MedialystvsJustReachOutJustReachOut alternative · 2026

The alternative to JustReachOut's top tier — more reach, a real agent, less money.

JustReachOut is a well-liked, SMB-friendly outreach tool: it finds press opportunities, writes pitches, and sends from your own inbox.

First list free · No credit card
From $97/mo · no contractPay only for verified emailsFirst list free · no credit card
See the full JustReachOut 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 JustReachOut documentation, customer reviews, and our own product. We update this page when either side ships something new.

Capability
MedialystMedialyst
JustReachOutJustReachOut
Finding the right journalist
Find journalists for this story
✓
Story-specific relevance scoring
~
Keyword/beat/publication search over a 700k journalist database
Understand a journalist's beat
✓
Reads past articles + recent coverage
~
AI reads prior work to personalize a pitch
Analyze past writing
✓
Grounded in actual articles
~
Instant article summaries, recency-biased index
Per-journalist pitch angles
✓
Personalized angles + pitch drafts
~
AI writes full pitch emails + subject lines
Data freshness
✓
Live news article search in real time
~
Recent-only index — older coverage missed
Refine a list with natural language
✓
“Remove anyone inactive in 6 months”
✕
Filter + saved-search UI
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-verified emails before each send
Send from one place
✓
Built-in sending
~
Send + analytics from your Gmail/Outlook
Pricing & setup
Time to first pitch
✓
Minutes
~
Minutes to a pitch; months to results
Free trial
✓
First list free
~
7-day trial, credit card required
Contract
✓
None — cancel anytime
~
None — cancel anytime
Price
✓
from $149/mo
~
$147 / $247 / $497 per month
Agent-native workflows
API access
✓
Public REST API
~
Not documented
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
✕
Manual database, no re-enrichment

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 JustReachOut.

  1. No API, no MCP, no agent surface

    JustReachOut is a closed outreach app — there's no public API, no MCP server, and Zapier was reportedly on the roadmap but not shipped. If your workflow lives inside Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, or your own scripts, JRO can't plug in. Medialyst is built the other way around: a public REST API and a hosted remote MCP server mean journalist discovery and enrichment run directly from your tools, and custom enrichment columns let you ask research questions a fixed filter UI can't express.

    TodayTesting — JustReachOut review (no API) ↗
  2. Recency bias and thin international coverage

    JRO's search indexes mostly recent articles, so older-but-relevant coverage — and the right journalist for a niche beat — gets missed. Reviewers also flag weak results outside the US, especially DACH, APAC, and LATAM, with some users building their own lists to fill the gap. Medialyst searches articles for your specific story and reads each candidate's coverage rather than filtering database rows. 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.

    TrustRadius — JustReachOut reviews (recency bias, coverage) ↗
  3. AI pitches that risk sounding templated

    JRO's AI takes a one-to-two-sentence brief and generates full pitch emails and subject lines. That's fast, but as more users run the same engine, journalists increasingly recognize and ignore AI-written outreach. Medialyst's edge is the research underneath: it scores reporters 0–100 by fit for your specific story and grounds per-journalist angles in their real recent coverage, so the personalization is true, not just generated.

    OnePitch — AI-powered journalist outreach 2026 ↗
  4. No relationship intelligence, no story-fit scoring

    JRO has no relationship CRM — no interaction history, no engagement tracking — and its match is keyword-and-beat over a database, not a fit score for the announcement you're making. Medialyst reads hundreds of articles relevant to your story, ranks journalists by how likely they are to write it, and tells you why — so the list is built around exactly what you're pitching today.

    r2 mid-tier analysis — JustReachOut feature gaps ↗
Fair is fair

Where each one wins.

Where Medialyst wins

  • Same price band, more range

    Medialyst Pro is $299/mo against JRO's Advanced at $247/mo — and for that you get more credits, more list capacity, story-specific research, and an agent surface (public API and hosted MCP) that JRO doesn't document. Starter is $149/mo, Scale $800, all published and monthly, no per-seat fees, no contract, and a 14-day money-back guarantee. The first list is free with 100 credits and no credit card.

  • Fit for this story, not a recency-filtered database pull

    Instead of keyword search over a recent-only index, Medialyst reads hundreds of articles relevant to your specific announcement, scores reporters 0–100 by fit, and explains why each one would write it — grounded in their actual recent coverage.

  • Evidence-first, with verified emails

    Journalists are picked from what they published recently for your story, and Medialyst works globally across major online news sources and many trade publications. 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.

  • Agent-native, not a closed outreach app

    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 can't, like “find journalists who use affiliate links” or “has this reporter covered Series A fintech in the last six months?” A public API, MCP server, or agent access is not documented on justreachout.io as of 4 October 2026.

  • Switching is a CSV upload

    Already running JustReachOut? Export your contacts, upload the CSV, and Medialyst's agent re-verifies and re-scores every one against your story — so you can compare on your own data before you cancel anything.

Where JustReachOut wins

  • Press-opportunity discovery is genuinely good

    Post-HARO, JRO's curated journalist-request marketplace aggregates queries from 20+ sources and updates throughout the day. If your strategy leans reactive — answering live journalist requests — that inbound finder is a real, well-executed strength Medialyst doesn't replicate.

