MedialystvsAgility PR SolutionsAgility PR Solutions alternative · 2026

The modern alternative to Agility PR Solutions.

Agility PR Solutions (owned by Innodata) is the friendlier, mid-market alternative to Cision — a 1M+ contact media database, monitoring, and reporting in one suite at a lower price point, with genuinely praised hands-on support.

First list free · No credit card
From $97/mo · no contractPay only for verified emailsFirst list free · no credit card
See the full Agility PR Solutions comparison ↓
Who builds it

Built by an AI engineer and a working publicist.

Medialyst's co-founders bring both halves of the job into the room: Elvis brings the standard he held at Google, and Carly brings the standard her own clients pay for.

  • Elvis Sun

    Co-founder

    Spent 8 years at Google working on AI systems used by millions of people.

  • Carly Martinetti

    Co-founder

    Runs Notably, a boutique PR agency serving 25+ clients, and pitches journalists for a living.

The proof is public. Carly grades our real media lists, and we publish every grade, starting with her first: F, 27.9/100 (latest: B, 81.1). As far as we know, Medialyst is the only AI PR tool that publishes a public, recurring quality benchmark.

At a glance

The honest comparison.

Pulled from public Agility PR Solutions documentation, customer reviews, and our own product. We update this page when either side ships something new.

Capability
MedialystMedialyst
Agility PR SolutionsAgility PR Solutions
Finding the right journalist
Find journalists for this story
✓
Story-specific relevance scoring
~
Keyword search + filters over 1M+ contacts
Understand a journalist's beat
✓
Reads past articles + recent coverage
~
Beat tags + topic filters
Analyze past writing
✓
Grounded in actual articles
~
Profile bylines, no per-article analysis
Per-journalist pitch angles
✓
Personalized angles + pitch drafts
~
Press release distribution + pitching
Data freshness
✓
Live news article search in real time
~
Static database — human-curated, periodic refresh
Refine a list with natural language
✓
“Remove anyone inactive in 6 months”
✕
Not available
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
~
Human-curated DB — stale-contact complaints
Send from one place
✓
Built-in sending
~
Built-in outreach + monitoring
Pricing & setup
Time to first pitch
✓
Minutes
~
Weeks: sales call → annual onboarding
Free trial
✓
First list free
✕
Demo only, no free trial
Contract
✓
None — cancel anytime
~
Annual-only
Price
✓
from $149/mo
~
~$8K–$15K+/yr (opaque, request a quote)
Agent-native workflows
API access
✓
Public REST API
~
API access (limited)
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
~
No re-enrichment from exports

Find your journalists now. No demo. No contract. No credit card.

Start in seconds and see live journalist matches for your first pitch.

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The honest read

Why people switch from Agility PR Solutions.

  1. A gentler version of the same locked-in model

    Agility is consistently reviewed as easier to use and cheaper than Cision, but it's still a quote-only annual contract with no public pricing, no monthly option, and no self-serve trial. Reported pricing ranges from roughly $8,000 to $15,000+ per year depending on features and seats. Medialyst publishes pricing from $149/mo, bills monthly, requires no contract, and gives you a free first list with no credit card.

    G2 — Agility PR Solutions reviews ↗
  2. The same static-database data rot

    Agility's 1M+ contact database is human-curated and refreshed periodically, but it draws the same stale-contact complaints as every legacy index — outdated emails, contacts who've moved outlets, and details that drift between refresh cycles. Medialyst starts from evidence instead: when you build a list it reads recent articles on your topic, confirms each journalist's beat from what they actually published, and only delivers an email that was validated within the last 14 days or re-checked before it reaches you.

    Capterra — Agility PR Solutions reviews ↗
  3. A filter dashboard, not story-specific research

    Agility's journalist search works the way every legacy database does: filter by keywords, beats, outlets, and geography, then manually vet the results. It doesn't read each journalist's recent articles to judge whether they'd actually cover your specific story. Medialyst reads hundreds of articles relevant to your announcement, scores reporters 0–100 by fit, and tells you why each one would write it.

    Agility PR Solutions — media database ↗
  4. Monitoring is the strength, not discovery

    Where Agility genuinely shines is media monitoring and analytics — tracking coverage, measuring earned media value, and reporting to stakeholders. But if your primary job is journalist discovery and outreach rather than post-campaign measurement, you're buying the side feature at a price point shaped by the monitoring suite.

    G2 — Agility PR Solutions reviews ↗
Fair is fair

Where each one wins.

Where Medialyst wins

  • Right-priced and flexible — no contract, no sales call

    Starter is $149/mo, Pro $299, Scale $800 — published, monthly, no per-seat fees, no annual lock-in, and a 14-day money-back guarantee. The first list is free with 100 credits and no credit card. You'll know exactly what you pay before you ever talk to anyone.

