The answer lies in media databases.

With the right database, you can find relevant journalists, create targeted media lists, and build meaningful public relations for many years to come. It's a much more effective alternative to buying media lists, as they will never be 100% tailored to your needs.

In this guide, you will read everything you need to know to choose the best media contact database for PR as well as compare top providers in 2025.

If you don't feel like comparing journalist databases, Prowly's media database software is free for 7 days with full search access, so you can see if it's a match for yourself.

TL;DR: Best media database tools by use case

1. Prowly: Ideal for PR teams seeking an affordable, all-in-one platform with over 1 million contacts, AI-assisted search, and integrated press release tools.
2. Meltwater: Best suited for large enterprises requiring comprehensive global media monitoring and analytics across news, social, and broadcast channels.
3. Muck Rack: Perfect for PR professionals who prioritize real-time online news tracking and journalist engagement through social media integration.
4. Cision: Tailored to organizations needing an extensive media database with advanced outreach automation and detailed analytics.
5. Propel: Designed for teams focused on PR workflow management, offering CRM-like features and AI-driven pitch recommendations.
6. Agility PR: Suitable for users looking for a versatile platform that combines media outreach with multi-channel monitoring capabilities.
7. Roxhill: Best for UK-based PR professionals seeking a curated database of journalists and media outlets with a focus on quality over quantity.
8. Critical Mention: Ideal for those needing real-time broadcast monitoring alongside online and social media tracking.
9. Notified: A comprehensive solution for enterprises aiming to manage PR campaigns, investor relations, and event communications in one place.

What is a media database (and why do you need one)?

A media database is an organized directory of journalists, editors, bloggers, and media outlets. It usually includes:

• Journalists' contact information
• Topics they cover
• Where they work
• How they prefer to be contacted

PR professionals use media databases to find the right people for their stories. Instead of guessing or researching from scratch, you get instant access to relevant contacts.

This helps you:

• Build media lists faster and find new journalists easily
• Personalize your outreach (e.g. based on a journalist's recent articles)
• Manage ongoing relationships

In short, a media database saves time and helps you land better media coverage.

List of journalist databases for PR

Unfortunately, many media database providers do not publicly share much information about their media databases (such as pricing), requiring you to contact them directly to find out more.

When choosing a media database, the most important thing is to check how many journalists in your niche are available and whether the data is up-to-date. The best way to find out is to sign up for a free trial or demo call with the database provider and check the quality of the contacts directly.

Prowly

Prowly is a user-friendly platform ideal for small to medium-sized PR teams. It provides access to over 1 million media contacts, AI-assisted search, and integrated press release tools.

With transparent pricing starting at $258/month and a 7-day free trial, Prowly is an excellent option for anyone who needs an all-in-one PR solution.

Key features:

• Media database with over 1 million contacts.
• AI-powered search for relevant media contacts.
• Customizable online newsrooms with SEO capabilities.
• Integrated press release creator and pitching tools.
• Media and social media monitoring.

Pros:

• User-friendly interface.
• Affordable pricing with transparent plans.
• Comprehensive feature set for PR needs.

Cons:

• Limited functionality in basic plans.

Pricing:

Prowly‘s media database costs $258/mo for the most basic plan, which includes the ability to use or export 1,000 media contacts. The price can be upgraded to 3,000 media contacts, which brings the total to $393. More contacts are additionally available upon request.

Meltwater

Meltwater is designed for large enterprises requiring comprehensive global media monitoring and analytics. It offers access to over 380,000 media contacts and integrates news, social, and broadcast monitoring.

Key features:

• Global media database with extensive contact information.
• Comprehensive media monitoring across news, social, and broadcast channels.
• Advanced analytics and reporting tools.
• Integration with social media management.

Pros:

• Powerful media monitoring capabilities.
• User-friendly interface with customizable reports.
• Strong customer support during setup.

Cons:

• High price, starting from $6,000/year.
• Some users find the platform's development immature.
• Additional features may come at extra costs.

Pricing:

Meltwater's media database pricing is also not available on their website. From our data, we estimate it to cost $6,000 per year if purchased for a single country. With more countries, the price can increase to $8,000 annually.

→ For more on Meltwater pricing, click here.

Muck Rack

PR professionals love Muck Rack because it prioritizes real-time online news tracking and journalist engagement. It has a database of over 300,000 contacts and emphasizes accurate, up-to-date information.

Key features:

• AI-powered media database indexing hundreds of millions of data points.
• Real-time media monitoring and alerts.
• PR campaign management and reporting tools.
• Collaboration tools for PR teams.

Pros:

• Comprehensive and up-to-date journalist profiles.
• User-friendly platform with strong customer support.
• Effective media monitoring capabilities.

Cons:

• High price, approximately $10,000/year.
• Some reports of outdated contacts.
• Limited AI insights compared to competitors.

Pricing:

Muck Rack's pricing is also hidden, but we estimate their database to cost around $10,000 per year or more, with no available monthly option.

Cision

Cision caters to organizations that need an extensive media database with advanced outreach automation and detailed analytics. With over 1.4 million contacts, it has a wide range of tools for press release distribution and media monitoring.

Key features:

• Extensive media database with over 1.4 million contacts.
• Advanced outreach automation and detailed analytics.
• Press release and email distribution, media monitoring tools.
• Social media listening and content management.

Pros:

• Comprehensive PR software with a wide range of tools.
• In-depth media databases and monitoring services.
• Flexible and user-friendly interface.

Cons:

• High price, starting at approximately $10,000/year.
• Requires annual contracts.
• Some users report high bounce-back rates on emails.

Pricing:

Based on our insights, Cision's media database pricing is around $600 monthly. Because Cision only offers annual plans, the database will cost a hefty $10,000 each year or more.

Cision's PR database is one of the most expensive available on the market, partly because it requires buying the other tools that Cision offers to get full use of it. Pricing is not publicly available on their website and requires potential users to contact their sales department.

Propel

Propel is designed for teams focused on PR workflow management. It offers CRM-like features and AI-driven pitch recommendations. It includes a global media database with over 1 million journalists and integrates with Gmail and Outlook.

Key features:

• AI-powered journalist recommendations.
• Media database with over 1 million contacts.
• PR CRM for workflow management.
• Integration with Gmail and Outlook.

Pros:

• Affordable pricing starting at $2,400/year.
• Strong analytics and reporting tools.
• User-friendly interface with responsive customer support software.

Cons:

• Limited enterprise features.
• Some users find the UI clumsy.
• Running reports and obtaining metrics can be challenging.

Pricing:

Propel offers its media database with its PRM4TM subscription, which includes four users. The tool also includes media monitoring and other useful PR features.

Agility PR

Agility PR Solutions is a versatile platform that combines media outreach with multi-channel monitoring capabilities. It offers a media database with over 1 million contacts and tools for press release distribution and PR measurement. Pricing details are undisclosed.

Key features:

• Media database with over 1 million contacts.
• Media outreach, monitoring, and analytics tools.
• Real-time alerts and sentiment analysis.
• Customizable reports and competitor analysis.

Pros:

• Suitable for agencies with multiple clients.
• Excellent customer support.
• Ease of use and intuitive interface.

Cons:

• Pricing can be high, with annual plans only.
• Media database personalization features could be improved.
• Some users report data inaccuracies.

Roxhill

Roxhill is best for UK-based PR professionals seeking a curated database of journalists and media outlets with a focus on quality over quantity. It provides personalized media insights and media monitoring tools. Pricing is undisclosed.

Key features:

• Database of over 190,000 journalist profiles.
• Real-time articles and journalists' social feeds.
• Advanced search technology and ready-made lists.
• Integrated media intelligence and monitoring.

Pros:

• Sophisticated and up-to-date media database.
• Intuitive to use with great list functions.
• Excellent customer service.

Cons:

• Some users report that details are often not up to date.
• Occasional slowness, possibly due to internet speeds.

Critical Mention

Critical Mention is ideal for those needing real-time broadcast monitoring alongside online and social media tracking. It offers near real-time tracking of brand, competitor, and keyword mentions across various media, including TV, radio, online news, social media, and podcasts. Pricing is estimated between $2,500 and $10,000 per year.

Key features:

• Real-time broadcast monitoring (TV, radio, podcasts).
• Online news and social media tracking.
• Customizable reports with graphs and charts.
• Media contact database.

Pros:

• Comprehensive media monitoring capabilities.
• User-friendly interface.
• Responsive customer support.

Cons:

• The media database may not be as robust as its competitors.
• Some users report outdated contact information.

Notified

Notified provides a comprehensive solution for enterprises aiming to manage PR campaigns, investor relations, and event communications in one place. It includes tools for media monitoring, press release distribution, and analytics. Pricing details are undisclosed.

Key features:

• Media monitoring across various channels.
• Press release distribution and analytics.
• Investor relations and event communications management.
• Integrated PR campaign tools.

Pros:

• Comprehensive solution for enterprises.
• Combines PR, IR, and event communications.
• Robust analytics and reporting features.

