Podcasts Like Casefile: The Best True Crime Shows to Try Next

Casefile's whole identity is the absence of one. No host bio, no social media persona, no "hey guys, welcome back" — just a script, read the same way whether the case is a small-town disappearance or a decades-long serial killer investigation. That restraint is why it has over 600 million downloads and why it's rated a Must listen on our Casefile page: the show trusts the material enough to get out of its own way.

The trouble is that Casefile's specific combination — anonymity, scripted delivery, no-nonsense pacing, genuinely international case selection — doesn't exist twice. So instead of a list of "if you like X you'll like Y" hand-waving, here's what to reach for depending on which part of Casefile you actually want more of.

If it's the flat, clinical tone you're chasing

American Predator is the closest match on this list, and it isn't close by accident. Based on Maureen Callahan's book on Israel Keyes, it's scripted, single-narrator, and deliberately unemotional about material that would tempt most hosts into editorialising. Keyes was, by most accounts, the most methodical serial killer the FBI has profiled — someone who buried "murder kits" across the country years before using them — and the show lets that fact sit there rather than dramatising it. It's a five-to-eight-episode series rather than an ongoing weekly show, so treat it as a companion piece, not a replacement.

If it's the research depth you're after

Casefile's reputation rests on how much verified detail makes it into a script most true crime podcasts wouldn't bother chasing down. Two shows match that standard, though both do it with a visible reporter rather than an anonymous voice — which changes the feel even when the rigor is comparable.

In the Dark is journalism first and true crime second — APM Reports built the show around actual accountability reporting (their jury-selection analysis in the Curtis Flowers case was submitted as evidence to the US Supreme Court), and it shows in every episode. Undisclosed takes the opposite approach to the same standard: three practising attorneys picking apart trial transcripts and forensic evidence case by case. Neither is going to feel anonymous the way Casefile does — you're very aware there's a specific, credentialed person doing the work — but the underlying rigor is arguably even higher.

If it's the single-case deep dive you want

Casefile occasionally devotes several episodes to one case, and if that's the format you find yourself gravitating toward, two shows do it better than almost anything else in the genre — for very different reasons.

Serial is the obvious one, and it earns the obviousness: Season 1's investigation into Adnan Syed and the murder of Hae Min Lee is still the reference point for what long-form audio journalism can do, and at a 10/10 binge factor on our scale, it's the highest-rated show in this entire list. Your Own Backyard is the opposite kind of single-case show — not a journalist working from a professional remove, but one obsessive amateur, Chris Lambert, spending years on the Kristin Smart disappearance. It's less polished than Casefile in places, and Lambert is far more personally present in the material than Casefile's anonymous host would ever allow — but the podcast helped put Smart's killer in prison 25 years after she disappeared. Few shows in the genre can say that.

If you want Casefile's global reach with more personality

This is the honest detour on the list. RedHanded, hosted by Hannah Maguire and Suruthi Bala, shares Casefile's willingness to go beyond American cases — it's British, culturally aware, and has won the British Podcast Awards Listeners' Choice three years running. But it is not clinical. The hosts have opinions, banter, and a point of view on power and gender that they bring to every case. If Casefile's blankness is actually the thing you find restful, RedHanded will feel like a different genre. If it's the international case selection you were really after, it's an excellent fit.

If you want the consistency without the intensity

Crime Junkie is the least similar podcast on this list, and it's here anyway because a specific kind of Casefile listener — the one who wants a reliable, victim-focused, no-drama true crime fix rather than 90 minutes of dense international investigation — is better served by it than by anything closer in tone. Ashley Flowers delivers one case a week in about 30 minutes, consistently, without the personal digressions of a lot of two-host shows. It won't match Casefile's production depth or case complexity. It will match the promise that you're not getting filler.

Where to start

If you've never listened to anything on this list, start with Serial Season 1 — it's the closest thing true crime podcasting has to a shared reference point, and it'll tell you fairly quickly which direction you want to go next: toward more journalism (In the Dark, Undisclosed), toward more personal obsession (Your Own Backyard), or toward something with a bit more warmth than Casefile ever offers (RedHanded).

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