  • Fit for this story, not keyword roulette

    Instead of keyword search over a static index, 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.

  • Evidence-first, not database-first

    Journalists are picked from what they published recently about your story, not from a filtered index. Medialyst keeps its own journalist database too, but an email is only served from it if it was validated in the last 14 days. Otherwise it's re-checked when you build the list. You pay 1 credit only when we deliver a verified email, and misses are free.

  • Agent-native, not dashboard-bound

    A public REST API, a hosted remote MCP server, and custom enrichment columns mean you can run Medialyst directly inside Claude, ChatGPT, or Cursor — and ask for things a filter UI simply can't express.

  • Switching is a CSV upload

    Already paying for Agility? Export your media lists, upload the CSV, and Medialyst's agent re-verifies and re-scores every contact — so you can compare on your own data before your renewal window closes.

Where Agility PR Solutions wins

  • A full-service suite at a friendlier price than Cision

    Agility bundles a media database, monitoring, analytics, and reporting in one suite at a price point consistently reported as lower than Cision or Meltwater — roughly $8K–$15K/yr vs. Cision's $10K–$30K+. For a mid-market team that wants the traditional all-in-one without enterprise pricing, that gap is real.

  • Genuinely praised hands-on support

    Agility's single most consistent positive review theme is support — responsive, helpful account managers who are praised by name across G2 and Capterra. That's a meaningful differentiator in a category where Cision and Meltwater draw regular complaints about post-sale support vanishing.

  • Strong media monitoring and analytics

    For teams whose primary need is tracking coverage, measuring share of voice, and reporting earned media value, Agility's monitoring suite is competent and integrated. It covers print, online, broadcast, and social with dashboards that reviewers find usable.

Their AI vs. ours

AI bolted on vs. AI-native.

Legacy platforms point AI at the same filter UI you already had. Medialyst assigns a research agent to each candidate journalist, reads their actual work, and consolidates the strong fits. Watch the same brief run through both.

THEIR AILegacy database + AI layer
AI
BEAT
AnyTravel▾
REGION
AnyUS-West▾
KEYWORDS
Anyhotel...▾
that was the entire AI step: three dropdowns you could have clicked yourself
Henry Whitfield
GigaTravel
verified 2018outlet defunct
Rita Moss
Biz Traveler Weekly
verified 2019wrong beat
-generic inbox
Worth pitching: 0 of 3

OUR AIMedialyst: AI-native research agent
MEDIALYST AGENT

OUTPUT: 1,847 RESEARCHED TO FIT-CHECKED SHORTLIST

94
Diego Fuentes
Travel + Leisure
RECOMMENDED ANGLEVisited San Diego in March. Pitch the return-visit story.
91
Priya Raman
AFAR
RECOMMENDED ANGLERuns a boutique-openings series. Pitch the design story.
87
Lena Kowalski
The Points Guy
RECOMMENDED ANGLEAffiliate-friendly. Pitch opening rates and booking link.

Full architecture notes for Agility PR Solutions

Agility has added AI-powered features to its platform — AI-assisted search, AI-generated media briefs, and AI-suggested pitches — but architecturally it's the legacy keyword-filter database with AI bolted on top. The AI helps you construct better searches and drafts copy, but it isn't reading each journalist's recent articles to judge fit for your specific story. You still get whatever the filters return from a static index. Medialyst is AI-native end to end. There's no underlying filter UI to bolt onto — the agent reads real, recent articles per journalist, and you can 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 a database with an AI veneer 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, with journalist names, their publication, their most recent articles, and their contact information all in one place.”Amy BartkoAmy BartkoPR professional, Chatterbox
Workflow

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.

MedialystMedialyst9 min total
1
Paste the release
Drop your announcement into the agent. It identifies the angle and newsworthiness.
~30 sec
2
Receive ranked matches
Journalists scored 0–100 by fit, each with reasoning grounded in their recent articles.
~90 sec
3
Review drafted pitches
A unique angle per journalist referencing their actual recent work. Edit anything; tone stays yours.
~5 min
4
Send from your own Gmail or Outlook
You send each pitch from your own inbox, then see opens, clicks and replies per journalist.
~2 min
Time to first pitch~9 minutes
Agility PR SolutionsAgility PR Solutions~3 days
1
Build a media list
Filter by outlet, beat, and geography, then cross-reference recent coverage by hand and export to CSV.
hours
2
Validate the list
Someone checks each contact’s most recent byline. A meaningful chunk gets cut for staleness.
~1 day
3
Draft pitches
Mostly one template lightly varied per contact; generic AI assist gets re-edited anyway.
~1 day
4
Send & chase replies
Track opens and replies across separate tools; reporting often lags behind.
~1 hr
Time to first pitch~3 days
Under the hood

Three places the difference shows up.

