trendJack alternative · 2026

trendJack is a subscription. Newsjack.sh is free and open source.

Newsjack.sh is free and open source. Paste one prompt into your AI and it sets up daily newsjack monitoring for your company. Medialyst adds live news search and verified journalist contacts when you're ready to pitch.

First list free · No credit card
From $97/mo · no contractPay only for verified emailsFirst list free · no credit card
See the full trendJack comparison ↓
Medialyst
Medialyst
AI-native · agent-ready
vs.
trendJack
trendJack
Signal-to-publish tool
Misses free
You pay only for verified emails.
Each email validated in the last 14 days or re-checked
Minutes
From story to sent pitch in minutes.
From your story to a scored list
from $97/mo
Pricing on the website, not in a sales deck.
Starter billed annually · or $149 monthly

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.

Newsjack.sh · free and open source

Daily newsjack monitoring, set up with one paste.

Copy the prompt, paste it into your agent, and answer a few questions about your company. Newsjack.sh installs itself, builds your monitor profile and schedules the daily run. Add a monitor for every brand or client you look after.

  • Open source, MIT licence. Read every skill and the install script before anything runs, or fork them.
  • Runs inside your own agent. Claude, Codex, Hermes or OpenClaw. Monitor profiles, briefs and run reports are files on your machine.
  • One saved monitor per company. Save a monitor for each brand or client you look after, each with its own profile, brief and schedule.
  • It drafts. You send. Opportunities, angles and pitch drafts come back to you, and you decide what goes to a journalist.

Paste this into Claude, ChatGPT or Codex

help me install https://newsjack.sh from the github repo and setup a daily newsjack monitoring for my company.

Where it runs. The daily monitor needs an agent that can run commands on your computer: Claude, Codex, Hermes or OpenClaw, on macOS, Linux or Windows. Paste the prompt there and your agent follows the getting-started guide to install it and schedule the run. Paste it into a browser chat such as ChatGPT and you get guided setup steps and a one-off scan, but no saved schedule. The terminal command is for macOS and Linux.

What it costs. The software is free under the MIT licence. It runs on your own AI subscription. Steps that call Medialyst (live news search, media lists, journalist enrichment) use Medialyst credits, and you start with 100 free. Without a Medialyst login, news search falls back to your agent's own web search.

View Newsjack.sh1.5k
At a glance

The honest comparison.

Pulled from public trendJack documentation, customer reviews, and our own product. We update this page when either side ships something new.

Capability
MedialystMedialyst
trendJacktrendJack
Finding the right journalist
Find journalists for this story
✓
Story-specific relevance scoring
~
Not documented — its guide says to “choose a PR platform if journalist discovery, pitching and earned-media workflows are central”
Understand a journalist's beat
✓
Reads past articles + recent coverage
~
Not documented
Analyze past writing
✓
Grounded in actual articles
~
Not documented
Per-journalist pitch angles
✓
Personalized angles + pitch drafts
~
Not documented — drafts “social posts, newsletters, campaigns and comms”
Data freshness
✓
Live news article search in real time
~
Scans news, social and industry publications “around the clock”
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
~
Not documented
Send from one place
✓
Built-in sending
~
Drafts for your own channels, with “your team approving anything that publishes”
Pricing & setup
Time to first pitch
✓
Minutes
~
Not documented — briefings weekly (Basic) or daily (Pro and up)
Free trial
✓
First list free
~
7-day free trial, no card required
Contract
✓
None — cancel anytime
~
Monthly, or discounted annual billing (rate not published)
Price
✓
from $149/mo
~
From £19/mo (1 brand, 1 user); Team £239/mo (5 brands)
Agent-native workflows
API access
✓
Public REST API
~
Not documented
Remote MCP support
✓
Hosted remote MCP server
~
“MCP-ready” — plus a Claude plugin that needs a paid subscription
Agent-native workflows
✓
Usable directly inside Claude, ChatGPT & Cursor
~
Works inside ChatGPT, Claude, Cursor and Copilot via MCP
CSV import / re-enrichment from competitor exports
✓
Upload any CSV — the agent re-verifies & re-scores
~
Not documented

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 →
From $97/mo · no contractPay only for verified emailsFirst list free · no credit card
The honest read

Why people switch from trendJack.

