MedialystvsFeaturedFeatured alternative · 2026

Stop waiting to get picked on Featured. Pitch the journalists you choose, directly.

Featured (formerly Terkel) is a question-and-answer expert marketplace: publishers and journalists post questions, and you answer alongside every other expert who saw the same query, competing in a public queue for inclusion.

FreeMonitor journalist requests from HARO, Connectively, LinkedIn & more with an AI agent
First list free · No credit card
From $97/mo · no contractPay only for verified emailsFirst list free · no credit card
See the full Featured comparison ↓

Connect one authenticated MCP feed to Claude, ChatGPT, or another compatible agent. It checks six included request channels every hour, uses zero Medialyst credits, and keeps every response behind human review.

  • $0
  • 0 credits
  • Checks every hour
  • Human review before anything sends
Start free monitoring

All six sources included free

  • Connectively logo
  • HARO logo
  • Twitter/X logo
  • LinkedIn logo
  • MentionMatch logo
  • Substack logo
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 Featured documentation, customer reviews, and our own product. We update this page when either side ships something new.

Capability
MedialystMedialyst
FeaturedFeatured
Finding the right journalist
Find journalists for this story
✓
Story-specific relevance scoring
~
n/a — you answer questions, not find journalists
Understand a journalist's beat
✓
Reads past articles + recent coverage
✕
— you read the query, not the journalist's beat
Analyze past writing
✓
Grounded in actual articles
✕
Not available
Per-journalist pitch angles
✓
Personalized angles + pitch drafts
~
AI drafts your answer to a posted question
Data freshness
✓
Live news article search in real time
~
Inbound query feed (HARO/Connectively digests)
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
~
n/a — marketplace, no contact data delivered
Send from one place
✓
Built-in sending
~
Submit answers in-platform; no outbound send/track
Pricing & setup
Time to first pitch
✓
Minutes
~
Hours–days waiting for a relevant query to appear
Free trial
✓
First list free
~
Free tier (3 answers/mo) on Connectively
Contract
✓
None — cancel anytime
~
Monthly, cancel anytime
Price
✓
from $149/mo
~
$0–$99/mo (Connectively)
Agent-native workflows
API access
✓
Public REST API
~
Premium API (Business tier only)
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
~
n/a — no media list to upload

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

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

Build your first list free →
The honest read

Why people switch from Featured.

  1. You're reacting, not reaching out

    On Featured you wait for a publisher or journalist to post a question, then answer it. That's a fundamentally reactive motion — success depends on whether a relevant query happens to appear, and how fast you respond. Medialyst flips it: you find your own newsjacking opportunity, identify the journalists who'd cover it, and pitch them directly on your timeline. You're not waiting to be picked; you're making the first move.

    Featured research — reverse-marketplace model ↗
  2. You're competing in a public queue

    Every question on Featured is visible to every other expert who matches it. Popular queries — especially HARO-style ones — draw hundreds of pitches, and reviewers consistently flag low acceptance rates and the grind of monitoring and responding fast enough to be noticed. Medialyst removes the crowd entirely: when you find a story and pitch a journalist directly, you're not one of two hundred answers in a queue.

    MentionAgent — HARO review 2026 (competition on queries) ↗
  3. Database size, freshness, and verification not disclosed

    Featured's journalist-finding features live in its Business tier, but the platform doesn't publicly disclose database size, data freshness, or how (or whether) contacts are verified. Medialyst publishes how it works: journalists are picked from what they published recently for your story, and every email it delivers was validated within the last 14 days or is re-checked when you build the list. You pay 1 credit only when a verified email is delivered, and misses are free.

    Featured research — undisclosed media database depth ↗
  4. Discovery isn't part of the job

    Featured (and the new featured.com AI co-pilot it relaunched as on June 2, 2026) is built to surface inbound opportunities — journalist requests, podcast spots, speaking, awards, GEO — and help you respond. It does not help you proactively search for journalists by beat, outlet, or story. Medialyst owns that outbound lane: describe your announcement in plain language and the agent reads recent articles to find and score the reporters who'd actually write it.