Cons:

• Pricing details are undisclosed.
• It may be more suitable for larger organizations.

What to consider when choosing a media database

Media contact database size

Whether you're looking for a national or international media database, it's worth noting how many media contacts are available. While more is not always better, it increases your chances of finding the right journalists who will be most interested in your news story.

The largest media databases will have at least 1 million media contacts available, although this number can be lower if the database covers only a certain region.

Prowly’s Media Database has more than 1.1 million contacts, making it one of the biggest media contact databases on the market.

However, access to a large email database doesn't guarantee coverage. The key is identifying the right outlets and journalists.

PR experts note a shift towards research and data-driven decisions due to changes in the media landscape. With fewer traditional outlets and more niche platforms, effective pitching requires thorough research. Only about a quarter of pitches are relevant to a given journalist's audience.

Prowly enhances contact searches with unique features:

👉🏼 Partnership with Semrush provides exclusive data on audience and traffic.
👉🏼 AI keyword suggestions

International media database size

If you're looking for international media contacts, don't just look at the total number of media contacts available—find out how many are in the regions, countries or cities that you're interested in.

Some databases may have a large international media contact list, but the quality and quantity of the contacts can vary from region to region. If possible, ask about the number of contacts in the location you're interested in or find out if there's a free trial to have a look for yourself.

Available contact information

At the very least, a media contacts database should contain basic information about the media contact that lets you identify if they would be interested in your story and how you can contact them. These include:

• name and surname
• position
• email address
• phone number
• beat/topics covered
• media outlet
• social media accounts

More advanced databases will contain additional information such as:

• languages used in the case of multi-lingual journalists
• influence score or similar metric
• what articles they've recently written
• suggestions for new contacts generated by the system based on similar criteria, which you have followed so far

Accuracy and update frequency

Even if a media database checks all the boxes above, it can leave you frustrated if the media contact information is outdated or inaccurate.

In order to figure this out, it's worth asking these two crucial questions:

• How frequently the database is updated?
• What is/are the sources of the available media contacts?

Media contact information can be sourced from one channel or from various locations on the web. If possible, look for a database that gathers data from multiple sources.

For example, Muck Rack uses only Twitter to generate its media contacts. The downside – if the journalist is not on Twitter or doesn't update their profile, they may not be in the database or their information may be incorrect. This is a thing to keep in mind since more and more journalists are switching to Twitter alternatives.

Available search filters

As a journalist database can contain a lot of contacts, check what are the options for narrowing down your search in order to find the most relevant journalists. For example you can:

• search media outlets where your target audience is and then check contributing journalists
• search articles with keywords (expanded with AI keyword suggestions) and get contacts to the authors

The most common filters are:

• journalist's name
• location
• beat or topics of interest
• media outlet
• position/role
• keywords based on written articles
• keywords based on Tweets

Make it easier to find journalists and build relationships with highly targeted contacts — learn everything about using Audience Analytics and AI Keyword research from this article.

Media database sample or free trial

Absolutely make sure that the media database tool you're interested in offers a sample of the available contacts—or better yet, a free trial. Blindly buying media lists or contacts can lead to wasted time and money.

Most providers will provide a sample on request or display available contacts during a product demo. This is better than nothing, but it doesn't always give you the full picture and can leave you wondering if you'll find the right contacts.

If possible, find out if the media database provider offers a free trial. This lets you explore the application and see if it meets your needs.

Prowly offers a free 7-day trial with full search access. Contact details are hidden, but it allows you to see which contacts are available to be confident in your decision before purchasing.

Pricing & contract length

Media databases usually aren't cheap and some are only available with annual subscriptions. There is no free media database, but there are a few tools with free trials and free pitch credits.

Unless your PR budget is unlimited, take into account the following factors when doing your research:

• Compare media database pricing for different providers, keeping in mind that more $$$ does not always mean creating your own media list and making it exceptional
• Flexibility—does the vendor offer various plans depending on your needs and the size of your team (especially if you're a freelancer or small business), so you can adjust your PR strategy later
• Check what the minimum length is for a contract; some companies require you to pay upfront for a whole year

Unfortunately, most of the pricing plans for top media databases are not publicly available on their websites, but their subscription costs are estimated to start at around $400 per month or $5000 per year.

We were able to provide estimated pricing for the most popular databases based on third-party data and publicly available reviews.

Other media database pricing

Unfortunately, it's unknown how much the other databases cost. They do not disclose their pricing and require potential users to contact their sales teams. But pricing plans will depend on the number of users and features required.

💡 If you need even more details, check out this article featuring examples of Prowly alternatives. You can also simply ask us anything you'd like to know!

Questions to ask the media database provider

Even if you think that a chosen media database matches all your expectations, it’s better to ask the following questions before investing your time and money in it:

How is the media contact base relevant to the industry the customer works in?

When reviewing the size of a database, it's important to determine the number of relevant contacts. For example, the quantity of contacts that specialize in your industry topics. The sales team should provide you with custom research and showcase a possible media list based on your specific query.

💡 Learn how to create effective media monitoring queries from this article based on real-life examples.

What’s the number of unique contacts in the media database? 

The provider should be able to showcase the diversity of media types, such as journalists and bloggers, as well as their location and other filters that you can use on the platform.

Is it possible for customers to add necessary media contacts to the media database, such as specific journalists, influencers or outlets? 

It should be possible but may require a request to the customer support team.

What type of customer support is provided? 

Ask what the customer support process looks like - will the customer support team help you with ongoing questions on the platform or is there any training program offered? Ensure that the company is willing to guide you through the setup and provide prompt solutions to any questions that may arise.

Is it possible to export your contact lists?

It should be possible to download your list in CSV, XLS, or XLSX formats. 

Is it possible to create a personalized pitch right on the platform?

You should be able to tailor your email pitches to different recipients based on factors such as your relationship with them, their location, or their area of expertise simply by incorporating these details into your messages.

Does the platform have enough functionality to manage media contact lists?

You should be able to have different access levels for your team to work with, to add your own notes and tag contacts, to follow chosen journalists and receive notifications when they publish new articles, etc.

List of media databases for PR

Below you can find a list of the major media databases with US & global media contacts:

• Prowly
• Meltwater
• Muck Rack
• Cision
• Propel
• Agility PR
• Roxhill
• Critical Mention
• Notified

Looking for UK or Australian media contacts? Check out the comparison of UK media databases and Australian media databases respectively.

PR Trends 2025

Get our ultimate guide to what’s next in PR with expert-backed tips

Buying a media list or a media database – what's the difference?

You might wonder whether it's better to buy a media list or a media database or what the difference is between the two.

A media list is what it sounds like—a concrete list with media contacts, often narrowed down to a specific industry and/or location.

On the other hand, a media database gives you access to every single media contact and media outlet available (as long as they're in the database).

The upside to buying a media list is that it's already made and waiting to be used. You don't have to put in a lot of effort.

The downside, however, is that it can be outdated, inaccurate, or, most commonly, poorly customized for your specific needs.

A media database helps you to find the most relevant contacts for your story and make your own targeted media list. This greatly increases your chances of getting your story noticed and picked up by the media because you're reaching out to people who are waiting for a story like yours.

My go-to PR tools are online media databases and journalist source request platforms. It can be difficult to keep track of current journalists or media professionals' contact information, so online media databases like Prowly or Cision help connect with the right person for the right article on your clients' behalf. Using these helpful PR tools is key to advancing in the industry and making the most of every opportunity. - Brandi Sims, Founder & CEO @ Brandinc PR

💡 Tip: To get to know the top magazines to pitch in the US market, explore this article.

Conclusion

Choosing a media database can be frustrating, mainly because there are so many and the majority require you to talk with sales to get a sample of the available contacts.

Start by figuring out what exactly you're trying to achieve with a media database and what kind of contacts you're trying to find. Once you have that written down, look for providers that offer a free sample or trial to get an idea of the quality and accuracy of the database.

Frequently asked questions

1. What should I look for when choosing a media database?

When selecting a media database, consider the following factors:

• Relevance: Ensure the database includes contacts pertinent to your industry and target audience.
• Accuracy: The database should be regularly updated to maintain current contact information.
• Functionality: Look for features like advanced search filters, integration with PR tools, and analytics capabilities.
• Support: Reliable customer service and training resources can enhance your experience.

2. How does a media database differ from a media list?

A comprehensive, searchable media database contains many media contacts, including journalists, editors, and influencers. It allows users to build customized media lists tailored to specific campaigns or audiences. In contrast, a media list is a static compilation of contacts, often lacking the dynamic features and regular updates provided by a media database.

3. Are media databases suitable for small businesses or freelancers?

Yes, many media databases accommodate various needs and budgets. Some platforms provide flexible subscription models or pay-as-you-go options, making them accessible for smaller operations. Additionally, certain databases focus on specific regions or industries, allowing users to target their outreach effectively without unnecessary expenses.

The post Best Media Database in 2025: Top 9 Tools for PR Pros appeared first on Prowly.

