixel-based attribution tools let you track listeners who visit your site even if they never use a code. Decide upfront which metric you're optimizing, trial signups, demo requests, or pipeline influence, and make sure your tracking setup can capture it.
- Minimum spend and commitment length. The only show that publicly states a minimum is The SaaS Podcast at $4,500/month. Every other show requires direct outreach. Negotiate a two-episode test at full rate before committing to a three-month package. Don't discount the trial, discount volume instead.
One underrated lead source: your own podcast guests. As one creator put it in a recent YouTube breakdown, asking every guest "what tool do you rely on?" at the end of the recording session reveals what your audience actually pays for, and often opens a warm intro to a potential sponsor. That's a tactic that works whether you're buying sponsorships or selling them.
For authors and content creators building an audience before a launch, the same principles apply: niche community trust outperforms raw reach, which is a lesson covered well in resources on how to build a readership before publishing a nonfiction book, the mechanics of building an engaged audience translate directly to podcast sponsorship value.
FAQ
How much does it cost to sponsor a SaaS podcast?
Costs vary widely by show size and format. The only publicly disclosed minimum we found is $4,500/month for The SaaS Podcast's platform package. For smaller niche shows, a flat-rate host-read mid-roll can run $85 to $800 per episode depending on audience size. B2B host-read CPM rates typically land between $25 and $55 per thousand downloads, with highly targeted founder-focused shows commanding the high end of that range.
What is a good CPM for a SaaS podcast sponsorship?
For B2B and SaaS-adjacent shows, $35 to $55 CPM for a host-read mid-roll is a reasonable benchmark. Niche shows with verified founder audiences can justify $60 to $100 CPM because the audience quality is high. Pre-recorded or programmatic placements run lower, typically $15 to $30 CPM. The right CPM depends on how tightly the show's audience matches your ideal customer profile, not just the show's download count.
What should a SaaS podcast media kit include?
A one-page media kit needs five things: a one-sentence show description, per-episode download numbers (30-day average), episode completion rate, audience demographics (job titles, company sizes, MRR ranges if available), and ad format options with pricing. Keep it to a single PDF a marketing manager can skim in two minutes. Completion rate and audience occupations are the two data points most sponsors care about most but most media kits leave out.
How do I track ROI from a podcast sponsorship?
Use a unique vanity URL or promo code to capture direct conversions. Add UTM parameters to every link so traffic flows correctly into your CRM. For listeners who don't use the code, pixel-based attribution tools can track site visits from people who heard the ad. Track assisted conversions and self-reported attribution at signup, podcast sponsorships often influence deals that show up as direct or organic in last-click models.
Is it worth sponsoring a podcast with under 5,000 listeners?
Yes, if the audience is highly qualified. A show with 3,000 bootstrapped SaaS founders can deliver better pipeline than a show with 30,000 general marketers. The math only works if you know the listener profile deeply. Ask for audience demographics, episode completion rates, and any conversion data from past sponsors before committing. Episode completion rates above 60% on a small show signal a genuinely engaged audience.
What pricing model is best for a first SaaS podcast sponsorship?
Start with a flat-rate deal for a two-episode test at the show's standard rate. This gives you real conversion data before you commit to a CPM-based multi-month package. Avoid pure performance (CPA) deals for your first sponsorship, most established hosts decline them, and they shift all the risk onto the show. Once you have conversion data from the test, you have use to negotiate a volume discount on a longer commitment.
Conclusion
If you sell a tool to bootstrapped SaaS founders at every stage, start with the Profitable Founder Podcast. The audience match is tighter than anything else on this list, and the Profitable Founder Club community means your brand circulates beyond the episode itself. For brands that need scale first and can accept a broader audience, The SaaS Podcast's $4,500/month platform package is the only transparent starting point in the market. Pick the show where your exact buyer already listens, nail your attribution setup, and negotiate a two-episode test before signing a multi-month deal. Visit profitablefounder.xyz to explore sponsorship options directly.
