MedialystvsHAROHARO alternative · 2026

HARO is a query newsletter. Medialyst builds the list for you.

HARO (Help A Reporter Out) was acquired by Cision, rebranded to Connectively in March 2024, and shut down on December 9, 2024 — then Featured.com bought HARO back and revived it in April 2025 as what it always was: a free, ad-supported email newsletter of journalist requests, sent three times a day.

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 HARO comparison ↓

Free: let an agent watch journalist requests alongside HARO.

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 HARO documentation, customer reviews, and our own product. We update this page when either side ships something new.

Capability
MedialystMedialyst
HAROHARO
Finding the right journalist
Find journalists for this story
✓
Story-specific relevance scoring
✕
— you answer queries the crowd also sees
Understand a journalist's beat
✓
Reads past articles + recent coverage
~
Query text only; no beat analysis
Analyze past writing
✓
Grounded in actual articles
✕
— no per-journalist article reading
Per-journalist pitch angles
✓
Personalized angles + pitch drafts
✕
— you write each pitch yourself
Data freshness
✓
Live news article search in real time
~
Email digest, sent 3×/day
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
~
Pangram AI-detection on inbound pitches, not contact verification
Send from one place
✓
Built-in sending
✕
— reply by email, no built-in sending
Pricing & setup
Time to first pitch
✓
Minutes
~
Hours to days — wait for a relevant query
Free trial
✓
First list free
~
Free email newsletter
Contract
✓
None — cancel anytime
~
None — but reactive-only
Price
✓
from $149/mo
~
Free (ad-supported)
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
✕
Not available

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 HARO.

  1. The platform you remember no longer works the way it did

    HARO was acquired by Cision, rebranded to Connectively in March 2024, and shut down completely on December 9, 2024. Featured.com bought HARO back in April 2025 and revived it as a free email newsletter. If you're searching for "the HARO you used to use," it's been through three owners and two deaths — and many people land here precisely because the version they relied on is gone.

    PR Newswire — Featured.com acquires HARO from Cision ↗
  2. You're pitching the same journalists as the entire crowd

    The HARO model is reactive: a journalist posts a query, it goes out to everyone, and you respond alongside hundreds of other sources fighting for the same slot. Journalists themselves describe the result — "about 85% of the responses I'd get from queries were purely SEO-driven. It wasn't about sharing expertise or being helpful — it was about backlinks." Medialyst is proactive: you find your own news hook and choose exactly which journalists to pitch, so you're not one of a hundred replies in a public inbox.

    Amanda Lauren (journalist) — HARO relaunch controversy ↗
  3. AI spam is exactly what broke HARO the first time

    When Cision ran the platform as Connectively, AI-generated responses flooded every query, fake "experts" with AI bios piled in, and journalists couldn't find real sources — "every other pitch seemed like nothing more than lazy AI-generated nonsense from someone who definitely wasn't an expert." HARO's fix was to add Pangram AI-detection in July 2025 so journalists can filter pitches out. Medialyst sidesteps the whole dynamic: instead of helping you fire one more pitch into a crowded queue, it researches the right journalists for your specific story so the pitch belongs there in the first place.

    Ahrefs — HARO has been dead for a while ↗
  4. Reactive-only means you wait for the news to come to you

    On a query newsletter, you can only pitch what journalists happen to ask about today — if there's no relevant query, there's no opportunity. Medialyst inverts that: it searches live news in real time, surfaces the angles where you have a story, and lets you build a targeted list the moment something breaks — proactive discovery instead of refreshing your inbox and hoping a fitting request appears.

    Prezly — the best HARO/Connectively alternatives ↗
Fair is fair

Where each one wins.

Where Medialyst wins

  • Proactive discovery, not a public queue

    Instead of waiting for a journalist to post a query the whole crowd can see, Medialyst finds your own newsjacking opportunities from live news and lets you pitch any number of journalists you choose. You're not the hundredth reply in a shared inbox — you're the source who reached out first with a story built for that reporter.

  • Fit for this story, with verified contacts

    Medialyst reads hundreds of articles relevant to your specific announcement, scores reporters by fit, and tells you why each one would write it — grounded in their actual recent coverage. Every email it delivers was validated within the last 14 days or is re-checked when you build the list. A query feed can only tell you what someone asked about today; Medialyst tells you who covers your beat, why, and how to reach them directly.

  • Screen HARO requests, then go past them

    Medialyst's hosted MCP connection includes authorized HARO requests alongside Connectively, Twitter/X, LinkedIn, MentionMatch, and Substack, free and read-only. When a request fits, you answer it through HARO. When none does, you build a list of the journalists already covering your story and pitch them yourself.

  • Right-priced, public, and yours to keep

    Starter is $149/mo, Pro $299, Scale $800 — published, monthly, no contract, no per-seat fees, a 14-day money-back guarantee, and your first list is free (100 credits, no card). Already have a media list or an old HARO export? Upload it and the agent re-verifies and re-scores every contact — so you start from what you've already got, not an empty inbox.

Where HARO wins

  • Free and genuinely simple

    HARO under Featured.com is back to basics — a free, ad-supported email newsletter sent three times a day to 1,000,000+ sources, with no platform to learn. For someone who just wants occasional source requests in their inbox at zero cost, that simplicity is real. "Simplicity — and email — can be new again," as Featured's CEO put it.