The real opportunity? Turning those scattered mentions into insights that actually drive strategy. That’s where media intelligence tools step in — helping PR, marketing, and comms teams cut through the noise, spot trends early, and prove the value of their work with real numbers.

TL;DR:

• Media intelligence turns media mentions into insights that inform PR, marketing, and brand strategy.
• It goes beyond monitoring — helping you analyse sentiment, track competitors, and spot PR risks early.
• Tools powered by AI (like Prowly) make it easier to measure impact, optimize campaigns, and align PR with business goals.
• In 2025, media intelligence is essential for staying ahead in a fragmented, fast-moving media landscape.

What is media intelligence?

Media intelligence includes gathering, analyzing, and processing information from different media sources to gain insights and help drive decisions. With it, brands can understand their audience, customers, and competitors better, using it to elevate their campaigns in the direction they want to.

Media monitoring vs. media intelligence

Kind of the same, but different. Why? It depends on the tool.

Essentially, media intelligence involves media monitoring, but the latter doesn't necessarily result in media intelligence.

Media intelligence goes several layers deeper than just collecting mentions. It includes spotting trends, analyzing sentiment, gathering metrics from social listening, benchmarking competitors, and so on. Sounds like media monitoring, right?

However, media intelligence goes even a step further and offers deeper analysis of the data, making it easier for you to make informed decisions based on data-backed interpretations and context.

Why do businesses need media intelligence in 2025?

The short answer: media complexity is exploding. There are simply too many platforms, channels, and conversations to monitor — and too much reputational risk in missing what matters.

Even if your audience mostly lives on Facebook or LinkedIn, it doesn’t mean that’s where your reputation is being shaped. You may be getting clicks there, but brand sentiment could be shifting elsewhere — unnoticed.

That’s why businesses are upgrading from basic media monitoring to full-scale media intelligence — using advanced media analysis tools to uncover what’s really driving their brand narrative.

#1 Media fragmentation requires smarter media intelligence

Your audience is scattered across dozens of platforms — from TikTok and newsletters to niche blogs, Reddit, and YouTube. Owning the narrative in just one place no longer works.

A modern data-driven PR strategy depends on tools that turn scattered mentions into brand reputation insights — going beyond monitoring to unlock earned media analytics at scale.

💡 According to Harvard Business Review, 67% of consumers use multiple channels before making a purchase.

That journey might include an ad on Instagram, a mention on Facebook, and a review on Reddit — all influencing a single decision.

Only media intelligence tools can track this full arc and make it actionable.

#2 Real-time media insights prevent brand damage

Crises don’t wait. Public sentiment shifts within hours — and traditional monitoring tools just can’t keep up.

That’s why brands rely on real-time media insights and sentiment analysis to stay ahead of emerging issues. According to Deloitte’s Reputation Risk Survey, brands that actively monitor sentiment recover 30% faster from crises.

With the right tools, you can:

• Catch PR threats before they escalate
• Track how competitors handle crises using competitive benchmarking
• Build smarter response strategies powered by continuous media analysis

#3 Stakeholders demand proof, not gut instinct

What's the impact? Do you have proof? How do you translate things like brand awareness into numbers that stakeholders will understand?

Leaders want metrics — not “we think it worked.”

Modern earned media analytics take your reporting from:

“We got coverage,” to

“That coverage drove 2x web traffic, improved sentiment by 15%, and gave us 3x more share of voice than competitors.”

By moving from media monitoring to media intelligence, you gain a clear picture of what’s working and why — and turn PR into a measurable growth driver.

Ready to show real PR impact?
Tools like Prowly help you go beyond basic reporting with media intelligence features built for proving results. From sentiment analysis to share-of-voice benchmarks, you’ll get the data stakeholders actually care about — and a clearer view of how PR drives business outcomes.

Turning data analysis into decisions

Dashboards are powerful — but they don’t make decisions. People do.

Say your latest campaign earned twice as much coverage in Canada but triggered negative sentiment. Was it a messaging misstep? A cultural blind spot?

These are the kinds of insights media intelligence tools uncover — helping you not just measure results, but act on them.

What is a media intelligence solutions company?

A media intelligence solutions company collects and analyzes data from news, social media, reviews, blogs, and other earned, owned, and shared media.

But it’s not just about counting mentions — it’s about identifying patterns:

• Where is sentiment shifting?
• What’s fueling competitor growth?
• How does media exposure tie into reputation risk or campaign traction?

Modern media analysis platforms go beyond vanity metrics to deliver actionable, predictive insights.

Is media intelligence just another term for sentiment analysis?

Absolutely not. While sentiment analysis is part of the equation, media intelligence spans much wider. It can show you connections like:

• PR coverage to web traffic
• Social buzz to investor behavior
• Media narratives to real business performance

It’s not just what people say — it’s what that means for your next move.

Real-life media intelligence examples

Theory is great — but here’s how businesses actually use media intelligence platforms to drive smarter, faster decisions:

• Optimize campaign performance
  Test how your messaging and storytelling land across different outlets, formats, and demographics. Did your headline gain traction in the UK while making no commotion in Texas? Media intelligence helps you spot these gaps and adjust your strategy in real time.
• Spot PR crises before they trend
  Think of media intelligence as an early warning system. It helps catch brewing issues before they spill over, so you can fine-tune your reputation management strategies and respond proactively — not reactively.
• Benchmark competitors effectively
  Keep tabs on your industry without guesswork. Analyze share of voice, sentiment trends, media volume, and the quality of your coverage — all from a single dashboard. That’s competitive benchmarking made simple.
• Improve investor relations
  Track market sentiment and brand visibility to show that PR isn’t just about awareness — it’s a measurable asset. Media intelligence gives you the numbers your CEO and CFO actually care about.
• Fuel product decisions with real-world feedback
  Use insights from reviews, forum comments, and media mentions to iterate smarter. Whether it’s product features, messaging tweaks, or UX changes, earned media analytics reveal what your customers really think — without waiting for a formal survey.

What to look for in a media intelligence tool

If you really think on it, a monitoring tool can also be a media intelligence tool. However, that's not always the case. If the software only tracks mentions and gives you data you don't really know what to do with or how to analyze, then you can't add it to the media intelligence solutions bucket.

Features that will get you actionable insights

👉 AI-based sentiment analysis

After all, this is exactly what artificial intelligence is good at — predicting sentiment based on more than just a few words within an article, blog post, or comment. The best media intelligence solutions will be able to detect the difference between a "hit" being something positive ("Brand's latest release was an absolute hit"), and it being negative ("Brand name took a hit due to...").

👉 Entity and topic clustering

A core feature of predictive media intelligence. It's based on grouping related terms, themes, names, and trending issues into clusters, so it all makes some kind of sense all together. It shows how conversations evolve, connect, and form based on thousands of articles so you can see the bigger picture.

👉 Customizable dashboards and reporting

There is no one-size-fits-all dashboard, and many professionals struggle with getting value out of a tool that isn't tailored to their needs. Surely, a dashboard should be customized depending on who is using it: a stakeholder, a client, a coworker, or someone external.

👉 Analytics and CRM integration

PR doesn't live in a silo and it always affects different metrics that revolve around advertising, marketing, sales, and more. So the best media intelligence solutions will be able to show you trends between an increase in media exposure for a particular campaign and the number of sales you've hit thanks to it.

👉 Multilingual, multichannel coverage

You can't be successful if your tool only allows you to monitor half of the popular media channels, or picks and chooses which sources they monitor for you. It's all too common that a brand thinks they're wildly popular in one country, only to find out they've swept up a niche audience in their industry in another country.

Is Prowly a good media intelligence tool?

Yes — Prowly is more than a PR tool! It’s a media intelligence platform built to help public relations teams track performance, monitor sentiment, and prove ROI with real data.

While Prowly is best known for its all-in-one PR workflow, it also delivers powerful media intelligence capabilities thanks to features like:

✅ Audience analytics

To create the most curated media lists with various media data points about the traffic of online media outlets and visitor data on countries, interests, gender, age, income distribution, occupation, education level, and household size.

✅ Customizable dashboards

So you can show off your work and progress in a way that suits your stakeholders, managers, clients, or simply highlights the key parts of your campaign strategy.

✅ Competitor benchmarking

Monitor mentions across channels to compare share of voice, sentiment trends, and media volume — all within a unified dashboard.

✅ Smart press release builder

A press release creator tool that will allow you to write customizable press releases based on questions you'd typically get from a journalist (so you know exactly what to mention and what to leave behind).

✅ Pitching & email engagement insights

Powerful email statistics including how long someone has spent reading your email and how many times they clicked on it, timestamps included, which is useful in evaluating and predicting further follow-up and pitching actions.

Do you need a media intelligence strategy?

With where things are heading, that's a solid yes. The current trend is to predict what will happen next, rather than analyze the past and what's happening now.

The future of communications is where narratives meet attributions and PR effortlessly proves the ROI it brought in. Remember that if you're not keeping up with everyone else, you're being left behind.