01Database quality

Agility markets a 1M+ contact media database with global coverage, positioned as the more accessible alternative to Cision's 850K+ index.

The database is human-curated by a dedicated research team, and Agility's parent company Innodata brings data-services expertise to the maintenance. But scale and accuracy aren't the same thing, and Agility draws the same core complaint as every static legacy database: contacts go stale between refresh cycles. Journalists move outlets, change beats, and their emails bounce — and a quarterly or even monthly curation pass can't keep up with the churn that 2026's newsroom layoffs have accelerated. Medialyst is evidence-first rather than database-first.

It picks journalists from what they published recently for your story, confirming the beat from their actual bylines. It keeps its own journalist database as well, but every email it delivers was validated within the last 14 days or is re-checked when you build the list, and you pay 1 credit only when a verified email is delivered. It works globally across major online news sources and many trade publications. Coverage is strongest where articles and bylines are published online; hyper-local, print-only and some regional trade sources can be thinner.

02Speed

Agility is faster to get started than Cision — reviewers note a friendlier onboarding and a less painful sales process — but it's still a sales call, an annual contract, and a dashboard to learn before you build your first list.

Once you're in, finding journalists still means constructing keyword searches, scanning filter results, and manually vetting fit. Medialyst collapses that. There's no demo gate and no contract — you paste a press release, a URL, or a topic, and the agent goes to work immediately.

Going from describing your story to a verified, scored journalist list takes minutes. That speed changes what's possible: when a news story breaks and you have a timely angle, the difference between "list in minutes" and "list after an annual onboarding" is the difference between landing the coverage and missing the window entirely.

03AI & agent surface

Agility's features live inside its dashboard — you operate searches, monitoring, and analytics through its interface, on its terms.

There's limited API access for enterprise customers, but no meaningful way to drive journalist discovery from your own tools or compose it into an automated workflow. Medialyst is built agent-first. A public REST API and a hosted remote MCP server mean you can run 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 filter schema can't express. 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.

Pricing reality

Two pricing philosophies, side by side.

Ours is public and posted. Here's how it sits next to Agility PR Solutions's own published pricing page and what named third parties report.

Pricing and claims verified June 2026
Medialyst
Transparent
From $97/mobilled annually
or $149/mo month-to-month · cancel anytime
  • 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 · cancel anytime · 14-day money-back guarantee
  • Free first list — 100 credits, no credit card
  • One unified product — no modules priced separately
Agility PR Solutions
Quote-based
$8K–$15K+/yr
No public pricing — quote on request
  • Agility PR Solutions doesn't publish pricing — quotes are custom and annual. Third-party sources and reviewer estimates place typical subscriptions at roughly $8,000–$15,000+/yr depending on features and seats, meaningfully cheaper than Cision but still a significant annual commitment with no monthly option and no free trial.
  • No public pricing — quote on request
What teams say

In the words of Medialyst users.

Real customers, approved for use. Your results depend on your story and your list — these are theirs.

★★★★★

"Then recently I stumbled upon Elvis Sun's agentic PR tool Medialyst — 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."

Rita Liao
★★★★★

"Medialyst has become one of my go-to tools. It’s fast and intuitive, so I spend less time searching and more time pitching. It’s also helped me find journalists I hadn’t come across before, which has opened up new coverage opportunities for our brands."

Vanessa Dones
★★★★★

"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."

Kristjana (Kris) Hillberg
★★★★★

"What came back was a working list with real journalists, current coverage, and contact information I could use the same day. No cross-referencing. No digging through three different tabs. One prompt and I was pitching."

Amy Bartko
★★★★★

"Medialyst makes it super easy to narrow down and create dedicated PR lists to reach out to the journalists that actually want to hear what you have to say. The timeline from chatting to the agent about what you have to promote to actually launching the campaign goes down to mere 1-2 hours instead of days worth of research and prospecting."

Milena Petrović
★★★★★

"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."

Sim Aulakh
Sim Aulakh
Founder at EstablishCred
★★★★★

"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."

Saddat Abid
Saddat Abid
CEO at Property Saviour
★★★★★

"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."

Raul Quiroz
Raul Quiroz
Senior Account Manager at HJ-PR
★★★★★

"The big media database platforms are built for agencies with full teams and retainers to match. For a boutique practice like mine, the economics just do not work. Medialyst fits the model. Beyond contact discovery, it helps me stay on top of what reporters are actually covering: the beats, the patterns, the recent angles. That is the real work of pitching well these days. Spray and pray is over, and Medialyst is built for how modern media relations actually works, at a price point that makes sense for the way I operate."