  • Built for SMBs and DIY founders, with strong education

    JustReachOut is unapologetically shaped for solopreneurs and small teams who want to do PR without an agency, and its real edge is teaching: a PR Academy with 15+ lessons and big-name social proof (HubSpot, Wistia, Pipedrive). For a beginner who wants the tool to teach them outreach, that's a thoughtful package.

  • All-in-one outreach with send + link building

    Journalist database, press opportunities, podcast outreach, broken-link and guest-post tools, and sending from your own Gmail or Outlook all live in one app. For the SEO-meets-PR crowd chasing backlinks alongside coverage, that combined toolkit is a fair reason to stay.

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
JustReachOutJustReachOuthours–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

JustReachOut leads with a self-reported 700,000+ journalist database and human-verified emails checked before each send — a real trust signal, and a fair one.

The friction is what the index leaves out. Search is recency-biased: it surfaces journalists from recent articles and misses older-but-relevant coverage, which hurts most on narrow, niche beats where the right reporter wrote the definitive piece two years ago. International depth is the other soft spot — reviewers repeatedly flag weak results outside the US, especially DACH, APAC, and LATAM, with some building their own lists to compensate. Medialyst takes a different stance. It is evidence-first rather than database-first: journalists are picked from what they published about your 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, 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 aim is fewer gaps on niche beats, and less manual list-building to fill them.

02Speed

JustReachOut is fast where it counts for its model: there's no sales gate, you sign up self-serve, and the AI can take a one-to-two-sentence brief to a drafted pitch in minutes.

But JRO is honest that outcomes take time — it tells buyers plainly that if you want quick press in a month or two, it's not the right tool, and to expect three to six months for repeatable results. That's a relationship-and-volume model. Medialyst optimizes a different number: time from describing your story to a verified, scored journalist list, which takes minutes.

There's no credit card to start the first list and no contract. When a story breaks and you have a timely angle, the difference between a researched list in minutes and a database-and-draft cycle is the difference between landing the coverage and missing the window. Both tools are self-serve; Medialyst's speed is pointed at the research, so the list you act on is already fit-checked for today's pitch.

03AI & agent surface

This is the widest gap.

JustReachOut is an outreach application you operate through its own UI. A public API or MCP server is not documented on justreachout.io as of 4 October 2026, and reviewers reported integrations on the roadmap rather than shipped. 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 filter schema can't express. If your team is building AI-assisted workflows, Medialyst is a component you compose with; JRO is an app you log into.

Pricing reality

Two pricing philosophies, side by side.

Ours is public and posted. Here's how it sits next to JustReachOut'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
JustReachOut
Published
$147/mo
Typical range: $147–$497/mo (White Glove $1,997/mo)
  • JustReachOut publishes pricing openly: Starter Outreach $147/mo, Advanced $247/mo, Ultimate $497/mo, plus a done-for-you White Glove tier at $1,997/mo. Annual billing is ~33% off ($98/$165/$331). The 7-day trial is monthly-plans-only and requires a credit card.
  • 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 JustReachOut.

How much does JustReachOut cost in 2026?
JustReachOut publishes its pricing: Starter Outreach is $147/mo, Advanced is $247/mo, and Ultimate is $497/mo, with a done-for-you White Glove tier at $1,997/mo. Annual billing is roughly 33% cheaper ($98 / $165 / $331 a month). There's a 7-day free trial on monthly plans only, and it requires a credit card.
What is the best JustReachOut alternative?
For teams that want story-specific journalist research and an agent-native workflow in the same price band, Medialyst is the closest like-for-like alternative. It reads each journalist's recent articles, scores them 0–100 for your specific story, delivers emails validated within the last 14 days (or re-checked when you build the list), and adds a public API and hosted MCP, neither of which JustReachOut documents. Starter is $149/mo and the first list is free with 100 credits, no credit card.
JustReachOut vs Medialyst — which should I pick?
Pick JustReachOut if your core need is inbound press-opportunity discovery and AI-drafted pitches sent from your own inbox, especially as an SMB doing DIY PR. Pick Medialyst if you want story-specific journalist research scored 0–100, emails validated within the last 14 days or re-checked as the list is built, and agent access (API, MCP, custom enrichment columns) you can drive from Claude, ChatGPT, or Cursor. At the same tier, JRO Advanced is $247/mo and Medialyst Pro is $299/mo with more credits, more list capacity, and an agent surface JRO doesn't document.
Is JustReachOut worth it?
For solopreneurs and small teams who want an all-in-one outreach tool with strong press-opportunity discovery and built-in PR education, JustReachOut is a fair, well-liked choice — and it's honest that results take three to six months. Where it falls short is recency-biased search, thin non-US coverage, no relationship CRM, and no documented API or agent access. If those gaps matter to you, Medialyst covers them at a comparable price, with a free first list so you can compare before committing.
Does JustReachOut have an API?
Not that we can find. A public API or MCP server is not documented on justreachout.io as of 4 October 2026, and reviewers reported integrations on the roadmap rather than shipped; you operate it through its own UI. Medialyst is agent-native: a public REST API and a hosted remote MCP server let you run journalist discovery and enrichment directly inside Claude, ChatGPT, or Cursor, or wire it into your own scripts.
Can I import my JustReachOut contacts into Medialyst?
Yes. Export your JustReachOut contacts as CSV and upload them — Medialyst's agent re-verifies each email, re-scores the contacts against your story, and enriches them with recent coverage, so you can compare results on your own data before switching.
Try it free · no account to start

More reach, more agent, same budget. Build your first 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
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