Open source you can read, not a proprietary agent

trendJack describes Jack as “trendJack's proprietary agentic system.” Newsjack.sh is MIT-licensed: every skill is a plain-Markdown file you can read before it runs, change to fit how your team pitches, or fork. The install script is public too.

github.com/elvisun/newsjack — MIT licence ↗

It runs inside your agent, and the files are yours

trendJack connects your assistant to its hosted service: its Claude plugin page says “You need a paying trendJack subscription and at least one workspace.” Newsjack.sh installs into the agent itself, whether that's Claude, Codex, Hermes or OpenClaw. Each monitor's profile, client brief and run reports are saved on your own machine, so your monitoring setup is a folder you control.

trendjack.io/about — Claude plugin requirements ↗

Free, open-source software instead of a subscription

trendJack's Basic plan is £19 a month for one brand, one user and a weekly briefing. Daily briefings start on Pro at £39 a month for one brand, and “an extra brand” is £32 a month on Pro or Team, up to 10 brands. Team is £239 a month for five brands and three users. Newsjack.sh is free, MIT-licensed software, and you can save a monitor for each company or client you look after. What you pay for is your own AI subscription, plus any Medialyst credits you choose to use.

trendjack.io/pricing ↗

From a signal to the journalist who will write it

trendJack is built for your own channels, drafting “social posts, newsletters, campaigns and comms.” Its own guide says: “Choose a PR platform if journalist discovery, pitching and earned-media workflows are central.” Newsjack.sh is built for that earned-media path. It checks whether a story is still fresh and whether you have standing to comment, then turns it into angles. Medialyst finds the reporters covering it and scores each one 0–100 for fit, with a written reason citing their recent articles.

trendJack guide — trendJack vs media monitoring tools ↗
Fair is fair

Where trendJack wins.

Hosted, with zero setup

trendJack is a hosted product with a 7-day free trial and “no card required.” There is nothing to install, no terminal and no local agent to keep running, and a polished interface makes it easy for non-technical teams. Newsjack.sh asks you to run an agent; saved, scheduled monitors need one on your own machine.

Multi-brand workspaces and morning briefings

“Every brand gets its own workspace, watchlist and brand voice profile, and Jack briefs you on each one separately in your morning briefing.” Team adds three users, approvals and roles, and Slack or Teams routing. Enterprise adds whitelabel client views, SSO and audit trails. For an agency running several brands from one shared dashboard, that is a ready-made setup.

On-brand content drafting for your own channels

Jack scores signals against your brand pillars and drafts “social posts, newsletters, campaigns and comms, written in each brand's voice,” with blog and long-form drafting on Pro and above. It watches social platforms and competitor launches as well as news. If the output you need is posts for your own audience rather than pitches to journalists, trendJack is built for that.

Fits the tools a team already uses

trendJack says Jack “fits into your existing workflow across Slack, email, Google Drive, Microsoft 365 and your social accounts.” It is also “MCP-ready”, so Jack works inside ChatGPT, Claude, Cursor and Copilot, and there is a dedicated Claude plugin.

Where Medialyst wins

Where Medialyst pulls ahead.

Daily newsjack monitoring from one paste

Paste the setup prompt into an agent that can run commands on your computer, such as Claude or Codex. It installs Newsjack.sh and walks you through a monitor profile: what your company has standing to comment on, topics, competitors and feeds. It then schedules the monitor daily, twice a day or hourly. Each run returns the stories worth jumping on, with optional Slack delivery.

