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Roxhill Media alternative · 2026The modern alternative to Roxhill Media.
Roxhill Media is the UK's specialist media database — a tightly curated, journalist-first index with a unique "Pinpoint" newsjacking feature that alerts you when a journalist is working on a relevant story.
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.


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.
The honest comparison.
Pulled from public Roxhill Media documentation, customer reviews, and our own product. We update this page when either side ships something new.
| Capability | Medialyst | Roxhill Media |
|---|---|---|
| Finding the right journalist | ||
| Find journalists for this story | ✓ Story-specific relevance scoring | ~ Curated UK media database + Pinpoint newsjacking alerts |
| Understand a journalist's beat | ✓ Reads past articles + recent coverage | ~ Beat tags + desk assignments, journalist-first |
| Analyze past writing | ✓ Grounded in actual articles | ~ Limited — editorial intelligence, not per-article analysis |
| Per-journalist pitch angles | ✓ Personalized angles + pitch drafts | ✕ Not available |
| Data freshness | ✓ Live news article search in real time | ~ Curated by human researchers; periodic refresh |
| 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 | ~ Human-verified contacts — generally well-regarded in the UK |
| Send from one place | ✓ Built-in sending | ✕ — database + intel, not outreach |
| Pricing & setup | ||
| Time to first pitch | ✓ Minutes | ~ Weeks: sales call → annual onboarding |
| Free trial | ✓ First list free | ✕ Demo only |
| Contract | ✓ None — cancel anytime | ~ Annual-only |
| Price | ✓ from $149/mo | ~ Quote-only (~£5K–£15K+/yr estimated) |
| 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 | ~ 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.
Why people switch from Roxhill Media.
UK-only coverage in a global market
Roxhill is deliberately UK-focused — it covers UK and Irish media thoroughly but has minimal coverage of US, European, or Asia-Pacific outlets. If your PR needs extend beyond the UK, you either pair Roxhill with a global tool or switch to one. Medialyst works globally across major online news sources and many trade publications; coverage is strongest where articles and bylines are published online, and hyper-local, print-only and some regional trade sources can be thinner.
Roxhill Media — about ↗Opaque pricing on annual contracts
Roxhill doesn't publish pricing — every plan requires a sales call and an annual commitment. Estimated pricing ranges from roughly £5,000 to £15,000+/yr depending on seats and features. Medialyst publishes pricing from $149/mo, bills monthly, and gives you a free first list with no credit card.
G2 — Roxhill Media reviews ↗Pinpoint is unique but limited in scope
Roxhill's "Pinpoint" feature — alerts when a journalist is working on a relevant story — is genuinely innovative and unique in the category. But it only works within the UK media it tracks, and it's an alerting tool, not a proactive discovery engine. Medialyst's newsjacking workflow scans live news globally and surfaces opportunities you can act on immediately, with the journalist list attached.
Roxhill Media — Pinpoint ↗A curated database, but still a static one
Roxhill's human research team maintains tight curation, and UK contacts are generally well-regarded for accuracy. But it's still a static database that decays between refresh cycles — and with UK newsrooms undergoing the same layoffs and churn as everywhere else, even tight curation can't keep up. Every email Medialyst delivers was validated within the last 14 days, or is re-checked when you build the list.
G2 — Roxhill Media reviews ↗
Where each one wins.
Where Medialyst wins
Works beyond the UK
Medialyst works globally across major online news sources and many trade publications, so US, European or Asia-Pacific journalists can sit on the same list as UK ones. Coverage is strongest where articles and bylines are published online; hyper-local, print-only and some regional trade sources can be thinner.
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.
Recent bylines, plus a 14-day email window
Even tight human curation decays between refresh cycles. Medialyst picks each journalist from what they published recently about your story, and 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 a traditional database can't express.
Switching is a CSV upload
Already paying for Roxhill? Export your media lists, upload the CSV, and Medialyst's agent re-verifies and re-scores every contact — so you can compare on your own data.
Where Roxhill Media wins
The best-curated UK media database
For UK-focused PR, Roxhill is the specialist. Its 190,000+ journalist profiles and 140,000+ social media feeds are maintained by a research team that keeps tight, journalist-first curation — desk assignments, editorial calendars, and journalist-level intelligence across 1,800+ topic categories. London PR professionals rate it as the go-to for UK media.
Pinpoint newsjacking is genuinely unique
Roxhill's Pinpoint feature alerts you when journalists are actively working on stories relevant to your clients — before the story publishes. That's a genuinely differentiated capability no other legacy database offers, and for UK reactive-PR it's a real competitive advantage.
Editorial intelligence beyond contact data
Roxhill goes deeper than a contact list: editorial calendars, forward features, desk structures, and journalist-level briefings give you context that a pure contact database doesn't. For teams that value editorial intelligence alongside contacts, that depth is real.
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.