Some of the emerging trends in media intelligence include predictive modeling and automated alerts, tools that can help you spot correlations between earned media and traffic to your site and sales, as well as deeper integrations with business intelligence tools.

The coolest of them all? Real-time crisis simulation models (can't wait for this one to go mainstream).

Media intelligence is the new influence

Making decisions based on feelings is no longer relevant, especially thanks to all the metrics and insights available to PR professionals.

Media intelligence gives communications teams monitoring and social media monitoring on steroids. It shows who is saying what, where, and why, thus making influence more measurable and repeatable.

Think of it this way — you've placed dots on the map and media intelligence is what pulls them together into the cohesive narrative you need to succeed.

The post What is Media Intelligence and What Can It Do for Your Business? appeared first on Prowly.

Whether you're a fast-growing brand, a small in-house comms team, or a PR agency looking for a more intuitive, flexible, or cost-effective solution, this guide will help you explore the best Cision alternatives of 2025.

Below, you’ll find a breakdown of tools that offer strong media relations capabilities—many with faster onboarding, more user-friendly interfaces, and modern features built for agile teams.

You will also learn about alternatives to Cision’s PR Newswire in the areas of:

• Alternative to PR Newswire: media pitching tools
• Alternative to PR Newswire: distribution websites

TL;DR: Why consider Cision alternatives?

Cision is a legacy platform with powerful capabilities—but it isn’t always the right fit, especially for smaller teams. If you’ve experienced any of the following, it might be time to explore your options:

• Lack of pricing transparency
  Cision does not publicly share its pricing plans; subscriptions often start around $10,000/year, average between $12,000–$15,000, and can reach up to $30,000/year depending on contract scope and features.
• Complicated interface and steep learning curve
  Adjusting search queries often requires advanced Boolean logic, making everyday tasks harder than they need to be.
• High cost for diminishing value
  Many users report rising prices alongside declining monitoring quality, especially since migrating to CisionOne.
• Inconsistent coverage and missed mentions
  Even long-time users have noted gaps in tracking—sometimes for outlets previously monitored.
• Fragmented customer support experience
  Frequent turnover among account reps and long response times can lead to delays and repeated explanations.
• Built for enterprises, not lean PR teams
  Cision’s structure and features are often better suited to large corporations with compliance-heavy needs, not smaller teams looking for efficiency and flexibility.

When to explore Cision competitors

Not every PR team needs an enterprise-grade platform. Here are a few signs that it might be time to consider alternatives to Cision:

• Your team is small but growing
  If you're part of a lean in-house comms team or a mid-sized agency, you may not need all the advanced, compliance-focused features that Cision provides.
• You value usability and speed
  If your team spends more time navigating the platform than using it to get results, a more intuitive tool could save hours each week.
• You want more flexible, transparent pricing
  Budget-conscious teams often find Cision's pricing hard to justify—especially when costs increase without a clear return on value.
• You need modern outreach features
  Tools like AI-powered journalist discovery, real-time analytics, or Semrush-backed media insights can dramatically improve pitching outcomes—and aren't always available in legacy platforms.
• You’re not getting the support you need
  If switching reps, long wait times, or lack of onboarding are blocking your progress, it may be time for a more responsive solution.

Best Cision alternatives: shortlist

Here’s a quick overview of the top Cision alternatives to consider in 2025:

• Prowly – best all-in-one PR platform for small and mid-sized teams
• Meltwater – ideal for enterprise teams needing deep media intelligence
• Muck Rack – known for a strong media database and journalist profiles
• Mynewsdesk – suited for companies focused on newsroom publishing
• Critical Mention – strong real-time broadcast monitoring
• AgilityPR – balanced mix of media database and distribution tools
• Brand24 – lightweight, budget-friendly media monitoring option

Cision alternative #1: Prowly

Prowly is an all-in-one public relations software solution that helps small and medium PR agencies and in-house PR teams manage media relations, create press releases, pitch the right journalists, and monitor PR campaigns, all backed by the power of AI.

Best for: Small to mid-sized PR teams looking for smart journalist targeting and built-in PR tools.

Pricing: Starts at $258/month, billed annually.

Free trial: Free 7 day trial available.

Key features:

• AI-powered journalist search enhanced by Semrush traffic and audience insights
• Pitching tools with personalization and automated follow-ups
• Press release creator with built-in newsroom hosting
• Advanced email analytics (open rates, clicks, optimal send times)
• Print and broadcast media monitoring
• Intuitive UI and fast onboarding
• Live customer support and dedicated onboarding help

Prowly vs. Cision: Which one’s right for you?

If your team is smaller, more agile, or just tired of overbuilt legacy software, Prowly may be a better fit. It’s designed to help you get results faster—without needing to decipher Boolean logic or go through layers of account reps to make changes.

Where Cision leans towards enterprise, Prowly is optimized for usability, flexibility, and modern PR workflows.

Why PR teams choose Prowly

Prowly stands out for teams who value speed, flexibility, and smart workflows over complex enterprise features. Here’s why small and mid-sized PR teams are making the switch:

• Faster, smarter media outreach
  With AI-powered journalist discovery backed by Semrush audience insights, Prowly helps you target the right contacts with less guesswork.
• Intuitive and easy to adopt
  No complex setup, no long learning curve—teams can get started quickly without training sessions or tech support tickets.
• Support that feels like an extension of your team
  Real human support, one-on-one onboarding, and responsive live chat make a difference when you’re on a deadline.
• Built for your budget
  Transparent pricing, a 7-day free trial, and no enterprise upsells. Prowly is designed to deliver real value without the overhead.

“As a fast-moving agency, we needed a tool that scaled with us—not slowed us down. Prowly gave us speed, flexibility, and access to niche media that larger platforms just didn’t.” — She-PR agency team. Read the full case study →

Lakesha Cole, CEO and Founder at ShePR, after evaluating various options, chose Prowly to streamline their PR workflow. A choice which saved them time, effort, and on the costs associated with running their agency.

Cision vs Prowly: pricing

Cision alternative #2: Mynewsdesk

MyNewsDesk is a digital PR and communications platform that helps organizations manage public relations efforts. It allows users to create and distribute press releases, manage media contacts, and analyze PR campaign performance.

Best for: Companies that want to centralize their PR content and focus on visibility through an owned newsroom.

Pricing: Unknown.

Free trial: Yes.

Key features:

• Digital newsroom creation and hosting
• Press release distribution to Mynewsdesk's media network
• Basic media monitoring and analytics
• Contact database and pitching tools
• Multimedia content support (images, videos, documents)

Cision vs MyNewsDesk: pricing

Mynewsdesk offers an all-in-one PR solution: from preparing and pitching press releases, to newsrooms, media monitoring, and a contact database.

✅ Pros

• you can manage the entire pitching process, together with communication analysis
• content agency offers

source: G2

🔻Cons

Users on G2 complain a bit about their editing tool. One person also advises you to keep track of the notice period and remember to terminate it 3 months before the contract expires.

source: G2

Cision alternative #3: Meltwater

Meltwater is an enterprise-grade media intelligence platform offering global media monitoring, social listening, and analytics. It’s best known for its extensive data coverage and advanced reporting capabilities for large-scale PR and marketing teams.

Best for: Large enterprises and corporate comms teams managing complex, multi-market campaigns with high compliance or investor relations needs.

Pricing: Based on our research, Meltwater costs an average of $15,000 to $20,000 per year.

Free trial: No, you can only request a demo call.

Key features:

• Global media monitoring (online, print, broadcast, social, podcasts)
• AI-powered sentiment analysis and brand tracking
• Influencer identification across earned and social media
• Competitive benchmarking and market intelligence tools
• Collaboration and workflow features for large comms teams

Cision vs Meltwater: pricing

Both tools require custom quotes, but Meltwater can often be slightly more affordable than Cision depending on the scope. However, many teams find both platforms overbuilt or overpriced for small to medium PR operations.

✅ Pros

Cision shares many similarities with Meltwater. According to user reviews on G2, Meltwater assists in identifying relevant media for pitches and offers strong media monitoring capabilities, as well as the following benefits:

• quality of mentions
• no limits on queries
• customer service is often praised

source: G2

🔻Cons

Users have reported outdated information in the media database and slow responses from customer service.

source: G2

Cision alternative #4: Muck Rack

Muck Rack is a PR software platform known for its journalist database and media monitoring capabilities. It offers tools for media outreach, press release distribution, and coverage tracking, with a strong focus on transparency and reputation management.

Best for: PR professionals who prioritize journalist research, tracking their brand's media presence, and pitching based on verified reporter profiles.

Pricing: We estimate that Muck Rack costs an average of $15,000 annually.

Free trial: No, you can only request a demo call.

Key features:

• Verified media database with dynamic journalist profiles
• Real-time media monitoring and alerts
• Pitching tools with engagement tracking
• Centralized newsroom for press release hosting
• Collaboration tools for agencies and large teams

Cision vs Muck Rack: pricing

✅ Pros

Users on G2 commend Muck Rack for its effective TV and radio monitoring capabilities. Additionally, the tool is noted for its excellent user experience and intuitive interface. The coverage reports are particularly valuable for identifying new individuals discussing your company.

