Everything ListIQ does — in one AI workflow, without the browser-tab juggling.
ListIQ is a lightweight, affordable Chrome extension that pulls real-time journalist info from Google News pages as you browse. It's genuinely handy — but it's an extension, not an agent. You still do the work yourself, tab by tab: open a search, pop the extension, check activity, spend email credits, paste into a sheet, repeat. Medialyst does everything ListIQ does inside one integrated workflow — discovery, story-specific scoring, verified contacts, and send — plus an API, a remote MCP server, and custom enrichment columns ListIQ has no concept of.
The honest comparison.
Pulled from public ListIQ documentation, customer reviews, and our own product. We update this page when either side ships something new.
| Capability | Medialyst | ListIQ |
|---|---|---|
| Finding the right journalist | ||
| Find journalists for this story | ✓ Story-specific relevance scoring | ~ Manual: you run Google News searches; extension annotates the page |
| Understand a journalist's beat | ✓ Reads past articles + recent coverage | ~ Recent-articles panel per author, read tab by tab |
| Analyze past writing | ✓ Grounded in actual articles | ~ Shows recent articles; no per-article analysis |
| Per-journalist pitch angles | ✓ Personalized angles + pitch drafts | ✕ Not available |
| Data freshness | ✓ Live news article search in real time | ~ Real-time research from the page you're on |
| Refine a list with natural language | ✓ “Remove anyone inactive in 6 months” | ✕ — point-and-click extension, no NL refine |
| Find more like top performers | ✓ “Find 20 more like the top 5” | ✕ Not available |
| Add custom enrichment columns | ✓ “Research if they use affiliate links” | ✕ Not available |
| Pitching & sending | ||
| Email verification | ✓ Multi-step verification waterfall | ✕ — discovers emails, no verification before send |
| Send + track from one place | ✓ Built-in send + tracking | ✕ — feeds BuzzStream CRM (separate product) |
| Pricing & setup | ||
| Time to first pitch | ✓ Minutes | ~ Per-journalist, manual: search → extension → sheet |
| Free trial | ✓ First list free | ~ Free tier (200 standard / 20 email credits) |
| Contract | ✓ None — cancel anytime | ~ Monthly, credit-based; no contract |
| Price | ✓ from $149/mo | ~ $24–$399/mo (credit tiers); separate from CRM |
| Agent-native workflows | ||
| API access | ✓ Public REST API | ✕ Not available |
| Remote MCP support | ✓ Hosted remote MCP server | ✕ Not available |
| Agent-native workflows | ✓ Usable directly inside Claude, ChatGPT & Cursor | ✕ — Chrome extension only |
| CSV import / re-enrichment from competitor exports | ✓ Upload any CSV — the agent re-verifies & re-scores | ~ Google Sheets augment; no re-verify / re-score |
Three reasons teams switch.
We're not trying to out-database ListIQ. We're trying to out-result them — by being more accurate, faster to act on, and honest about price.
A smaller list that actually replies.
Instead of a giant static database, Medialyst enriches journalists live and verifies every email in real time before it reaches you — global coverage across any outlet, journalist, or beat, researched for your story rather than pulled from a stale row.
From story to sent pitch in minutes.
Paste a release, a URL, or a topic. Medialyst proposes journalists, scores them 0–100 by fit, and drafts a tailored angle for each — no demo call, no contract, no multi-week onboarding.
Pricing on the website. Not in a sales deck.
Every plan and limit is public. Starter is $97/mo billed annually (or $149 month-to-month, cancel anytime) — and your first list is free: 300 credits, no credit card. No lock-in, no “let’s get on a call.”
Why people switch from ListIQ.
It's an extension, so you still do the work yourself
ListIQ is a Chrome extension layered over Google News — you run the searches, open each result, pop the extension, check activity, spend email credits, and paste contacts into a sheet, one tab at a time. It's faster than doing it fully by hand, but the human is still the workflow. Medialyst is agent-native: describe your story once and the agent finds journalists, reads their recent coverage, scores them by fit, verifies emails, and stages the send — no tab-juggling.
