When comparing Castro vs Stitcher, the Slant community recommends Stitcher for most people. In the question“What are the best online podcast players?” Stitcher is ranked 4th while Castro is ranked 8th. The most important reason people chose Stitcher is:
There are zero in app purchases meaning the app retains full functionality while also being free.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Chapter Support (Premium Feature)
If a Podcast Show has chapters, then you can pre-select the ones that you want to listen to and it skips all other chapters on auto pilot.
Pro Beautiful, easy to use interface
Castro has an intuitive, minimalistic interface.
Pro Auto downloads podcasts
Pro Adjust playback speed
There are seven different playback speeds ranging from 0.5x (slow) to 2x (fast). It also uses a voice-optimized playback algorithm so the sound quality is great no matter which speed you prefer.
Pro Sleep timer
Pro Free
There are zero in app purchases meaning the app retains full functionality while also being free.
Pro Allows downloading episodes for offline listening on mobile devices
This is a useful feature for saving bandwidth and listening when you are not on a network.
Pro Find similar podcasts through Smart Station
A feature called Smart Station will offer podcasts based on what you've previously listened to.
Pro Auto generated stations
Stitcher creates stations from a mix of podcasts, making for an easy way to listed to different things in one channel.
Cons
Con very expensive Premium Features
If you want any of those Premium Features then you need to pay for a Subscription that costs $ 3.- each month or 20.- every year.
Con auto deletes Downloads
downloaded media is removed immediately after the episode has ended.
Therefore you are not able to read show notes of said episode or lookup links in chapters.
And if your are offline and need to listen again to any part (for whatever reason) of that show, then you are out of luck. The whole show has to be downloaded again.