🔻Cons

Muck Rack is positioned at the higher end of the pricing scale, making it suitable for teams with larger budgets. However, despite the cost, it has several drawbacks, such as inconsistent results compared to other tools and an abundance of media alerts without the ability to prioritize key mentions.

Cision alternative #5: Critical Mention

Critical Mention is a media monitoring service that tracks and analyzes broadcasts, online channels, and social media content. It provides real-time insights and analytics to help organizations manage their media presence and public relations efforts.

Best for: PR and comms teams that prioritize broadcast media monitoring—especially in regulated industries or high-visibility campaigns.

Pricing: Critical Mention costs between $2,500 and $10,000 per year.

Free trial: No, you can only request a demo call.

Key features:

• Real-time monitoring of TV, radio, and online broadcasts
• Instant access to video/audio coverage and transcripts
• Searchable media archive
• Media contact database and distribution tools
• Coverage reports and engagement metrics

Cision vs Critical Mention: pricing

✅ Pros

• they monitor various sources: broadcasts, podcasts, and even paywall content (through print-only stories)

source: G2

🔻Cons

• no details on their media database - you need to schedule a demo to learn more
• to cover other PR activities, you'd need a separate PR tool

source: G2

Cision alternative #6: AgilityPR

Agility PR Solutions is a comprehensive PR platform offering media database access, press release distribution, and media monitoring. It’s positioned as a more affordable, mid-market alternative to traditional enterprise platforms like Cision.

Best for: Mid-sized PR teams that want a mix of media outreach, monitoring, and basic analytics in a single tool.

Pricing: Unknown—you need to request a demo call to find out.

Free trial: No—you can only schedule a demo call.

Key features:

• Global media contact database
• Press release distribution via AgilityWire
• Media monitoring and sentiment tracking
• Customizable coverage and performance reporting
• Email outreach tools with limited automation

Cision vs AgilityPR: pricing

✅ Pros

• if you need to cover just one area with a PR tool, you can buy one package
• you can ask the team for a full editorial review of your press release
• the customer service is widely appreciated
• a bunch of recognition badges from G2

Source: G2

🔻Cons

• with annual plans, there's little space for flexibility
• they offer poor message personalization options
• users claim its pricing lies on the higher side
• some features are only available for extra money

Source: G2

Cision alternative #7: Brand24

Brand24 is a social listening and media monitoring tool designed to track online mentions across news sites, blogs, forums, and social media platforms. It's lightweight, fast, and built for teams that want to stay on top of conversations about their brand.

Best for: Small businesses, start-ups, and marketing teams looking for a simple, affordable way to monitor media and social chatter.

Pricing: From $199/month.

Free trial: Free 14-day trial available.

Key features:

• Real-time media and social media monitoring
• Sentiment analysis and trend detection
• Shareable reports and alerts
• Influencer identification
• Slack and mobile app integrations

Cision vs Brand24: pricing

✅ Pros

• cool brand monitoring options and mention sources
• clear interface
• numerous teams (marketing, product, customer service, sales) will benefit from Brand24

🔻Cons

• it's not a PR-focused platform - you'd need other tools to support different PR activities

💡 Brand24 is a great choice if you only need media monitoring and want to keep your PR work in Excel. When you prefer to keep your work all in one place, an all-in-one solution like Prowly might fit you better.

Alternative to PR Newswire: media pitching tools

PR Newswire is a global news distribution service by Cision that helps companies and organizations disseminate their press releases and other information to media, investors, and the public.

PR Newswire pricing

Starting price: From $195 per release

🔻Additional costs:

Determining the exact cost of a service can be challenging, especially with no free plans or trial offers available. Additional add-ons or membership fees can further complicate an understanding of the final amount you'll need to pay.

Pitching vs. Cision PR Newswire

PR Newswire is a news distribution service from Cision. It ensures broad reach and visibility, but what about outcomes?

Here's why you should consider sending personalized emails to journalists as a PR Newswire alternative:

• targeted outreach: with a personal email pitch, you increase the chance of getting published
• strategic releases: media pitching lets you go with exclusive pitches and embargoed releases - a valuable aid in building relationships
• measurable ROI: the stable, monthly cost of Prowly gives you a clearer expense and ROI estimation - and a chance to make an impact with each press release
• investment in strategic partnerships: the focus for 37% of PR specialists, according to our latest research in PR trends for 2024, well-thought out, personalized messages help you foster closer relationships

The difference? PR platforms offer a noteworthy advantage regarding the volume of press releases you can send. Using their extensive media databases, you can efficiently reach out to numerous media contacts for announcements for a fraction of the cost.

Pitching tool examples

You can try pitching the right media with Prowly, where you can get everything: from a media pitching tool to craft your message, through a huge database to find the right contacts right away, to an AI Assistant that helps you write your pitch, tweak it, and find the best media contacts.

Plus the press release creator, PR reports, media monitoring and online newsrooms are already counted into the price.

Who is Prowly best for?

PR agencies and in-house teams that are focused on building relationships and don’t want to spend hundreds of dollars on a single press release. A perfect mix of efficiency and cost effectiveness.

No newswire service can guarantee your story gets picked up - so you need to invest in other distribution methods anyway.

Alternative to PR Newswire: distribution websites

Another alternative to Cision’s PR Newswire is to use other PR websites, like Business Wire, for their press release fee distribution.

Who is it best for?

Corporations who need to share press releases through newswire services - e. g. for legal reasons.

You can try out solutions like:

• EIN Presswire (from $99.95 /release)
• Globe Newswire (contact for a quote)
• Newswire (from $349.00 /release)
• Presswire (from $250 /release)

💡 Compare the most popular choices and learn more about the best press release distribution websites in this article.

Which solution fits you best?

With numerous Cision alternatives, it can be challenging to make up your mind. Here are our takeaways:

• pricing might be the biggest differentiator, especially with tools that don't share it upfront
• all-in-one PR platforms let you combine data from various PR areas all in one tool
• not all media databases are equal, so make sure to test them out or ask for a sample

While there’s no simple answer, the best way to choose your solution is by trying it out on your own.

Ready to start testing your options?

Besides transparent pricing plans, Prowly offers you a full 7-day free trial period. No credit card required, no pressure 👇

The post The 7 Best Cision Alternatives for 2025 (Features & Pricing) appeared first on Prowly.

The problem is that there are so many media measurement tools that it can feel hopeless just getting started. To help, we've collected over 30 traditional and digital media measurement tools which we've divided into seven categories.

From measuring website traffic to the success of your social media campaigns, we have something for everyone.

What are media measurement tools?

Media measurement tools help PR teams see what’s working and what’s not.

They track how your press coverage performs across channels, highlight the impact of your campaigns, and provide data to back up your results when reporting to clients or leadership.

Common features of media measurement tools:

• Media monitoring: Track brand mentions across news sites, blogs, TV, radio, and social media.
• Sentiment analysis: Flags whether coverage is positive, negative, or neutral. This audience measurement method is usually driven by AI.
• Share of voice reports: Compares your brand's performance and presence to competitors.
• Reach and impressions: Estimates how many people saw or could have seen your coverage.
• Coverage scoring: Rates each media hit based on relevance, reach, sentiment, or custom criteria.
• Campaign performance tracking: Groups media hits by campaign, user behavior, and more, and shows what got the most traction.
• Custom reports: Builds branded coverage reports you can send to stakeholders, e.g., key performance indicators relevant to your social media performance.
• Influencer and journalist tracking: Shows which contacts drive the most valuable media hits.
• Alerts and notifications: Sends real-time updates when your brand is mentioned.

What are marketing campaign measurement tools?

While media measurement tools focus on earned media and PR impact, such as coverage volume, sentiment, and share of voice, marketing campaign measurement tools are built to track performance across paid and owned channels. These include email campaigns, PPC ads, social media posts, and landing pages.

They help marketing teams understand which campaigns drive clicks, conversions, and revenue. For example, a marketing team might use these tools to see how many leads came from a paid LinkedIn campaign, which ad creatives performed best, or how email open rates varied across audience segments.

In short, media tools show your influence in the press, while marketing tools show your return from direct outreach and ad spending.

Traditional media measurement tools

These tools help you measure the effectiveness of traditional media channels, like TV and radio.

Nielsen Audio (formerly Arbitron)

Source type: Radio

Use case: Measures radio audience size, reach, and demographics to assess the impact of radio ads or mentions

Limitation: Does not capture streaming radio or podcasts accurately, and regional data can be limited

Circulation Figures

Source type: Print

Use case: Local newspapers or trade publications often publish their own distribution stats to support ad sales or sponsorship pitches

Limitation: These are often unaudited and self-reported, which may affect reliability

Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC)

Source type: Print

Use case: Verifies the print circulation numbers of newspapers and magazines, often used to estimate potential reach

Limitation: Measures distribution, not actual readership or engagement

BARB (Broadcasters' Audience Research Board)

Source type: Television (UK)

Use case: Tracks TV viewing figures in the UK, useful for evaluating brand mentions in TV news or talk shows

Limitation: Data is sampled from a small panel and may not reflect niche or regional programming

Traditional campaign & media measurement metrics

For traditional media formats, there are two main types of metrics you can track:

• Media impressions: the number of times a piece of content is viewed across different platforms.
• Advertising Value Equivalency (AVE): a metric that estimates the value of media coverage by comparing it to the cost of purchasing the same amount of ad space.