MEDIALYST AGENTOUTPUT: 1,847 RESEARCHED TO FIT-CHECKED SHORTLIST
Full architecture notes for Roxhill Media
Roxhill's strength is human editorial intelligence — research analysts who curate UK media contacts and maintain editorial calendars, plus the Pinpoint newsjacking alerts. It's not marketing AI features in the same way as the US platforms. But the underlying model is the same: a static, human-maintained database you filter and browse. Medialyst is AI-native end to end — the agent reads real, recent articles per journalist, and you can define custom enrichment columns in plain language. That's the difference between human curation you browse and AI research you direct.
★★★★★“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 BartkoPR professional, Chatterbox
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.
Medialyst9 min total
Roxhill Media~3 daysThree places the difference shows up.
01Database quality
Roxhill's database is small by global standards but deliberately so — it's a UK specialist, and the tight curation is the point.
Human researchers maintain journalist profiles, track desk assignments, and update editorial calendars, which gives UK coverage a level of editorial depth that global databases skim over. UK PR professionals consistently rate the contact accuracy as strong. The limitation is structural: coverage outside the UK and Ireland is minimal, and the database's strength — human curation — doesn't scale globally. Medialyst takes a different approach: evidence-first, not database-first.
When you build a list, the agent reads recent articles about your story, picks the journalists who wrote them, and confirms the beat. The email comes from Medialyst's own database when it was validated within the last 14 days, and is re-checked when you build the list otherwise. Coverage works globally across major online news sources and many trade publications. It is strongest where articles and bylines are published online; hyper-local, print-only and some regional trade sources can be thinner.
02Speed
Roxhill is built for ongoing UK media relations, not rapid list-building.
There's a sales call, an annual contract, and onboarding before you start. Once inside, the Pinpoint alerts are valuable for reactive PR, but building a proactive journalist list still means browsing the database, filtering, and manually selecting contacts. Medialyst collapses that.
You paste a press release, a URL, or a topic, and the agent goes to work immediately. A verified, scored journalist list takes minutes, and it works globally, not just in the UK.
03AI & agent surface
Roxhill's features live inside its platform — the database, Pinpoint alerts, and editorial intelligence are operated through its dashboard.
There's no public API, no MCP server, and no way to drive it 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 — a capability no traditional database can match.
Two pricing philosophies, side by side.
Ours is public and posted. Here's how it sits next to Roxhill Media'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
- Roxhill doesn't publish pricing — quotes are custom and annual. Estimated pricing ranges from roughly £5,000 to £15,000+/yr depending on seats and features. There's no monthly option and no free trial.
- No public pricing — quote on request
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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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!"

"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."

"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."

"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!"

"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!"

Common questions about switching from Roxhill Media.
How much does Roxhill Media cost in 2026?
What is the best Roxhill Media alternative?
Is Roxhill Media UK-only?
What is Roxhill Pinpoint?
Can I import my Roxhill lists into Medialyst?
Beyond the UK. Build your first global journalist 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.