Free, open and yours

Newsjack.sh is MIT-licensed open source with 30 PR skills, from newsworthiness checks and angle generation to fact-checks and crisis holding statements. It costs nothing to install. You run it on the AI subscription you already pay for, and the monitors, briefs and reports stay on your machine.

Live news search built for PR

With a Medialyst login, monitoring and research use Medialyst's real-time news search. It returns the outlet, author, publish date and canonical URL for each article, at 0.01 credits per query. The first 100 credits are free with no credit card.

The journalists who cover it, and why

When a story is worth pitching, Medialyst reads the relevant coverage and scores each journalist 0–100 for fit to your angle, with a written reason citing their recent articles. Every email it delivers was validated within the last 14 days, or is re-checked when you build the list, and you are not charged when no email is found. Plans start at $149/mo ($97/mo billed annually) with no per-seat fees, and the public REST API and hosted MCP server work on every plan.

Human-in-the-loop by design

Newsjack.sh surfaces opportunities and drafts; you decide what goes to a journalist and send it yourself. A pitch you review is one that fits, and that protects your relationships with the reporters you depend on.

Under the hood

Three places the difference shows up.

01Database quality

Each tool watches different sources because they produce different outputs.

trendJack says Jack “scans news, social platforms and industry publications around the clock” and tracks “competitor launches, messaging changes, content themes and earned media,” scoring each signal against your brand pillars. That breadth suits a team drafting social and campaign content, where a trend on social can matter as much as a headline. sh starts from news because its output is a pitch. A monitor reads the RSS feeds you choose, an optional X trend source, and, with a Medialyst login, Medialyst's real-time news search. That search returns the outlet, author, publish date and canonical URL for every article.

Before anything reaches you, the detector checks when a story first broke, whether newer coverage adds anything, and whether your company has standing to comment. When a story is worth pitching, Medialyst researches the journalists covering it at build time and scores each one against your angle with a written reason. Every email it delivers was validated within the last 14 days or is re-checked when you build the list, and you are not charged when no email is found. trendJack is designed to find what your brand should post about. sh and Medialyst are designed to find the story you should pitch, and the reporter who will want it.

02Speed

” Because it is hosted, it starts working as soon as you create a workspace.

sh takes a few minutes of setup: paste the prompt, answer questions about your company, and your AI installs the skills, saves the monitor and runs a first scan with you. After that, the schedule is yours to set: once a day at 7am, twice a day at 7am and 2pm, or every hour. Each run deduplicates stories it has already shown you and sorts the rest into pitch now, watch, or big story. When a story is worth acting on, Medialyst turns a described angle into a fit-scored journalist list in about five minutes on average.

Drafts come back for you to review, so you can move while a story is live and still decide who gets each email. If you want the fastest path to a hosted briefing with nothing to install, trendJack is built for that. sh is built for that.

03AI & agent surface

Both products work with AI assistants, but in different ways.

trendJack is “MCP-ready”, so Jack can work inside ChatGPT, Claude, Cursor, Copilot and other compatible agents, and it publishes a dedicated Claude plugin. That plugin connects your assistant to trendJack's hosted service, and trendJack says “you need a paying trendJack subscription and at least one workspace” to use it. The intelligence stays on trendJack's side. sh works the other way around. It is a set of open skills, plain-Markdown instructions plus a small open-source CLI, that install into your agent, whether that's Claude, Codex, Hermes or OpenClaw.

Your agent does the reasoning on your own AI subscription. Skills work in browser chats too, as one-off passes, while saved and scheduled monitors run in a local agent. Medialyst is the data layer underneath: a public REST API and a hosted remote MCP server for live news search, journalist enrichment and media-list research, available on every plan including the free 100 credits. Because the monitors, briefs and reports are local files, you can inspect them, version them, or hand them to another agent.

Pricing reality

Two pricing philosophies, side by side.

Ours is public and posted. Here's how it sits next to trendJack's own published pricing page and what named third parties report.