💡 Remember that although AVE is a traditional method, it’s not the best way to measure your PR tactics’ impact. In digital PR, there are many better ways to make data-driven decisions. Find out more in this article: What is Advertising Value Equivalency in PR? (+ AVE Alternatives)

PR campaign and digital media measurement tools

Before we dive deep into other measurement tools, just one quick note. We'll get into what you can measure with Prowly, as we have detailed information at our fingertips. We lack detailed testing data for all the other listed tools, but you can discover more by booking a call or utilizing a free trial where offered.

P.S. Here's a whole article about PR metrics that will show you what to measure exactly and why (with examples).

Prowly

Prowly is an all-in-one public relations software solution that uses AI to help small and medium PR agencies and in-house PR teams manage media relations, create press releases, pitch the right journalists, and monitor PR campaigns.

It offers PR CRM, pitching tools, a media database with over one million contacts, an AI Assistant, a press release creator, media monitoring tools, and a detailed PR reporting suite.

Prowly is best for agencies and in-house PR and marketing teams, especially small-to-medium-sized businesses, and any business that wants to gain valuable web or social media insights.

Pricing: starts at $258/mo billed annually, and a free trial is available

What metrics can you track with Prowly?

Share of Voice

Domain Authority

Domain authority, calculated by Semrush on a scale of 0 to 100, reflects a website's overall quality and SEO performance, with higher scores indicating stronger authority.

Backlinks

In Prowly’s PR Reports tool, you can track your PR success by comparing your number of backlinks through different periods, showing year-over-year growth, for example. Backlinks are counted automatically and you will see them in each project's main Media Monitoring dashboard.

Media tiers

Set up media tiers in Prowly based on the preferences of your target audience, not just visitor numbers. Track how often your brand is mentioned in Tier 1 outlets and monitor the number of press mentions in each tier to assess their value.

Top mentions

Prioritize top mentions from media outlets that best match your target audience, using filters like country and sentiment. In Prowly, you can generate and sort a list of top mentions by industry category and domain authority to effectively measure your PR activities.

Sentiment analysis

The solution uses algorithms and machine learning to perform sentiment analysis, which Prowly groups into easy-to-follow categories.

Data visualization

With Prowly, you can personalize your data visualization. You can export your data to Excel (.XLSX), Numbers (.CSV), or copy it into a PR report to easily share your outcomes with your clients or company.

Prezly

Prezly is a PR CRM for agencies and businesses that want to reach out to a large number of media professionals systematically.

It offers email outreach, sites and newsrooms, CRM for public relations, PR and media analytics, and linking coverage to the PR CRM for more valuable insights.

It is best suited for PR agencies.

Pricing: Prezly pricing starts at $90 per user, per month, billed annually, and has a free trial is available

Meltwater

Meltwater is a data analytics platform that gives insights into media, social, and consumer trends.

Its features include media intelligence, media relations, consumer intelligence, influencer marketing, and sales intelligence.

It is a best fit for agencies, so smaller PR teams are better off looking at Meltwater alternatives.

Pricing: It has not been disclosed publicly, but our research on Meltwater pricing shows it's around $6,000-10,000 per year. There is no information about a free trial, but you can book a demo.

Press clipping services

These services send you updates and summaries of content where your brand was published, both online and offline. It's a tool that has been around for a while and is available in Prowly too.

With Prowly you get press clippings and a host of other PR features with a flexible pricing plan and a free trial period.

Marketing campaign measurement tools

These digital analytics tools for marketing performance measurement give you insights about specific marketing channels.

Mixpanel

Mixpanel is a product and website analytics platform that helps you better understand your customers and how they behave in your app or website.

Features include website metric analysis, research validation, KPI monitoring, website and product performance reporting, and feedback collection.

It is best for product businesses and marketing teams.

Pricing: starts at $24 per month and there is no free trial.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a free tool for measuring any aspect of your website's performance. GA shows everything from visitors to conversions and the performance of individual pages.

Features include website analytics, campaign performance tracking, conversion rate tracking, website visitor behavior tracking, and more.

It is ideal for any business with a website.

Pricing: This tool is free to use.

Meta (Facebook & Instagram) analytics

This tool helps you track the performance of your organic and paid media content on Meta's platforms.

It offers metrics and trends tracking, visual reports, ad performance overview, demographic reports and more.

It is a good fit for agencies, in-house marketing teams, and anyone with a business account on Meta.

Pricing: free to use

Adobe Analytics

Adobe Analytics is a web analytics platform that helps you track the customer journey across digital channels.

It offers website analytics, drag-and-drop segmentation, ad hoc analysis, page reports, mobile dashboards, cross-device analysis, and more.

It is best suited for business owners and agencies.

Pricing: not disclosed publicly, research shows that it starts at $2,000 per month and there is no free trial

Kissmetrics

Kissmetrics is an analytics tool for tracking human behavior on your website and removing bottlenecks to additional revenue.

It comes with real-time website metrics, tracking across websites and products, funnel tracking, and detailed customer activity monitoring.

It is a good choice for business owners and e-commerce stores.

Pricing: starts at $125.99 per month. A free trial is available, but only after a demo.

Social media monitoring tools

Social monitoring tools give you details on your brand's performance on social media channels.

Prowly

Prowly is a PR and media monitoring tool that gives real-time insights about your brand terms and target keywords.

Prowly offers real-time monitoring, keyword combinations, context, sentiment analysis, estimated mention reach, and region and language filtering.

It is a great choice for agencies, in-house PR and marketing teams, or anyone who wants a detailed and accurate social media report.

Pricing: starts at $258 per month, billed annually, with a free trial available for 7 days

Brand24

Brand24 is an AI-powered social media tracking and listening tool for marketers and brands.

It comes with competitive analysis, reputation management, hashtag analytics, PR measurement, white label reporting, and detailed analytics.

It is a solid choice for In-house teams, agencies, and freelancers.

Pricing: starts at $119 per month and a free trial is available for 14 days.

Talkwalker

Talkwalker by Hootsuite is a consumer intelligence platform that gives you detailed insights about your customers.

It comes with social listening, media monitoring, social benchmarking, audience insights, customer feedback analytics, social content ratings, and more.

It is best suited for larger in-house marketing teams and agencies.

Pricing: not publicly available and there is no free trial.

Brandwatch

BrandWatch is a consumer intelligence platform that helps businesses understand how customers interact with them across platforms.

It comes with content searching and segmentation, sentiment analysis, real-time consumer data access, and an AI-powered analytics search engine.

It is best suited for agencies and in-house teams of larger businesses.

Pricing: not publicly available and there is no free trial

Social media analytics tools

The best social media measurement tools reveal the performance of your social media channels through specific metrics.

Hootsuite analytics

Hootsuite is a free social media measurement tool that lets you measure performance through organic and paid social media channels from a single dashboard.

Features include publishing and scheduling, social media analytics, AI content creation, help figuring out the best time to post, social engagement tools, inbox and messaging tools, and more.

It is best for agencies, in-house teams, and freelance social media marketers who need marketing measurement tools.

Pricing: starts at $99 per month and a free trial is available for 30 days.

Sprout Social

SproutSocial is a social media management platform with analytics and monitoring capabilities.

Its features include social media engagement, publishing, social analytics, social listening, influencer marketing, and employee advocacy tools.

It's a great tool for agencies and internal marketing teams.

Pricing: starts at $199 per seat per month, billed annually, and a free trial is available for 30 days

Buffer Analyze

Buffer Analyze is a part of the Buffer suite of tools that helps you understand your social media platform performance.

Features include content idea libraries, scheduling, publishing, social analytics, a customized landing page creator, and an AI assistant.

It's a good choice for agencies, freelancers, and in-house marketers.

Pricing: starts at $6 per month per social media channel and a free trial is available for 14 days.

Keyhole

Keyhole is a full-stack social media tool that lets you manage your online presence, create and schedule posts, analyze their performance, and more.

Features include social media analytics, social listening, historical insights, publishing, and scheduling.

It is best for freelancers, in-house teams, and marketing and PR agencies.

Pricing: starts at $40.83 per month for the analytics suite and a free trial is available for 14 days

Rival IQ

Rival IQ is a tool for real-time social media analytics, reports, and real-time alerts.

Features include competitive analysis, channel social media analysis, social media audits, and social listening.

It's a great choice for agencies and in-house marketing teams.

Pricing: starts at $199 per month, billed annually, and a free trial is available

SEO tools

These tools help you uncover opportunities to upgrade your SEO performance and rank better with great content.

