MedialystvsOnclusiveOnclusive alternative · 2026

The modern alternative to Onclusive.

Onclusive is an enterprise PR intelligence platform born from a string of acquisitions — Kantar Reputation Intelligence, PRgloo, Critical Mention, and Digimind — backed by Symphony Technology Group (STG).

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

Capability
MedialystMedialyst
OnclusiveOnclusive
Finding the right journalist
Find journalists for this story
✓
Story-specific relevance scoring
~
Basic contact database + influencer search
Understand a journalist's beat
✓
Reads past articles + recent coverage
~
Topic and beat filters
Analyze past writing
✓
Grounded in actual articles
✕
— no per-article analysis
Per-journalist pitch angles
✓
Personalized angles + pitch drafts
✕
— analytics-focused, not pitch-writing
Data freshness
✓
Live news article search in real time
~
Static database, not live research
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
~
Not documented
Send from one place
✓
Built-in sending
~
Monitoring + analytics (not outreach-first)
Pricing & setup
Time to first pitch
✓
Minutes
~
Weeks: enterprise sales cycle
Free trial
✓
First list free
✕
Demo only
Contract
✓
None — cancel anytime
~
Annual enterprise contracts
Price
✓
from $149/mo
~
Quote-only (enterprise pricing)
Agent-native workflows
API access
✓
Public REST API
~
API for analytics data
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.

Build your first list free →
The honest read

Why people switch from Onclusive.

  1. Analytics-first, not discovery-first

    Onclusive's DNA is measurement and attribution — tracking earned media impact, share of voice, and PR ROI. That's genuinely valuable for enterprise comms teams who need to prove PR value to the C-suite, but it means journalist discovery and outreach are secondary features, not the core product. If your primary job is finding the right journalists for a specific story, you're paying for a measurement suite and using the side feature.

    G2 — Onclusive reviews ↗
  2. An acquisition patchwork with integration growing pains

    Onclusive is the product of multiple acquisitions — Kantar Reputation Intelligence, PRgloo (UK newsroom CMS), Critical Mention (broadcast monitoring), and Digimind (social listening) — all under Symphony Technology Group's umbrella. Reviewers note that the integration is still a work in progress, with inconsistent UX across modules and features that don't always talk to each other smoothly.

    G2 — Onclusive reviews ↗
  3. Enterprise pricing with no self-serve option

    Onclusive sells to enterprise accounts via custom annual contracts — there's no published pricing, no monthly option, and no free trial. The sales cycle is long and the commitment is significant. Medialyst publishes pricing from $149/mo, bills monthly, and gives you a free first list with no credit card.

    Onclusive — request a demo ↗
  4. Critical Mention's broadcast monitoring merged in, but contacts didn't improve

    When Onclusive absorbed Critical Mention in 2023, it gained strong broadcast and TV monitoring capabilities. But the merger didn't solve the journalist-database gap — contact data quality and discovery features remain secondary to the analytics and monitoring story.

    STG — Onclusive expands US footprint with Critical Mention acquisition ↗
Fair is fair

Where each one wins.

Where Medialyst wins

  • Discovery-first, not measurement-first

    Medialyst is built around finding the right journalists for your story. Story-specific relevance scoring reads their recent articles, and every email we deliver was validated within the last 14 days or is re-checked when you build the list. You're not paying for a measurement suite and using the contact database as a side feature.

  • 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.

  • Evidence-first, not database-first

    Journalists are picked from what they published recently about your story, not filtered out of a contact module. Every email we deliver was validated within the last 14 days, or is 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 an analytics dashboard simply can't express.

  • Switching is a CSV upload

    Already paying for Onclusive? Export your contacts, upload the CSV, and Medialyst's agent re-verifies and re-scores every contact against your story.

Where Onclusive wins

  • Enterprise-grade PR analytics and attribution

    Onclusive's core strength is earned-media measurement: linking PR coverage to business outcomes, tracking share of voice, and delivering ROI reports that satisfy the C-suite. For enterprise comms teams that need to prove PR value with data, that attribution capability is genuinely differentiated.

