Pytch is built to send. Medialyst is built to pick who you send to.
Pytch drafts your pitches, then “You review and send” from Gmail. Medialyst picks who to pitch from their recent bylines, publishes how good its lists are, and leaves every send to you.
Who builds Medialyst, and who grades it.
As far as we know, Medialyst is the only AI PR tool that publishes a public, recurring quality benchmark. Carly Martinetti, our Founding Strategic Advisor, runs Notably, a boutique PR agency serving 25+ clients; she grades our real media lists, and we publish every grade, starting with her first: F, 27.9/100. Elvis Sun, the founder, is an AI engineer who spent 8 years at Google working on AI systems.
The honest comparison.
Pulled from public Pytch documentation, customer reviews, and our own product. We update this page when either side ships something new.
| Capability | Medialyst | Pytch |
|---|---|---|
| Finding the right journalist | ||
| Find journalists for this story | ✓ Story-specific relevance scoring | ~ Google News results for your keywords, each with a 0–100% match score and a “Targeting Reason” |
| Understand a journalist's beat | ✓ Reads past articles + recent coverage | ~ Rates “the article's synergy with your product”, also using “the journalist's editorial beat and bio” |
| Analyze past writing | ✓ Grounded in actual articles | ~ Reads “the full text and headline of the reporter's recent Google News article” |
| Per-journalist pitch angles | ✓ Personalized angles + pitch drafts | ~ Drafts “a pitch tuned to their last article” |
| Data freshness | ✓ Live news article search in real time | ~ “Queries Google News indexes in real time” |
| Refine a list with natural language | ✓ “Remove anyone inactive in 6 months” | ~ Not documented |
| Find more like top performers | ✓ “Find 20 more like the top 5” | ~ Not documented |
| Add custom enrichment columns | ✓ “Research if they use affiliate links” | ~ Not documented |
| Pitching & sending | ||
| Email verification | ✓ Multi-step verification waterfall | ~ Pattern checks plus “a direct SMTP handshake”, per its FAQ |
| Send from one place | ✓ Built-in sending | ~ Gmail or Google Workspace; manual sends wait “until you click Send”, Autopilot queues them automatically; automatic follow-ups |
| Pricing & setup | ||
| Time to first pitch | ✓ Minutes | ~ Not documented |
| Free trial | ✓ First list free | ~ 14-day free trial, no card required |
| Contract | ✓ None — cancel anytime | ~ Monthly, or a one-off €29 run with “No recurring subscription” |
| Price | ✓ from $149/mo | ~ €29 one-off run; €99/mo Pro; €159/mo Business |
| Agent-native workflows | ||
| API access | ✓ Public REST API | ~ Not documented |
| Remote MCP support | ✓ Hosted remote MCP server | ~ Not documented |
| Agent-native workflows | ✓ Usable directly inside Claude, ChatGPT & Cursor | ~ Not documented |
| CSV import / re-enrichment from competitor exports | ✓ Upload any CSV — the agent re-verifies & re-scores | ~ CSV export documented; import not documented |
Find your journalists now. No demo. No contract. No credit card.
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Why people switch from Pytch.
A quality grade you can check, starting with an F
As far as we know, Medialyst is the only AI PR tool that publishes a public, recurring benchmark of its own list quality. Carly Martinetti, Medialyst's Founding Strategic Advisor, has built media lists by hand for fourteen years. She builds her own list from the same client brief, grades ours against it, and we publish every grade. The first, on 20 July 2026, was an F: 27.9 out of 100. Her verdict was “Not yet, if we pitched these journalists our client would fire us.” The latest grade, on 1 October, is a B (82.0). You can read every mark, and the counts behind it, before you pay.
medialyst.ai/carly-score — every published grade ↗Beat across recent bylines, not one article's synergy
Pytch's User Guide describes its Audit Rating as an “AI assessment of the article's synergy with your product.” Its FAQ says the model weighs “the full text and headline of the reporter's recent Google News article” together with “the journalist's editorial beat and bio.” Medialyst asks a different question: does this journalist cover your beat? It picks each journalist from their recent bylines. On Pro and Scale, it reads their author page, recent bylines and the openings of their latest articles before it scores fit.
Pytch User Guide — Audit Rating ↗A person sends every pitch
Pytch's homepage says “You review and send. That's it.”, and its FAQ says that in manual mode “Emails are never sent until you click Send or trigger batch delivery.” Its Autopilot Mode is the hands-off option: it “composes personalized pitches and queues them for phased delivery automatically. You simply check your inbox and engage with journalists who respond.” In Medialyst, a person sends every pitch from their own Gmail or Outlook, with open, click and reply tracking, and a filter that hides bot opens.
Pytch FAQ — Q6 and Q49 (Autopilot Mode) ↗Open to your agents and scripts
Medialyst ships a public REST API and a hosted MCP server on every plan, including the free credits, so you can run journalist research from Claude, ChatGPT or Cursor. The Medialyst team also builds Newsjack.sh, MIT-licensed open-source PR skills for your own agent. As of 4 October 2026, Pytch's site does not document an API or MCP server.
medialyst.ai/docs — MCP server ↗Where Pytch wins.
A €29 one-off run, no subscription
Pytch's Pay As You Go option is a “€29 one-off charge” for “1 complete campaign run with up to 50 verified contacts, pitch generation, and delivery,” with “No recurring subscription.” For a single launch or funding announcement, that is a low-commitment way in. Pro is €99 a month. Medialyst's lowest monthly price is $149, or $97 a month billed annually.