Moz

Moz is an SEO tool for monitoring your SEO performance and finding new ways to improve your rankings.

It comes with domain analysis, keyword explorer, link explorer, competitive research, backlink research, and reporting tools.

It's a good tool for agencies and in-house SEO teams.

Pricing: starts at $99 per month and a free trial is available for 30 days

Ahrefs

Ahrefs is an SEO tool that helps you create great content, do keyword and competitor research, and improve your search engine rankings.

Features include keyword research, competitor research, website analytics, backlink monitoring, site audits, and content explorer.

It's a great choice for agencies, in-house SEO teams, and freelancers.

Pricing: starts at $129 per user per month and there is no free trial.

Semrush

Semrush is an all-in-one SEO tool that helps you create better content and rule search engine results.

Top features include keyword research, competitor analysis, rank tracking, content creation and distribution, PPC keyword research, and many others.

It's a solid choice for agencies, in-house teams, and SEO freelancers.

Pricing: starts at $139.95 per month and a free trial is available for 7 days

P.S. If you’re searching for the best tools available for competitor analysis, check out this article.

Google Search Console

GSC is a tool for monitoring your presence in organic search results.

It offers page performance tracking, keyword rankings and monitoring, measuring impressions and clicks, and helps keep up with search performance trends over time.

It's a great tool for anyone who has a website. Coupled with Google Analytics, it covers your SEO basics.

Pricing: This tool is free to use.

P.S. If you want to dive deeper (not only) into PR metrics, check out this reach vs. impressions comparison.

Heatmaps

These tools analyze your website to reveal patterns in how visitors access them. The "hotter" the heatmap, the more visitors come to that part of your website.

Hotjar

Hotjar is a user experience and data analytics platform that shows you insights about how people access your website.

Its features include heatmaps, polls, feedback collection, video recording sessions, surveys and interviews.

It is a good tool for any marketing team or agency.

Pricing: starts at $32 per month and there is no free trial, but there is a forever-free plan

Crazy Egg

Crazy Egg is an analytics tool by Neil Patel that helps website owners understand the behavior of their visitors.

Features include heatmaps, visitor recordings, A/B testing, traffic analysis, error tracking, surveys, goals, and CTAs.

It is best for marketing teams.

Pricing: starts at $99 per month and a free trial is available for 30 days

Email analytics

These tools help you understand the performance of your email campaigns and key metrics such as CTRs, open rates, conversion rates, and more.

Mailchimp

Mailchimp is a popular email marketing tool that lets you build your email lists and create campaigns for different audiences.

It has a visual email builder, audience segmentation, detailed email analytics, a landing page builder, email personalization, and more.

It is best for small businesses, marketing teams, agencies and anyone who needs to send business emails.

Pricing: starts at $13 per month and there is a forever-free plan for up to 500 contacts

Get response

GetResponse is a marketing automation platform that lets you harness the power of emails combined with other marketing channels.

Its features include email marketing, SMS marketing, an AI email generator, website builder, landing pages, live chat, and much more.

It's a great choice for marketers, agencies, small and large businesses, and anyone serious about email marketing.

Pricing: starts at $15.58 per month and there is a 30-day free trial

Benefits of using media measurement tools

Besides getting a seat at the table and growing your budget for PR activities, digital and traditional media measurement tools have a number of benefits.

1. Track the real impact of press coverage

Instead of guessing how far your story reached, you can measure impressions, sentiment, and audience engagement. For example, if your product launch gets picked up by five outlets but only one drives traffic or engagement, you’ll know where to focus future outreach.

2. Prove ROI to clients or leadership

Clients often ask, “What did we get from this campaign?” Tools like Prowly let you generate reports showing how many people saw the coverage, the tone of any mentions, and whether your share of voice increased. It’s easier to justify continued investment when you have the numbers to back it up.

3. Spot issues early and act fast

If a negative story starts gaining traction, tools like Mention, Prowly or Brand24 can alert you in real time. That allows you to issue a response, correct misinformation, or brief spokespeople before things spiral.

4. Understand which messages actually resonate

Not every press release lands the way you intend. With sentiment analysis and engagement tracking, you can see which parts of your messaging stick. For example, if journalists keep quoting a specific stat or angle from your release, you’ll know to lead with that hook in future pitches.

Join 1,000+ businesses and start measuring your PR campaigns with Prowly.

Practical applications of media measurement tools

Now that you've seen the different tools for measuring the effectiveness of your PR and media strategies, let's show you how a few of them work in real life.

Prowly lets you track media coverage and analyze how your PR efforts land with journalists and the public. For example, after sending a press release through Prowly’s media database, you can monitor who picked it up, what the sentiment was, and how much reach it generated.

If your campaign gets coverage in multiple outlets, you can use Prowly’s reporting tools to group those mentions by campaign and instantly create a clean report to share with clients or leadership.

With Mention, you can stay on top of what people say about your brand across social platforms and news sites. You'll be alerted immediately if there’s a sudden spike in brand mentions. This helps with real-time crisis response or spotting organic buzz you might want to amplify with paid media.

While basic, Google Alerts still serves as a free way to track media mentions. If you're running a small campaign with limited resources, setting alerts for your brand name and campaign keywords can give you a low-maintenance way to stay in the loop without paying for full analytics.

Frequently asked questions

What are media measurement tools?

Media measurement tools are software solutions that track and analyze your brand's presence across various media channels. They help PR and marketing teams understand the effectiveness of their campaigns by providing insights into reach, engagement, sentiment, and more.

Why are media measurement tools important for PR professionals?

These tools let PR professionals quantify the impact of their efforts, demonstrate ROI to stakeholders, and refine strategies based on data-driven insights. By understanding what resonates with audiences, teams can make informed decisions to enhance future campaigns.

How frequently should I analyze media coverage?

Regular analysis is beneficial. Depending on the volume of media activity, weekly or monthly reviews can help you stay informed and make timely adjustments to strategies.

The post Best Media Measurement Tools for PR in 2025: 30+ Top Choices appeared first on Prowly.

Understanding who's discussing your or your client's brand, knowing their sentiment, remaining well-informed, swiftly addressing issues, and fostering a positive brand image are key tactics in PR. 

Prowly is the best brand monitoring software that ticks all the boxes, but there are plenty of other solid choices. In this article, we take a look at the best brand monitoring software for PR professionals, agencies, and in-house communication teams:

1. Prowly
2. Semrush
3. Brandwatch
4. Brand24
5. Sprout Social
6. Mention
7. Google Alerts
8. Talkwalker
9. Hootsuite
10. BuzzSumo
11. Awario
12. Keyhole
13. X Pro

In the second part of this article, you'll find answers to the following questions:

• How do you monitor a brand?
• How to choose a brand monitoring tool?

What is brand monitoring software?

Brand monitoring software is a tool that helps businesses keep track of how their brand is being mentioned and perceived across various channels. It collects and analyzes brand mentions from sources such as:

• news sites
• blogs
• social media
• forums
• and other online sources

Such software typically includes media monitoring, social listening, and journalist tracking features.

It can identify when your brand is mentioned, flag emerging stories or narratives, and analyze the tone and sentiment behind each mention, whether positive, neutral, or negative.

Brand monitoring software is especially useful for understanding consumer perception, spotting potential PR risks early, and identifying media or influencer relationships worth pursuing. It allows brands to stay informed and control how they are talked about in public.

Key features to look for in top brand monitoring software

When evaluating brand monitoring tools, look for features beyond basic tracking. The best platforms offer a combination of speed, depth, and workflow support. Here are the most important ones to consider:

What to monitor for your brand (and why)

To understand how your brand is performing, it’s important to track more than just mentions. Here are some of the most valuable brand metrics to keep an eye on:

• Share of voice – How often your brand is mentioned compared to competitors
• Sentiment – Whether mentions are positive, neutral, or negative
• Media reach – The potential audience size of your coverage
• Top sources and channels – Where your brand is getting the most attention
• Key topics and narratives – What themes are consistently linked with your brand
• Audience engagement – Likes, shares, and comments on brand-related content

These metrics help you measure visibility, reputation, and relevance over time. For a full breakdown, check out this guide on brand metrics.

Top brand monitoring software to try in 2025

Now that you know which features you need to measure brand awareness, stay on top of industry trends, and improve your overall brand health, let's discuss the best brand monitoring tools you can choose in 2025.

1. Prowly

• Price: starting from $258 monthly
• Free trial: Yes, for 7 days
• All-in-one PR tool: Yes
• G2 rating: 4.2/5 (103 reviews)

Prowly is the only tool on our list that's focused entirely on a PR specialist's needs. It covers your entire PR workflow - with an online newsroom, media database, AI press release creator, and, of course, tracking brand mentions.

Prowly offers fast onboarding, with a clean user experience, allowing anyone to track their brand mentions online without a steep learning curve.

Prowly's data is powered by Semrush, which means it's accurate and up to date. It also offers cutting-edge features such as advanced email analytics and AI-powered journalist discovery.