  • Broadcast monitoring via Critical Mention

    The Critical Mention acquisition gave Onclusive real-time broadcast and TV monitoring across thousands of stations — a capability that's hard to match and genuinely useful for teams tracking broadcast coverage. If TV and radio monitoring is a must-have, this is a real strength.

  • Backed by Symphony Technology Group

    Onclusive is backed by STG, a private equity firm focused on software and analytics. STG's portfolio and investment signal long-term commitment to the PR intelligence space. For enterprise buyers who want a vendor with PE resources behind it, that backing provides reassurance.

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 Onclusive

Onclusive markets AI-powered analytics — sentiment analysis, impact scoring, and predictive insights — but its AI serves the measurement story, not journalist discovery. There's no AI that reads each journalist's recent articles to judge fit for your specific story; the contact database is a supporting feature filtered the traditional way. Medialyst is AI-native end to end. There's no underlying analytics dashboard to bolt onto — the agent reads real, recent articles per journalist, and you can define custom enrichment columns in plain language. That's the difference between AI for measurement and AI for 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
OnclusiveOnclusive~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

Onclusive has a journalist and influencer database, but it's not the product's center of gravity — analytics and monitoring are.

The database serves as a supporting feature for teams that need to identify media contacts alongside their measurement workflows. Coverage and accuracy are serviceable for enterprise customers already in the platform, but reviewers don't single it out as a strength, and it doesn't receive the same investment attention as the analytics and monitoring modules. Medialyst takes the opposite stance: journalist discovery is the core of the product.

When you build a list, the agent reads recent articles about your story, picks the journalists who wrote them, and confirms the beat from their bylines. The email comes from our own database when it was validated within the last 14 days, and is re-checked when you build the list otherwise. The practical result is a list chosen for the pitch you're sending today, not a database row that exists as a supplement to a measurement dashboard.

02Speed

Onclusive is built for enterprise workflows — long sales cycles, annual onboarding, and dashboards designed for ongoing measurement rather than rapid list-building.

Time-to-first-pitch isn't the metric it's optimized for. Medialyst collapses that entirely. 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.

A verified, scored journalist list takes minutes. When a news story breaks, that speed is the difference between landing coverage and missing the window.

03AI & agent surface

Onclusive's features live inside its enterprise dashboard — analytics, monitoring, and contact tools are operated through its interface.

There's API access for analytics data, but no meaningful way to drive journalist discovery from your own tools. 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 across a whole list. If your team is building AI-assisted workflows, Medialyst is a component you can compose with.

Pricing reality

Two pricing philosophies, side by side.

Ours is public and posted. Here's how it sits next to Onclusive'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
Onclusive
Quote-based
Quote only
No public pricing — quote on request
  • Onclusive doesn't publish pricing — it sells via custom annual enterprise contracts. Pricing is negotiated based on features, seats, and monitoring scope. 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 Onclusive.

How much does Onclusive cost in 2026?
Onclusive doesn't publish pricing — it sells via custom annual enterprise contracts. Pricing varies widely based on monitoring scope, analytics features, and number of users. There's no monthly option and no free trial.
What is the best Onclusive alternative?
It depends on what you're looking for. If your primary need is journalist discovery and outreach, Medialyst is the best 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 with no contract. If you need enterprise-scale monitoring and analytics, Meltwater or Cision are the closer like-for-like swaps.
Is Critical Mention the same as Onclusive?
Yes — Onclusive acquired Critical Mention in 2023, folding its broadcast and TV monitoring capabilities into the Onclusive platform. Critical Mention's brand still appears in some contexts, but the product is now part of Onclusive, which is backed by Symphony Technology Group (STG).
Who owns Onclusive?
Onclusive is backed by Symphony Technology Group (STG), a private equity firm focused on software and analytics. It was formed from STG's acquisition and merger of Kantar Reputation Intelligence, PRgloo, and the original Onclusive brand, and later acquired Critical Mention and Digimind.
Can I import my Onclusive contacts into Medialyst?
Yes. Export your Onclusive contacts as CSV and upload them — Medialyst's agent re-verifies the contacts, re-scores them against your story, and enriches them with recent coverage.
Try it free · no account to start

Discover journalists, not dashboards. Build your first list now.

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 →