Pricing and claims verified 4 October 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
trendJack
Published
£19/mo
Typical range: £19–£239/mo
  • trendJack publishes four plans in GBP: Basic £19/mo (1 brand, 1 user, weekly briefing, 30 drafts a month), Pro £39/mo (1 brand, daily briefings, long-form drafting), Team £239/mo (5 brands, 3 users, approvals, Slack or Teams routing) and a custom Enterprise tier. Extra brands are £32/mo each on Pro or Team, up to 10. Every plan starts with a 7-day free trial and no card required; annual billing is discounted, but the rate isn't published.
  • 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.

★★★★★

"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
★★★★★

"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
★★★★★

"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
★★★★★

"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
★★★★★

"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
★★★★★

"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
★★★★★

"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
★★★★★

"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
★★★★★

"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
Try it free · no account to start

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.

First list free · No credit card
From $97/mo · no contractPay only for verified emailsFirst list free · no credit card
FAQ

Common questions about switching from trendJack.

How much does trendJack cost in 2026?
trendJack's Basic plan is £19 a month for one brand and one user with a weekly briefing. Pro is £39 a month for one brand with daily briefings, Team is £239 a month for five brands and three users, and Enterprise is custom. Extra brands cost £32 a month each on Pro or Team. Every plan starts with a 7-day free trial and no card is required. trendJack says annual billing is discounted but doesn't publish the annual price.
Is Newsjack.sh really free?
The software is: Newsjack.sh is MIT-licensed open source, and installing it costs nothing. It runs on your own AI subscription, such as Claude or ChatGPT. Steps that call Medialyst use Medialyst credits: live news search, media-list research and journalist enrichment. You start with 100 free credits and no credit card. News search costs 0.01 credits per query. Without a Medialyst login, news search falls back to your agent's own web search.
How do I set up daily newsjack monitoring with Newsjack.sh?
Paste this prompt into an agent that can run commands on your computer, such as Claude, Codex, Hermes or OpenClaw: “help me install https://newsjack.sh from the github repo and setup a daily newsjack monitoring for my company.” The agent follows the getting-started guide to install Newsjack.sh, build your monitor and schedule the daily run, on macOS, Linux or Windows. On macOS or Linux you can also install from a terminal with curl -fsSL newsjack.sh | bash. In a browser chat such as ChatGPT, the same prompt gets you guided setup steps and a one-off scan, but no saved schedule.
Can I monitor more than one company?
Yes. In Newsjack.sh, each company or client is its own saved monitor, with its own profile, brief and schedule. Newsjack.sh itself is free software; Medialyst credits apply only to the Medialyst-backed steps you choose to use. trendJack supports multiple brands too: “Every brand gets its own workspace, watchlist and brand voice profile.”
Does trendJack work with Claude or ChatGPT?
Yes. trendJack says it is “MCP-ready”, so Jack can work inside ChatGPT, Claude, Cursor, Copilot and other compatible agents, and it publishes a dedicated Claude plugin that needs a paid trendJack subscription. Newsjack.sh is different: its skills install into your agent and run on your own AI subscription, and Medialyst adds a hosted MCP server and REST API for live news and verified journalist data.
Does Newsjack.sh send pitches automatically?
No. Newsjack.sh surfaces opportunities, writes angles and drafts, and you decide what to send and to whom. Keeping a human on every send is deliberate: a pitch you review is one that fits, and it protects your relationships with the reporters you depend on.
trendJack vs Newsjack.sh — which should I use?
If you want a hosted dashboard with nothing to install, multi-brand workspaces, morning briefings, and social and long-form drafts for your own channels, trendJack is built for that. If you want daily newsjack monitoring you set up with one paste, run inside your own agent, and can read the code for, use Newsjack.sh, with Medialyst for live news search and verified journalist contacts.

Set up the monitor free. Pay only for the data you use.

Start free with 100 credits and no credit card. Paste your story and get a verified, story-specific list of journalists in minutes.

From $97/mo · no contractPay only for verified emailsFirst list free · no credit card