Follow-ups and reply handling built in
Pytch sends from your Gmail when you click Send (“Emails are never sent until you click Send or trigger batch delivery”), then follows up for you: “If no reply is received after 3–4 business days, Pytch sends a polite 2-sentence bump in the same email thread.” Replies land in your inbox and in its Threads tab, where “Pytch flags the contact with a green Replied badge and automatically halts scheduled follow-ups.” Medialyst tracks replies, but it does not send follow-ups for you.
Hands-off outreach, if that's what you want
Pytch's Autopilot Mode “Performs scheduled scans of Google News for newly published articles in your niche” and “Discovers newly active writers,” then queues pitches for you. For a founder who doesn't want to come back every week, that is a real feature. Manual mode is there too, and its FAQ says you can edit any pitch first: “You have 100% control over every message.”
Local-language news
Pytch says that “Entering your campaign details in Spanish, German, French, or Russian instructs the AI to crawl local Google News editions and draft pitches matching native journalistic etiquette first.” If you pitch in those markets in those languages, that is built in.
Where Medialyst pulls ahead.
Built from both sides
Elvis Sun, Medialyst's founder, spent 8 years at Google working on AI systems. Carly Martinetti runs Notably, a boutique PR agency, and is Medialyst's Founding Strategic Advisor. He builds the agents; she judges the lists against real agency work, and her grades are public.
Picked for your story, with the reason written down
Each journalist is picked from their recent bylines for the story you describe, with a 0–100 fit score and a written reason that cites the articles behind it. On Pro and Scale, deep fit scoring reads each journalist's author page and recent bylines before judging fit.
You send it, and you see what happened
Pitches go out from your own Gmail or Outlook when you send them. Medialyst tracks opens, clicks and replies for each journalist, and one toggle hides opens from scanners and bots.
Pay for delivered emails, not misses
Each email is validated within the last 14 days or re-checked at build time, and you pay only for delivered verified emails. Misses are free. Starter is $149/mo ($97/mo billed annually), Pro $299/mo and Scale $800/mo, with no per-seat fees, 100 free credits to start, and a 14-day money-back guarantee.
API, MCP and open-source skills
A public REST API and a hosted MCP server come with every plan. Newsjack.sh, MIT-licensed and built by the Medialyst team, adds open-source PR skills like newsworthiness checks, angle generation and daily newsjack monitoring.
Three places the difference shows up.
01Database quality
Both products start from live news rather than a static list.
Pytch says it “does not use static, purchased contact lists” and instead “Queries Google News indexes in real time” for your campaign keywords. It splits results into Tier 1, the byline reporter on a matching article, and Tier 2, editorial desks, used when an article is authored by Staff or the reporter is unavailable. Each contact gets a 0–100% Audit Rating, which its User Guide describes as an “AI assessment of the article's synergy with your product,” with a written Targeting Reason. ” Medialyst also reads recent coverage for each story, but the question it scores is about the journalist rather than one article: do they cover this beat?
Each journalist is picked from their recent bylines, and on Pro and Scale the scorer reads their author page, recent bylines and the openings of their latest articles first. Each email is validated within the last 14 days or re-checked at build time, and you pay only for delivered verified emails. The difference you can check is the grade. 9) in July 2026.
02Speed
Pytch is built to take you from a product description to pitches in your outbox in one flow.
You describe your product, it finds journalists, drafts a pitch for each, and you send from Gmail, one at a time or all at once. Follow-ups go out after 3–4 business days if nobody replies. On Autopilot it keeps going: its FAQ says it “Performs scheduled scans of Google News for newly published articles in your niche” and queues new pitches. Pytch's site does not publish a time-to-list figure. Medialyst is built to get you a list worth sending in minutes.
Paste a press release, a URL or a topic, and the agent proposes story angles you can edit before any credit is spent, then researches the journalists for each angle. You get a ranked, fit-scored list with drafted pitches, and you decide who gets each email. If you want the loop from discovery to follow-up handled for you, Pytch is built for that. If you want to spend your time choosing who to pitch, with the reason in front of you, Medialyst is built for that.
03AI & agent surface
Pytch runs in its own web app.
” Contacts export to CSV. As of 4 October 2026, Pytch's site does not document a public API or MCP server. Medialyst is built to be used from wherever you already work. A public REST API and a hosted MCP server come with every plan, including the free 100 credits, so journalist research and enrichment can run inside Claude, ChatGPT or Cursor, in your own scripts, or in an internal agent.
sh, MIT-licensed open-source PR skills that install into your own agent, from newsworthiness checks to daily newsjack monitoring. Inside the app, custom columns take plain-English research questions and answer them across a whole list, and you can upload any CSV to re-score it against your story. Sending stays with a person, from their own Gmail or Outlook, with open, click and reply tracking.
Two pricing philosophies, side by side.
Ours is public and posted. Here's how it sits next to Pytch's own published pricing page and what named third parties report.
- 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
- Pytch publishes three paid options in EUR: Pay As You Go at €29 for one campaign run of up to 50 contacts, with no subscription; Pro at €99 a month; and Business at €159 a month. Pytch offers a 14-day free trial, and no credit card is required.
- Pricing published online
In the words of Medialyst users.
Real customers, approved for use. Your results depend on your story and your list — these are theirs.
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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!"
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
Paste a story. Get your journalist list in minutes.
Drop in a press release, your website URL, or a one-line description of your news. Medialyst reads what's relevant, finds reporters who actually cover it, scores them by fit, and checks every email before you get it. Your first list is free, no credit card.
Common questions about switching from Pytch.
How much does Pytch cost in 2026?
Does Pytch send emails automatically?
Pytch vs Medialyst — what's the difference?
What is the Carly Score?
Does Pytch have an API or MCP server?
Which should I choose?
Pick who to pitch. Then send it yourself.
Start free with 100 credits and no credit card. Paste your story and get a verified, story-specific list of journalists in minutes.