BuzzStream — ListIQ (Chrome extension) ↗Emails are discovered but never verified
ListIQ finds email addresses but does not verify them before you send — a gap multiple 2026 reviews call out as a deliverability and spam risk, with one Capterra reviewer noting the extension "sometimes pulls wrong contact info, requiring tools like Email Hunter." Medialyst verifies every email in real time before it's delivered to you, so the list you receive is checked for the pitch you're sending today.
Capterra — BuzzStream reviews ↗No story-specific scoring — just whoever's on the page
ListIQ annotates the journalists who show up in your Google News search; it doesn't read each reporter's beat and rank them 0–100 by how likely they are to write your specific story. Medialyst does exactly that, grounding every score in the journalist's actual recent articles and telling you why each one would cover it — so you're not eyeballing relevance tab by tab.
BuzzStream — ListIQ features ↗Two separate products, two separate bills
ListIQ builds lists; BuzzStream's outreach CRM sends and tracks them — and they're sold as separate subscriptions that share a login but not credits. To run the full find-to-send loop you pay for both, and the CRM's prices have climbed sharply (Starter $24→$49/mo, +104%, since 2025). Medialyst is one workflow at one price: discovery, verified contacts, and built-in send and tracking together.
BuzzStream — plans & pricing ↗Where ListIQ wins.
No tool is best at everything. Here's where ListIQ is genuinely strong — so you can decide honestly.
Lightweight and in-browser
ListIQ lives where digital-PR and link-building teams already work — inside Chrome, on top of Google News, with a Google Sheets integration that augments lists you've already started. If your workflow is built around browsing news and dropping contacts into a spreadsheet, that in-the-flow convenience is real, and reviewers consistently praise how quickly you can pop the extension open.
Tuned for digital-PR and link building
ListIQ comes out of BuzzStream's link-building world, so it's shaped for SEO and digital-PR teams chasing coverage-for-links — surfacing contributors and outlets you can pitch for backlinks, then handing the list to an outreach CRM. If link building is the actual job rather than earned-media storytelling, that focus is a genuine fit.
A light footprint when that's all you need
If you just want to pop open an extension now and then and grab a few contacts, ListIQ stays minimal — no onboarding, no campaign builder to learn. On price and freshness it's a wash with Medialyst, which also researches journalists live and starts free (300 credits, no card) — so choose on workflow, not sticker.
Where Medialyst pulls ahead.
The flip side: here's where Medialyst is the stronger choice over ListIQ for finding and pitching the right journalists.
One workflow instead of a dozen tabs
Discovery, story-specific scoring, verified contacts, and send all happen in one place. You describe the story once; the agent does the research, the vetting, and the email verification — instead of you running searches, popping an extension, and copy-pasting into a sheet for every journalist.
Fit for this story, scored 0–100
Rather than annotating whoever appears in a Google News search, Medialyst reads hundreds of relevant articles, scores reporters by fit, and tells you why each one would write your announcement — grounded in their actual recent coverage.
Verified emails before delivery
Coverage is global and enriched live in real time, and every email is verified in real time before it reaches you — closing exactly the deliverability gap ListIQ leaves open by discovering addresses without validating them.
Agent-native: API, MCP, and custom columns
A public REST API, a hosted remote MCP server, and custom enrichment columns let you run Medialyst directly inside Claude, ChatGPT, or Cursor — and ask for things an extension can't express, like "research if they use affiliate links" or "flag anyone inactive in the last six months." ListIQ has no concept of any of this.
Switching is a CSV upload
Already building lists in ListIQ? Export your contacts to CSV, upload it, and the agent takes it from there — re-verifying every email and re-scoring each journalist against your story, so you can compare on your own data before you change anything.
Pitching the same announcement.
One launch, two tools. Here's what a comms lead actually does to get a story-specific pitch out the door.
Medialyst9 min totalListIQhours–daysThree places the difference shows up.
Database quality
ListIQ and Medialyst agree on one big thing: a static media database goes stale, so journalist data should be researched in real time.
ListIQ does this from the page you're on — scan a Google News search, and the extension pulls current bios, recent articles, activity status, and social profiles for the authors it finds. " The limits are structural. ListIQ researches whoever your search surfaces, so coverage is only as good as the search you ran, and there's no proactive discovery without a starting URL.