    PR Newswire — Featured.com acquires HARO from Cision ↗
  • Warm, opted-in journalist demand

    When a reporter posts to HARO, they are explicitly asking for sources — that opted-in intent is genuinely valuable, and it's a signal a proactive tool has to find for itself. If your strategy leans reactive and you have the time to scan three emails a day for a fit, that inbound demand is a real, free top-of-funnel.

  • A brand and reach reporters still recognize

    HARO is a 15-year-old name with a million-plus sources on the list, and plenty of working journalists still fire off a HARO query out of habit. That two-sided familiarity means a steady supply of requests flowing in — exactly what a reactive model needs to keep working.

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
HAROHAROhours–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

HARO was never a journalist database — it's a request newsletter, and its "data" is whatever queries journalists choose to post.

That's a different unit of value than a researched contact: you don't get a list of the right reporters for your story, you get a stream of whatever happened to be asked today, broadcast to everyone at once. The quality problem the model is famous for is AI spam — "every other pitch seemed like nothing more than lazy AI-generated nonsense" — which is why HARO had to add Pangram AI-detection so journalists could filter responses out. Medialyst takes a different stance. Rather than relying on a feed of inbound requests, it picks journalists from what they published recently for your story and confirms the beat from their actual bylines. It keeps its own journalist database too, 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. The unit of value is a researched contact for your specific story, not a public query you're racing the crowd to answer. The practical result is that you control who you pitch and why, instead of being one of many sources reacting to the same request.

02Speed

On a query newsletter, "speed" means how fast you can react once a relevant request appears — and that's the catch: if no journalist posts a query that fits, there's nothing to react to.

You're scanning three emails a day waiting for something to match. Medialyst removes the waiting entirely. You paste a press release, a URL, or a topic, and the agent goes to work immediately — searching live news in real time and building a verified, scored journalist list without anyone needing to ask for sources first.

A verified, scored journalist list takes minutes. That matters most for newsjacking: when a story breaks and you have a timely angle, you don't have to hope a journalist files a query about it — you find the reporters already covering it and reach out, while the window is open.

03AI & agent surface

HARO is something you read and respond to through its own workflow.

Medialyst makes the screening step agent-native: one hosted MCP connection normalizes authorized HARO requests alongside Connectively, Twitter/X, LinkedIn, MentionMatch, and Substack — all six platforms free — then adds journalist discovery and enrichment in Claude, ChatGPT, and other MCP clients.

The feed is read-only, costs zero credits, and does not promise every HARO request; a human still reviews and submits each response through the source network.

Pricing reality

Two pricing philosophies, side by side.

Ours is public and posted. Here's how it sits next to HARO'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
HARO
Published
Quote only
Published pricing
  • HARO (under Featured.com) is free and ad-supported — a journalist-request email newsletter sent three times a day, with no paid tier for sources. The separate Connectively platform is the paid product. Medialyst's first list is free; paid plans start at $149/mo.
  • 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 HARO.

Is HARO still around — what happened to HARO?
HARO (Help A Reporter Out) was acquired by Cision, rebranded to Connectively in March 2024, and shut down completely on December 9, 2024. Featured.com then bought HARO back from Cision in April 2025 and revived it on April 22, 2025 as a free, ad-supported email newsletter sent three times a day. So HARO is back — but as a different product, under a different owner, after being shut down once.
What's the difference between HARO and Connectively now?
Under Featured.com they're two separate products. HARO is the free email newsletter — journalist requests delivered to your inbox three times a day. Connectively is the paid platform at connectively.us: a live feed of journalist requests with search, filtering, and AI co-pilot workflows. HARO is the simple newsletter; Connectively is the paid software.
What is the best HARO alternative?
It depends on what you're trying to do. If you want to keep answering journalist queries, Source of Sources (Peter Shankman's free platform) and Qwoted are the closest like-for-like marketplaces. But if you'd rather stop competing in a public queue and instead find your own story angles and pitch journalists proactively, Medialyst is the alternative: it reads live news, scores journalists by fit for your story, delivers emails validated within the last 14 days (or re-checked when you build the list), and starts at $149/mo with a free first list.
HARO vs Medialyst — what's the difference?
HARO is reactive: you wait for a journalist to post a query, then pitch alongside everyone else who received the same request, in a public queue. Medialyst is proactive: it finds your own newsjacking opportunities from live news, scores the right journalists for your specific story, and lets you pitch exactly who you choose, using emails validated within the last 14 days or re-checked as the list is built. One is a newsletter you react inside; the other is a research agent that builds your list for you.
Is there a free HARO alternative?
HARO itself is free again as an email newsletter under Featured.com, and Source of Sources is free too — both are reactive query feeds. Medialyst isn't free, but your first list is free with 100 credits and no credit card, so you can build a real, story-specific journalist list before paying anything. Paid plans start at $149/mo with no contract.
Can I import my HARO or media list contacts into Medialyst?
Yes. If you have a CSV of journalists from HARO, a past media list, or any spreadsheet of contacts, upload it and Medialyst's agent re-verifies the emails, re-scores them against your story, and enriches them with recent coverage. You start from the relationships you already have instead of an empty inbox.
Try it free · no account to start

HARO is a newsletter. Build a list that's actually yours.

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