Propel's database is static. Medialyst's is enriched live, in real time.
Propel's database is static — ours is enriched live, and our agent surface goes deeper than Propel's AI features. Propel is a solid PR CRM with native inbox plugins and a reasonable, transparent price; its Premium tier even undercuts Medialyst at entry. But the journalists you pull come out of a database that's refreshed on a schedule, and its AI sits on top of that database. Medialyst enriches every journalist live in real time and exposes the whole workflow to agents.
The honest comparison.
Pulled from public Propel documentation, customer reviews, and our own product. We update this page when either side ships something new.
| Capability | Medialyst | Propel |
|---|---|---|
| Finding the right journalist | ||
| Find journalists for this story | ✓ Story-specific relevance scoring | ~ Prompt-based DB search; AI Media List Builder |
| Understand a journalist's beat | ✓ Reads past articles + recent coverage | ~ Beat from profile + pitch-preference data |
| Analyze past writing | ✓ Grounded in actual articles | ~ Profile bylines, no per-article analysis |
| Per-journalist pitch angles | ✓ Personalized angles + pitch drafts | ~ AI Tailored Pitch Writer + personalized intros |
| Data freshness | ✓ Live news article search in real time | ~ Daily database updates (static refresh) |
| Refine a list with natural language | ✓ “Remove anyone inactive in 6 months” | ~ Prompt-based search, not list-level NL refine |
| Find more like top performers | ✓ “Find 20 more like the top 5” | ~ Personalized journalist recommendations |
| Add custom enrichment columns | ✓ “Research if they use affiliate links” | ✕ Not available |
| Pitching & sending | ||
| Email verification | ✓ Multi-step verification waterfall | ~ Native Gmail/Outlook/Slack send + tracking |
| Send + track from one place | ✓ Built-in send + tracking | ~ Built-in send + open/response tracking |
| Pricing & setup | ||
| Time to first pitch | ✓ Minutes | ~ Fast self-serve, but CRM setup first |
| Free trial | ✓ First list free | ~ Free tier (tight limits) — no paid trial |
| Contract | ✓ None — cancel anytime | ~ Premium billed annually |
| Price | ✓ from $149/mo | ~ ~$99/mo (Premium, annual, 1 user) |
| 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 | ✕ Not available |
| CSV import / re-enrichment from competitor exports | ✓ Upload any CSV — the agent re-verifies & re-scores | ~ Media list import, no re-enrichment |
Three reasons teams switch.
We're not trying to out-database Propel. 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 Propel.
The database is static — refreshed, not live
Propel's media database is large and updated daily — its own materials cite 1M+ journalists, 3B+ articles, and daily updates. But a daily refresh is still a static pull: you get whoever was last indexed, not a journalist researched for your specific story right now. Medialyst takes the opposite approach — it enriches journalists live in real time the moment you build a list, and verifies every email in real time before it's delivered to you, rather than serving the last scraped profile.
Authority Tech — AI PR platforms comparison 2026 ↗Propel's own marketing can't agree on its journalist count
Propel's homepage says 500K+ journalists while its features pages and blog claim 1M+ — an inconsistency in Propel's own marketing that was unverified as of June 2026. When the database itself is the product, that ambiguity matters. Medialyst doesn't compete on a headline inventory number; it researches and verifies the contacts you actually need, for the story you're actually pitching.
Propel blog — How AI is revolutionizing PR ↗It's a relationship CRM first, a discovery engine second
Propel is built around ongoing PR relationship management — a Story Funnel pitch pipeline, projects, and inbox plugins. That's powerful if you live in a CRM, but it means discovery starts from setup and a database search rather than from your announcement. Medialyst is discovery-first: paste a press release, URL, or topic and the agent finds and scores journalists by fit immediately, no CRM scaffolding required.
Sword and the Script — Propel PR software review ↗Third-party roundups rank it mid-tier despite the AI marketing
Guideflow's March 2026 roundup of the 14 best PR software tools placed Propel #13 of 14 — described as a "modern PR CRM focused on outreach workflow," positioned mid-market rather than as a first-call recommendation, even with heavy AI messaging. The AI label and the AI substance aren't the same thing, which is exactly where Medialyst's live, story-specific research separates from a database with an AI layer.
Guideflow — 14 best PR software tools 2026 ↗Where Propel wins.
No tool is best at everything. Here's where Propel is genuinely strong — so you can decide honestly.
An ongoing free tier for small teams
Credit where it's due: Propel is public and self-serve, with a standing $0 tier (up to 10 users, tight limits) and a Premium tier around $99/mo billed annually for a single seat. Medialyst is public and self-serve too — $97/mo annually, with a free first list (300 credits, no card) — but that first list is a trial, whereas Propel's free tier sticks around. For a small team that wants to keep running on $0 indefinitely and can live with the limits, that's a fair call.
Native inbox plugins are a real differentiator
Propel is the rare PRM with native Gmail, Outlook, and Slack plugins, so you can send pitches and track opens and responses directly from the inbox you already work in. If your workflow is centered on your email client and you want everything to live there, that integration is genuinely convenient and not something every competitor offers.
Included media monitoring via the Signal AI partnership
Through its October 2025 partnership with Signal AI, Propel folds in real-time media monitoring — 5M+ content pieces daily across 226 markets and 75 languages — with SSO between the platforms. If you want outreach and broad monitoring/share-of-voice in one place, that bundled monitoring is a legitimate advantage Medialyst doesn't try to replicate.
Where Medialyst pulls ahead.
The flip side: here's where Medialyst is the stronger choice over Propel for finding and pitching the right journalists.
