PodsnapPodsnap Spotify podcast ads
Does Spotify Premium remove podcast ads?
Updated
No, not as of October 2026. Premium's ad-free listening covers music. Spotify's own help page says podcasts may include ads for free and Premium listeners alike: ads that Spotify sells, and ads the hosts read themselves.
Why Premium doesn't cover podcast ads
A podcast's ads come in two kinds. Host-read sponsor segments are part of the recording itself. Inserted ads are added to the episode by an ad network, often a different set for each listener. Either way, the ads are how most shows are paid, and a Premium subscription doesn't replace that money, so the ads stay in.
Is Spotify adding a way to skip them?
Spotify has tested a "Skip ahead" button for a subset of Premium subscribers, Podnews reported in August 2026. Reports differ on which ads it works on, and Spotify hasn't announced a wide launch. Until it does, getting past a podcast ad on Spotify means tapping the skip-forward button or dragging the playhead, once per break.
Hearing the same shows without the ads
Most podcasts on Spotify also publish a public feed, so other podcast apps can play them. In Podsnap you search for the show, or paste its feed link or Apple Podcasts link, and it plays with the ad breaks skipped: Podsnap transcribes each episode, finds the sponsor reads and inserted ads, and jumps over them while you listen. How the skipping works.
Shows that are only on Spotify are the exception: they have no public feed, so no other app can play them.
Other options
- Some shows sell an ad-free version through a membership site such as Patreon, or through Apple Podcasts subscriptions.
- Skipping forward by hand works in any app. How to skip podcast ads compares the ways.
Checked October 2026. Spotify is changing how podcast ads work, so this may go out of date; the date at the top says when it was last checked.