    GlobeNewswire — Featured AI co-pilot scope ↗
Fair is fair

Where each one wins.

Where Medialyst wins

  • Proactive discovery, not a waiting game

    Instead of waiting for a relevant question to land in a digest, you describe your story and Medialyst reads hundreds of recent articles to find the journalists who'd cover it, scoring each by fit and telling you why. You set the timeline — when news breaks and you have an angle, you pitch now rather than hoping a matching query appears.

  • Pitch directly, no crowd to beat

    On a marketplace you're one expert among many answering the same query. With Medialyst you pitch any number of journalists directly, one-to-one, with a personalized angle for each. There's no public queue, no acceptance lottery — just your story in the right inbox.

  • Researched journalists with verified contacts

    Medialyst works globally across major online news sources and many trade publications, picking journalists from what they published recently for your story. Every email it delivers was validated within the last 14 days or is re-checked when you build the list, so you get contacts you can pitch, not a feed of questions to answer.

  • Right-priced and self-serve

    Starter is $149/mo, Pro $299, Scale $800 — published, monthly, no per-seat fees, no contract, and a 14-day money-back guarantee. Your first list is free, with 100 credits and no credit card. You're paying for a research assistant that does outbound, not a subscription to a query feed.

  • Agent-native end to end

    One hosted MCP connection and custom enrichment columns let you run Medialyst directly inside Claude, ChatGPT, or Cursor — screen the approved request feed, then ask for things a marketplace can't, like "find journalists who use affiliate links" or "who covered this beat in the last 90 days." Upload competitor CSVs and the agent takes it from there.

Where Featured wins

  • Genuinely good for getting quoted

    If your goal is expert citations, bylined-article placements, and backlinks from authoritative outlets, Featured is legitimately useful. Major publications actively source through HARO and Featured's Q&A network, and for thought-leadership exposure and SEO link building the model works — that's a real, different job from proactive media outreach.

    MentionAgent — HARO review 2026 ↗
  • A low barrier into the Q&A model

    Featured's Q&A platform (now Connectively) lets an expert start answering journalist queries for free — 3 answers a month plus HARO access, with paid plans running roughly $0–$99/mo. As a way to begin building credibility through inbound source requests, that's a genuinely low barrier — and a different on-ramp from proactive outreach, where Medialyst likewise starts free with your first list.

    G2 — Featured pricing ↗
  • HARO brand and two-sided network

    Featured acquired HARO from Cision in 2025, and the combined platform reports 100,000+ users, 2,500+ publisher partnerships, and over a million answers collected. That two-sided network — and HARO's 15-year brand recognition — means a steady supply of journalist queries flowing in, which is exactly what a reactive model needs.

    GlobeNewswire — Featured scale metrics ↗
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
FeaturedFeaturedhours–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 pitchhours–days
Under the hood

Three places the difference shows up.

01Database quality

This is where the comparison gets honest fast: Featured isn't really a media database, and it doesn't claim to deliver journalist contacts.

Its core motion is a reverse marketplace — publishers and journalists post questions, and verified experts answer, with the best responses curated into content. Even the journalist-finding features in its Business tier come with no public disclosure of database size, data freshness, or verification method, and reviewers note it feels secondary to the Q&A engine. So the "data" you interact with is a stream of inbound queries, not a researched set of reporters to reach. Medialyst takes the opposite stance. It is evidence-first: journalists are picked from what they published recently for your specific story, with the beat confirmed 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. 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. The practical difference: Featured tells you which questions to answer; Medialyst tells you which journalists to pitch, and gives you verified contact details to do it.

02Speed

On Featured, speed is about reaction time.

A relevant query has to appear in your digest or alerts first, and then — because the queue is public and popular questions draw hundreds of responses — you have to answer within roughly the first hour to have a real shot at being chosen. You can be fast and still not get picked. Medialyst changes the unit of speed from "how quickly can I respond to someone else's prompt" to "how quickly can I act on my own."

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. When a story breaks and you have a timely angle, that means you're pitching the right reporters in minutes, on your schedule — not waiting, possibly for days, for a matching question to surface in someone else's marketplace.