More importantly, it discovers emails but does not verify them — a gap 2026 reviews flag as a real bounce-and-spam risk, with users reaching for tools like Email Hunter to double-check addresses. Medialyst takes the same real-time stance but closes the loop: it enriches journalists live across any outlet, journalist, or beat worldwide, and verifies every email in real time before it's ever shown to you. The unit of truth is a freshly-researched, verified contact for your story — not a page annotation you still have to validate yourself.
Speed
ListIQ is fast in the moment — "you can rapidly pop that Chrome extension open," as one reviewer puts it — but the speed is per-journalist and human-driven.
You run a search, open results, trigger the extension, read the activity check, spend email credits, and move the contact into a sheet, then repeat for the next name. The tool accelerates each manual step; it doesn't remove the manual loop. Medialyst removes the loop.
You paste a press release, a URL, or a topic, and the agent goes to work on the whole list at once: finding journalists, reading their recent coverage, scoring fit, verifying emails, and staging the send. The average time from describing your story to a verified, scored journalist list is four minutes and thirty-two seconds — for the entire list, not one contact. When a story breaks and the window is short, building the whole list in one pass beats annotating a search page row by row.
AI & agent surface
This is the widest gap, and it's the core of the wedge.
ListIQ is a Chrome extension: it runs in your browser, on the page you're viewing, and that's the entire surface. There's no API, no MCP server, and no way to drive it from another tool or compose it into an automated workflow — everything routes through a human clicking inside Chrome. Medialyst is built agent-first.
A public REST API and a hosted remote MCP server mean you can run journalist discovery and enrichment directly from inside Claude, ChatGPT, or Cursor, wire it into your own scripts, or hand it to an internal agent. " — and get structured answers back, the kind of thing a point-and-click extension simply has no way to express. If your team is building AI-assisted workflows, Medialyst is a component you compose with; ListIQ is a tab you open.
Two pricing philosophies, side by side.
Ours is public and posted. Here's how it sits next to what ListIQ customers tell us they encounter.
- Starterfounders & small teams$97/mo annual
- Proin-house comms & PR teams$194/mo annual
- Scaleagencies & high-volume teams$520/mo annual
- No contract · no per-seat fees · 30-day money-back
- Free first list — 300 credits, no credit card
- One unified product — no modules priced separately
- ListIQ publishes credit-based monthly pricing: a free tier (200 standard + 20 email credits), then Starter $24, Plus $99, Growth $199, and Pro $399/mo, plus custom Enterprise. Credits don't roll over, and ListIQ is billed separately from BuzzStream's outreach CRM ($49–$999+/mo), so the full find-to-send stack costs more than either alone.
- Pricing published online
In the words of Medialyst users.
Real customers, approved for use. Your results depend on your story and your list — these are theirs.
"My new favorite PR intern. With a few detailed prompts, the agent comes up with a pretty targeted list of journalists. The best thing is it gives a summary of their recent articles before I commit to reading every piece."
"Medialyst is the only tool that keeps up with the pace our firm needs to move at across our High Growth B2B Tech clients. The journalist targeting is sharp as well as accurate, and Elvis actually ships when you give him feedback."
"It's 100% customizable to you & your clients. It's affordable. It's built by someone who gets back to you quickly & truly wants to give the people what they want — MORE time."
"Medialyst takes the guesswork out of journalist outreach. It vets your pitch for suitability, matches it to the right journalists, and hands you their most accurate contact details — so instead of firing off cold emails into the void, you're landing in the right inboxes. The result? Fewer emails sent, more stories published."
"This is a must-have if you work in media, it's easy to use and saves you a lot of time! The customer service has been some of the best I have experienced."
Paste a story. Get your journalist list in minutes.
Drop in a press release, your website URL, or a one-line description of your news. Medialyst reads what's relevant, finds reporters who actually cover it, scores them by fit, and verifies every email — your first list is free, no credit card.
Common questions about switching from ListIQ.
How much does ListIQ cost?
What is the best ListIQ alternative?
Is the ListIQ Chrome extension worth it?
Does ListIQ verify journalist emails?
ListIQ vs Medialyst — which should I use?
Can I import my ListIQ list into Medialyst?
One workflow beats a dozen browser tabs. Build your list now.
Start free with 300 credits and no credit card. Paste your story and get a verified, story-specific list of journalists in minutes.