Live enrichment instead of a static pull
Global coverage across outlets, journalists, and beats, enriched live in real time rather than served from a database that refreshes on a schedule. Every email is verified in real time before it reaches you — so the list you receive was researched and checked for the pitch you're sending today, not last indexed sometime this quarter.
Fit for this story, not a database search
Medialyst reads hundreds of articles relevant to your specific announcement, scores reporters 0–100 by fit, and tells you why each one would write it — grounded in their actual recent coverage. That's a different unit of work from prompting a static database and getting back whoever the index returns.
Custom enrichment columns a CRM can't express
Define research questions in plain language and get structured answers back across a whole list — "research if they use affiliate links and identify which platform," or "has this travel journalist visited San Diego in the last two years?" Propel's database fields can't be invented on demand the way Medialyst's enrichment columns can.
Agent-native, not AI on top of a database
A public REST API and a hosted remote MCP server mean you can run journalist discovery and enrichment directly inside Claude, ChatGPT, or Cursor, wire it into your own scripts, or hand it to an internal agent. Propel's AI lives inside Propel; Medialyst is a component you can compose with.
Monthly, no contract, free first list
Starter $149/mo, Pro $299, Scale $800 — published, monthly, no per-seat fees, no contract, 30-day money-back. The first list is free with 300 credits and no credit card. Propel's Premium undercuts Starter at entry, but Medialyst's plan is month-to-month rather than Propel's annual billing on Premium.
AI bolted on vs. AI-native.
Propel markets hard on AI — PropeLLM, its proprietary Llama-based model fine-tuned for PR, plus the Amiga "Artificial Media Intelligence" layer, the AI Tailored Pitch Writer, and the AI Media List Builder. It's real engineering, and the named LLM is a genuine asset. But architecturally the AI sits on top of a journalist database that's refreshed on a schedule: the model helps you search and write against that database and personalize intros, but the underlying contacts are still a static index, and the most autonomous "LLM-Powered AI Agent" was flagged as "coming soon" as of mid-2025 with status unverified since. That's a legacy filter dashboard with an AI front end and extra steps. Medialyst is AI-native end to end. There's no static database to bolt onto — the agent reads real, recent articles per journalist, scores them for your specific story, and lets you define custom enrichment columns in plain language: "find journalists who use affiliate links and identify which platform," or "has this travel journalist visited San Diego in the last two years?" That's the difference between an AI layer over a database and a research assistant that actually does the research.
“Not a static database pull. Not the same recycled names that have been sitting in a spreadsheet for two years. A researched, current list built around exactly what you tell it to look for.”— Amy Bartko
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 totalPropel~3 daysThree places the difference shows up.
Database quality
Propel's data story is scale plus daily updates: its materials cite a media database of 1M+ journalists, 50M+ influencers, and 3B+ articles, refreshed daily, with prompt-based natural-language search instead of pure keyword filters.
The catch is that "updated daily" still describes a static inventory — you query an index and get back whoever was last written into it. Propel's own marketing even disagrees with itself on the headline number: the homepage says 500K+ journalists while features pages and blog posts claim 1M+, an inconsistency unverified as of June 2026. Medialyst takes the opposite stance.
Rather than maintaining a giant static inventory and hoping it's current, it enriches journalists live at the moment you build a list — pulling recent articles, confirming the beat, and verifying the email in real time before it's ever shown to you. Coverage is global — any outlet, any journalist, any beat — but the unit of truth is the freshly-researched contact for your story, not a row that was last touched in a daily refresh cycle. The practical result is fewer bounces and far less manual cross-referencing, because the list you receive was built and checked for the pitch you're sending today rather than pulled from a profile that may have drifted.
Speed
Propel is fast to start by legacy standards — pricing is transparent and self-serve, with a free tier and no mandatory demo, which is a real improvement over the sales-call gauntlet older vendors impose.
But because Propel is a relationship CRM, getting to a first pitch still means setting up the workspace and running a database search, then writing and personalizing from there. Medialyst collapses that further. There's no CRM to configure — you paste a press release, a URL, or a topic, and the agent goes to work immediately, finding and scoring journalists for that specific story. The average time from describing your story to a verified, scored journalist list is four minutes and thirty-two seconds.
That speed isn't just convenience; it changes what's possible. When a news story breaks and you have a timely angle, the difference between "list in five minutes" and "list after I set up the CRM and search the database" is the difference between landing the coverage and missing the window. For teams that newsjack or simply move fast, discovery-first speed is the whole game.
AI & agent surface
This is where the gap is widest.
Propel's AI features live inside Propel — you operate PropeLLM, the AI Media List Builder, and the pitch writer through its app and inbox plugins, on its terms. There's no public way to drive journalist discovery from your own tools, and the more autonomous agent was still "coming soon" as of mid-2025. 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.
Custom enrichment columns let you ask research questions in plain language and get structured answers back across a whole list — the kind of thing a fixed database schema can't express. And you can upload competitor CSVs and the agent takes it from there, re-verifying and re-scoring every contact. If your team is building AI-assisted workflows, Medialyst is a component you can compose with, not a walled garden you have to log into.
Two pricing philosophies, side by side.
Ours is public and posted. Here's how it sits next to what Propel 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
- Propel publishes self-serve pricing: a $0 free tier (up to 10 users, tight limits) and a Premium tier starting around $99/mo billed annually for one user, scaling up to roughly $599/mo for 5–9 users; Enterprise is contact-sales.
- 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 Propel.
How much does Propel cost in 2026?
What is the best Propel PRM alternative?
Propel vs Medialyst — which should I choose?
Is Propel's database up to date?
Is there a cheaper alternative to Propel?
Can I import my Propel lists into Medialyst?
Live data beats a static database. Build your first 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.