MedialystvsRoxhill MediaRoxhill Media alternative · 2026

The 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.

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

Capability
MedialystMedialyst
Roxhill MediaRoxhill 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.

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The honest read

Why people switch from Roxhill Media.

  1. 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 ↗
  2. 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 ↗
  3. 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 ↗
  4. 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 ↗
Fair is fair

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.

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 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 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
Roxhill MediaRoxhill Media~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

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.

Pricing reality

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.

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
Roxhill Media
Quote-based
£5K–£15K+/yr
No public pricing — quote on request
  • 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
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 Roxhill Media.

How much does Roxhill Media cost in 2026?
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.
What is the best Roxhill Media alternative?
For teams that need journalist discovery beyond the UK, Medialyst is the best alternative: it finds and scores journalists by fit across major online news sources and many trade publications globally, delivers emails validated within the last 14 days (or re-checked when you build the list), and starts at $149/mo with no contract. For UK-specific coverage alongside a global tool, you can upload your Roxhill CSV and the agent re-verifies and re-scores every contact.
Is Roxhill Media UK-only?
Primarily, yes. Roxhill specializes in UK and Irish media with tight, journalist-first curation. Coverage outside those markets is minimal. For global PR needs, you'd typically pair Roxhill with a global database or use a tool like Medialyst that works globally across major online news sources and many trade publications.
What is Roxhill Pinpoint?
Pinpoint is Roxhill's unique newsjacking feature — it alerts you when journalists are actively working on stories relevant to your clients, before the story publishes. It's genuinely innovative but works only within the UK media Roxhill tracks.
Can I import my Roxhill lists into Medialyst?
Yes. Export your Roxhill media lists 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

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.

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