Personally, re. google podcasts, it lacks a lot of useful features that other podcasts apps have.
I’ve found pocket casts to have the better set of features and functionality (for the unpaid version) compared to other podcasts apps. I don’t use spotify, but it’s definitely better than the recent and awful implementation of podcasts in youtube music. I tried a couple other podcast apps, most recently podcast republic, and I found podcast republic to be buggy, certain settings don’t stick or work as expected.
Their recent addition to support wearOS made me consider a subscription (wearOS version requires subscription). Until youtube music recently added support for podcasts, so I didn’t bother although I can’t say the podcast feature in youtube music is all that good so far but it will let episodes get downloaded to my watch.