Kyle Cabodi
★★★★★

"This new company is a terrific idea—and helps PR people in ways they didn't know they needed it. The team really 'gets' this business and so many businesses just don't. Jump in. The agents are ready!"

Richard Laermer
★★★★★

"I needed a tool built for speed: finding the journalists who are on a story right now, in the moment, while it's still news. For how fast our world moves, this service is genuinely a big deal."

Emily Carter
★★★★★

"I love Medialyst. It follows the workflow I already use, which, if I may say so myself, is the right workflow. I don't keep old Excel documents full of old emails and blast things to people. I hate the spray and pray. I like to make sure reporters are writing about the things I'm talking about, and to find new people who are. Muck Rack, Cision, all of those are basically very expensive static databases. I already know the major trade reporters. What Medialyst has helped me uncover are the people at Fast Company and The Wall Street Journal who cover packaging, and the freelancers I can get on the radar of. Muck Rack just doesn't help with that. Now when I tell Claude 'here's the person,' it pulls them through Medialyst, onto my list there, and starts gathering information about them. I haven't gotten a bounced email yet. I'd rather send a smaller list I can defend. And I'm never afraid to share it with clients, because it has everything in there. It proves its worth. My first job, as an intern, was photocopying Bacon's books into an Excel database every year. So I'm acutely aware of how hard it is to keep track of all this. This is how I would approach it myself."

Christine Pietryla Wetzler
Christine Pietryla Wetzler
★★★★★

"As most of us in the PR business know, media database services can be expensive, cumbersome, and too often imperfect. We pay a premium for access to AI and out-of-the-box features. We still spend significant time verifying whether a journalist is still covering the same beat, whether contact information is current, whether a reporter is truly relevant to a story, and whether outreach is actually reaching the right person. And that is only one part of the problem. Media relations itself has become increasingly fragmented. Research happens in one place, list building in another, monitoring somewhere else, and outreach through email —with PR teams constantly stitching the workflow together manually. This can leave teams overwhelmed and unsure how efficient they are. At Trier and Company, we’re excited to endorse Medialyst because it is tackling that workflow from a different direction - with AI top of mind. It's 'pitch-driven' in real time with bona fide speaking points. It's an entirely new experience. … It’s time for a change — and Medialyst is building in exactly the right direction. We’re pleased to support the team - Elvis Sun and Carly Martinetti. Excited to see where they take it from here. Count us in!"

Beth Trier
★★★★★

"This is awesome and I just want to say I LOVE Medialyst! It’s well into my workflow. Landed an AP and WashPo interview today for a newsjack for two different clients. Cut down HOURS of work and enabled me to move so quickly! What a great tool!"

Lizi Sprague
FAQ

Common questions about switching from Agility PR Solutions.

How much does Agility PR Solutions cost in 2026?
Agility doesn't publish pricing — quotes are custom and annual. Reviewer estimates and third-party sources place typical subscriptions at roughly $8,000–$15,000+/yr depending on features and seats. That's meaningfully cheaper than Cision ($10K–$30K+) but still a significant annual commitment. There's no monthly option and no free trial.
What is the best Agility PR Solutions alternative?
For teams that want story-specific journalist discovery without an annual contract, Medialyst is the closest like-for-like alternative: it finds and scores journalists by fit, delivers emails validated within the last 14 days (or re-checked when you build the list), and starts at $149/mo on a monthly plan with no sales call and no annual lock-in. You can build your first list free before deciding.
Is there a cheaper alternative to Agility PR Solutions?
Yes. Medialyst's Starter plan is $149/mo billed monthly with no contract — a fraction of Agility's typical $8K–$15K+/yr. Pricing is public, there's a 14-day money-back guarantee, and the first list is free with 100 credits and no credit card required.
Can I import my Agility lists into Medialyst?
Yes. Export your Agility media lists as CSV and upload them — Medialyst's agent re-verifies the contacts, re-scores them against your story, and enriches them with recent coverage, so you can compare results on your own data before your renewal window closes.
Agility PR Solutions vs Medialyst — what's the real difference?
Agility is a traditional all-in-one PR suite built around a static 1M+ contact database, media monitoring, and analytics, sold quote-only on annual contracts. Medialyst is AI-native and self-serve: it picks journalists from their recent coverage, delivers only emails validated within the last 14 days or re-checked as the list is built, scores them by fit for your specific story, and starts at $149/mo with no contract. Agility wins on integrated monitoring and hands-on support; Medialyst wins on price, freshness, speed, and flexibility.
Who owns Agility PR Solutions?
Agility PR Solutions is owned by Innodata Inc. (NASDAQ: INOD), a data-engineering and AI company. Innodata acquired Agility in 2021, bringing data-services expertise to the media-database operation.
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