Podcast Growth Calculator

Because Monthly Growth Rate compounds -- each month's growth is calculated on top of the PREVIOUS month's already-grown total, not on the original starting number. At the default 10% monthly rate over 12 months, that compounding turns 1,000 downloads into roughly 3,138, more than 900 downloads higher than the 2,200 a simple "add 10% of the original number every month" calculation would produce.

No. At 6 Months and At 12 Months are always calculated at exactly 6 and 12 months of compounding from Current Downloads / Episode and Monthly Growth Rate, no matter what you set Projection Period to. Projection Period only controls Projected Downloads, the headline figure; the two fixed snapshots exist so you can compare a half-year and one-year outlook without changing that setting back and forth.

0 means Current Downloads / Episode is already at or above that milestone -- there is nothing left to grow toward, so zero months are needed. -1 means Monthly Growth Rate is set to 0%, so the show's downloads never grow at all and can never reach a milestone above where they already sit, no matter how many months pass. These used to both render as a plain "0", which read as good news in either case -- now only the genuinely-already-there case shows 0, and the never-reaches-it case shows -1 instead.

Very sensitive, because the rate is an exponent's base, not a flat multiplier -- moving from a 10% to a 15% monthly rate increases Projected Downloads at 12 months by about 70% (from roughly 3,138 to 5,350, a 1.7x multiple) rather than a proportional 50% more. Small, sustained differences in month-over-month growth compound into large gaps over a year, so treat Monthly Growth Rate as the single most important number to pressure-test against your show's real download history -- for reference, published podcast benchmarks put the industry-average month-over-month growth rate around 1.6%, making a sustained 10% a genuinely ambitious target, not a typical one.