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Best podcasts · Updated

The 15 best coding podcasts in 2026.

As of Oct 23, 2026, Real Alpha’s ranking of 5 coding podcasts puts Latent Space, Behind the Craft, AI & I, The Pragmatic Engineer and The Peterman Pod at the top, by the minutes worth watching cut from each. We follow 68 long-form podcasts and cut those minutes from their episodes. These are the shows we follow about how software gets built, which now mostly means building it with AI. This list ranks the 5 we follow that fit it: the 5 we’ve cut 58 moments from. Then come 10 more we don’t follow, A to Z. It changes as we cut more.

How we rank: Each moment we’ve cut from a show earns a point, plus one when an AI builder is the one talking and one when its episode cleared our views bar, and a moment’s points halve every year after its episode came out. Each show is scored on its five best episodes by those points, so posting more often doesn’t lift it. Shows we follow but haven’t cut from yet come after, by the views their episodes usually get on YouTube.

The ranking

  1. No. 1. Latent Space

    Latent Space is an interview show with the people building AI, hosted by Shawn Wang (swyx) and Alessio Fanelli, with a new episode every day.

    Top guests: Erik Bernhardsson, Ian Quigley, Evan Conrad

    Start with:Agents hacked their scorer and chained exploits to communicate

  2. No. 2. Behind the Craft

    Behind the Craft is an interview show with the people building AI, hosted by Peter Yang, with a new episode every week.

    Top guests: Sam Stephenson, Ras Mic, Lauren Tan

    Start with:Build trust in a bot by turning observed runs into skills

  3. No. 3. AI & I

    AI & I is an interview show with the people building AI, hosted by Dan Shipper, with a new episode every week.

    Top guests: Boris Cherny, Willie Williams, Cat Wu

    Start with:Turn past code and mistakes into compounding leverage

  4. No. 4. The Pragmatic Engineer

    The Pragmatic Engineer is an interview show with the people building AI, hosted by Gergely Orosz, with a new episode every week.

    Top guests: Uday Kiran Medisetty, Sam Newman

    Start with:Uber reused cloud workspaces to give agents ready-to-build repos

  5. No. 5. The Peterman Pod

    The Peterman Pod is an interview show with the people building AI, hosted by Ryan Peterman, with a new episode every week.

    Top guests: Boris Cherny, Scott Aaronson

    Start with:Build for the model that will exist six months from now

10 more coding podcasts we don’t follow

We don’t follow these, so they aren’t ranked. Here they are A to Z, each linking to where you can listen.

The same shows, by what they cover

Best AI engineering podcasts

  1. 01Latent Space
  2. 02Behind the Craft
  3. 03AI & I
  4. Practical AI

Best software engineering podcasts

  1. 04The Pragmatic Engineer
  2. 05The Peterman Pod
  3. Accidental Tech Podcast
  4. The Changelog
  5. CoRecursive
  6. Hanselminutes
  7. Oxide and Friends
  8. Software Engineering Daily
  9. Software Unscripted
  10. The Stack Overflow Podcast
  11. Syntax

Questions

What is the number one coding podcast?

Latent Space is the number one coding podcast in Real Alpha’s ranking of 5, as of Oct 23, 2026. It has 28 moments cut from 10 episodes, 16 with an AI builder talking, mostly on AI business models and AI agents.

What is the best daily coding podcast?

Latent Space, No. 1 of 5 in Real Alpha’s ranking, is the best-ranked one with a new episode every day.

What is the best podcast to learn coding?

In Real Alpha’s ranking, the best of the software engineering podcasts is The Pragmatic Engineer (No. 4), and of the AI engineering podcasts, Latent Space (No. 1).

How does Real Alpha rank coding podcasts?

Each moment we’ve cut from a show earns a point, plus one when an AI builder is the one talking and one when its episode cleared our views bar, and a moment’s points halve every year after its episode came out. Each show is scored on its five best episodes by those points, so posting more often doesn’t lift it. Shows we follow but haven’t cut from yet come after, by the views their episodes usually get on YouTube. Then come the shows we don’t follow, unranked, A to Z.

More lists, ranked the same way