03AI & agent surface

Featured's newest form — the featured.com AI co-pilot it relaunched as on June 2, 2026 — is a chat interface that aggregates inbound opportunities (journalist requests, podcasts, speaking, awards, GEO) and helps you respond, with API access reserved for its Business tier.

Medialyst's hosted MCP gives agents a read-only, normalized feed across six approved sources, then adds proactive journalist discovery and enrichment in the same connection. It works directly inside Claude, ChatGPT, and other MCP clients; custom enrichment columns can answer structured research questions across a whole list.

The feed does not submit responses or promise a complete archive, so a human still reviews each request and replies through the source network.

Pricing reality

Two pricing philosophies, side by side.

Ours is public and posted. Here's how it sits next to Featured'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
Featured
Published
$0–$99/mo
Published pricing
  • Featured's Q&A platform (now Connectively) runs roughly $0–$99/mo with a real free tier; HARO stays free. Pricing for the new featured.com AI co-pilot, launched June 2, 2026, is not yet public.
  • Pricing published online
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
★★★★★

"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 Featured.

How much does Featured cost?
Featured's expert Q&A platform — now sold as Connectively — has a free tier (3 answers per month plus HARO access) and paid plans that run roughly $0–$99/mo, with journalist-finding features reserved for its Business tier. HARO itself remains free. Pricing for the new featured.com AI co-pilot, which launched June 2, 2026, is not yet publicly listed. By comparison, Medialyst is published and monthly: Starter $149/mo, Pro $299, Scale $800, with a free first list and 100 credits, no credit card.
What is the best Featured alternative?
It depends on the job. If you want to keep answering inbound expert queries for quotes and backlinks, the closest alternatives are HARO, Qwoted, and JustReachOut. But if you'd rather stop waiting to be picked and instead find your own story angles and pitch journalists directly, Medialyst is the proactive alternative: it discovers and scores on-beat journalists, delivers emails validated within the last 14 days (or re-checked when you build the list), and lets you pitch directly — starting at $149/mo with a free first list.
Is Featured.com worth it?
For getting quoted, earning expert citations, and building backlinks through a Q&A marketplace, Featured is legitimately useful — major outlets source through its HARO and Q&A network, and the free tier lets you try it at no cost. It's worth it if your goal is inbound, reactive placements. It's not the right tool if you need to proactively find specific journalists and pitch a story on your timeline — that's a different job, and the one Medialyst is built for.
Featured vs Medialyst — what's the difference?
Featured is a reverse marketplace: publishers and journalists post questions, and you answer alongside every other expert who saw the same query, competing in a public queue to be included. It's reactive — you wait to be picked. Medialyst is proactive: you find your own newsjacking opportunity, the agent reads recent articles to identify and score the journalists who'd cover it, and you pitch them directly with verified contact details. One waits for opportunities; the other goes and gets them.
Does Featured help you find and pitch journalists directly?
Not really. Featured's core motion is answering questions journalists and publishers post — you respond and hope to be selected, rather than searching for reporters and reaching out. Its Business tier adds a media database, but it doesn't publicly disclose size, freshness, or verification. Medialyst is built for direct outreach: describe your story, get a scored list of on-beat journalists whose emails were validated within the last 14 days or re-checked as the list was built, and pitch any number of them directly.
Can I switch from Featured to Medialyst?
Yes — and they can complement each other. If you already keep a media list or contacts in a spreadsheet, upload the CSV and Medialyst's agent re-verifies and re-scores every contact, enriching them with recent coverage. You can keep answering Featured queries for inbound placements while using Medialyst to run proactive outbound at the same time. Your first list is free with 100 credits and no credit card.
Try it free · no account to start

Stop waiting to get picked. Build your own list.

Paste a press release, your website URL, or a one-line description of your news. Medialyst finds reporters who actually cover it, scores them by fit, and checks every email before you get it.

First list free · No credit card
From $97/mo · no contractPay only for verified emailsFirst list free · no credit card
Or start free, no credit card →Or monitor journalist requests with an AI agent for free