Track brand mentions

Prowly's Media Monitoring helps you track brand mentions and analyze metrics that are PR-specific, like AVE, SOV or outlet reach. Together with regular metrics, like reach or sentiment, you can estimate the effects of each campaign.

Prowly’s AI detects the context, sentiment, and over 15 other attributes of every press hit and social mention. Leverage this data to establish tailored filters for viewing only the mentions that matter most to you.

Examples of filters:

• Keyword combinations & context
• Topic of each mention and website (1000+ available)
• Estimated mention reach
• Region and language
• Platform (Instagram, X, Facebook, Tiktok, Youtube)

Build custom reports

The top brand tools make your life easier with clean and neat reports. In Prowly, you can generate a coverage report whenever you need it to sum up a particular month or a full campaign. Create coverage reports tailored to what you need with multiple metrics, chart types, and filters. Show how your outcomes correlate with business objectives and save the time usually needed to fill the report manually.

2. Semrush’s Brand Monitoring App

• Price: $79 for the add-on
• Free trial or demo: Yes, you can try the tool for free and schedule free training
• All-in-one PR tool: No
• G2 rating: 4.5/5 (2651 reviews)

Semrush is a comprehensive tool for online marketing — from SEO and content to paid promotion and PR. It's often chosen by agencies and huge players, and that's why it made our list.

If you work for an agency or a big company, chances are you already use Semrush. If your company already uses several marketing tools, you might consider switching to an all-in-one solution.

Then, for brand monitoring purposes, you can add the Brand Monitoring App, developed by Prowly. It covers the entire media monitoring functionality of Prowly's original platform.

💡 Tip: When choosing a media monitoring service, make sure it's tailored to local media — for example, the UK market.

3. Brand24

• Price: starting from $119 monthly
• Free trial or demo: Yes, for 14 days
• All-in-one PR tool: No
• G2 rating: 4.6/5 (296 reviews)

Brand24 is focused solely on your brand's online presence. You can analyze all publicly available data coming from web pages, social media, or - and this is pretty unique - podcasts and newsletters.

With sentiment analysis, estimated awareness metrics, social media monitoring tools and alerts, you'll be the first to find out about an upcoming crisis.

If you're looking for more tools that can help you with crisis prevention, check out this Best PR Crisis Management Software Comparison.

4. Brandwatch

• Price: pricing available upon request
• Free trial or demo: you can book a meeting
• All-in-one PR tool: No
• G2 rating: 4.4/5 (635 reviews)

Brandwatch is one of the most advanced brand monitoring software offerings on our list. Brandwatch tracks brand mentions in both online and offline areas. For example, you can access paywalled news, broadcasts, YouTube, or TikTok - with datasets going back more than 10 years.

You get advanced analytics solutions to manage this impressive list of data sources, backed by machine learning algorithms. Also, you can track your data and brand management efforts on real-time dashboards.

However, if you're looking for a tool that can monitor not only online media but also print and broadcast (meaning radio and TV programs), Prowly is a great choice.

With Prowly's print and broadcast monitoring, you can track mentions not just online but across newspapers, magazines, radio, and TV, ensuring you never miss important coverage. While manual tracking might work for a small client, securing comprehensive media insights—both nationally and internationally—requires automation.

Prowly streamlines this process, combining digital and traditional media monitoring in one powerful platform so you can access all your relevant mentions.

5. Sprout Social

• Price: the Social Listening add-on starts from $999 monthly
• Free trial or demo: Yes, you can try it for 30 days or get a demo call
• All-in-one PR tool: No
• G2 rating: 4.4/5 (4,181 reviews)

Sprout Social is a complex social media management platform. It offers social listening features, such as profile or location monitoring, that you can use to monitor brand reputation, collect customer feedback, or monitor your marketing campaigns.

For each query, it retrieves all historical data, so you can start your analysis right away. With complex queries and filters, you'll get valuable results.

For PR purposes, you can also use trend identification and influencer recognition.

💡 Learn how to create effective media monitoring queries using Prowly from this article based on real-life examples.

6. Mention

• Price: starting from $41 monthly 
• Free trial or demo: Yes, there's a 14-day free trial available, and you can book a demo call
• All-in-one PR tool: No
• G2 rating: 4.3/5 (440 reviews)

Mention is another tool for social media management, combining social listening with post-scheduling. You can track brand mentions from blogs, online news, social media channels, and videos (including YouTube and TikTok).

Moreover, you can track chosen review pages (like Booking or G2) and social media accounts to ensure you don't miss new content.

Mention also lets you evaluate each hit with sentiment, reach, and influence score. In higher-priced plans, it offers insights and more advanced analytics.

7. Google Alerts

• Price: free
• All-in-one PR tool: No
• G2 rating: N/A

Google Alerts is the only free tool on our list. It's popular, easy to use, and (again) free, but you might struggle with getting actual value out of it.

When Google indexes a new page that mentions a phrase you wish to observe, you get an email notification. And basically, that's it. But it can be enough if you need a simple tool or are just getting started.

For professional PR purposes, it's pretty limited. You get the results with a delay, it doesn't cover sources like social media channels, and it might not send you all relevant results. Plus, you don't get analytics, like sentiment info, reach, or trends in your data.

To learn more, check out our article on Google Alerts alternatives. It covers in detail why it is worth making a switch.

8. Talkwalker

• Price: available upon request
• Free trial or demo: No free trial, but you can book a demo call
• All-in-one PR tool: No
• G2 rating: 4.3/5 (132 reviews)

alkwalker is one of the most comprehensive brand tracking tools on the market. It covers over 30 social media channels and 150 million data sources, giving insights into even the most niche topics.

It provides your PR campaigns with sentiment, reach, and engagement analytics. You can use the advanced Boolean search to get only relevant resources. Moreover, Talkwalker tracks visual content, meaning you get information from images and videos too.

You can compare your brand reputation with the competition based on sentiment, engagement and reach. Also, the tool will assist you in finding appropriate influencers.

💡 Tip: If you want to make your PR strategy truly robust, read these articles to learn how to manage your brand reputation and protect its reputation.

9. Hootsuite

• Price: starting from $99 monthly, though Social Listening is an add-on and not included in the main product
• Free trial or demo: Yes, a free 30-day trial (or up to 60% off the plans if you skip it)
• All-in-one PR tool: No
• G2 rating: 4.2/5 (6,216 revie

Hootsuite was created for social media management, with post scheduling, indicators of the best time for posting, and a social media inbox. And it does offer some social listening options that can help with brand monitoring.

Hootsuite analyzes most major social media sites and monitors mentions, keywords and hashtags. It also integrates with other brand monitoring tools, like Talkwalker and Brandwatch.

10. BuzzSumo

• Price: starting from $199 monthly 
• Free trial or demo: Yes, a free 30-day trial
• All-in-one PR tool: No
• G2 rating: 4.5/5 (103 reviews)

BuzzSumo gives you tools to generate buzz about your company or client, either via PR or marketing strategies. It offers a wide range of tools to generate content ideas, spot influencers, and support content research.

In terms of brand monitoring, you can track brand mentions for yourself or your competitors. You can also get alerts when given authors or outlets publish something new. This option can prove valuable if your PR outreach strategy involves engaging with specific people.

11. Awario

• Price: starting at $39 monthly 
• Free trial or demo: Yes, free trial available
• All-in-one PR tool: No
• G2 rating: 4.0/5 (41 reviews)

Awario is a full-time brand monitoring tool. Its web crawler analyzes over 13 million pages and social media channels daily. You can look for results in given locations and use the Boolean search to refine your query.

To analyze the data, you get a simple dashboard with the crucial information on hand. In higher priced plans, you can download white-labeled reports with brand mention analysis.

12. Keyhole

• Price: starts at $179 monthly
• Free trial or demo: Yes, free trial available
• All-in-one PR tool: No
• G2 rating: 4.3/5 (69 reviews)

Keyhole was designed for social media platforms. It lets you analyze profiles, hashtags, or phrases across different channels.

This solution is your ally if you run many PR campaigns on social media channels. You can get insights on your performance, see the most engaging post for your searched term, or find the best influencer for your campaign. What's more, it comes with detailed reports and comparisons.

Apart from the social listening options, you can use it as your social media planning tool. With scheduling and profile analytics, Keyhole helps you squeeze more from social media — both for marketing and PR.

13. X Pro (formerly TweetDeck)

• Price: only available in the X (Twitter) Premium subscription
• Free trial or demo: No
• All-in-one PR tool: No
• G2 rating: 4.3/5 (653 reviews)

Formerly called TweetDeck, XPro was one of the most useful free tools for heavy Twitter users. It lets you open a few X threads on one screen and follow the conversations simultaneously.

Although it's not full-time brand monitoring software, we decided to include it here for those who already spend hours on X threads. It's a nice addition to keep the conversations flowing!

Nevertheless, it won't be enough for more advanced insights. For example, it lacks social media reach and sentiment analysis.

Right now, it's available only with an X Premium subscription.

P.S. Discover more ideas and inspiration by exploring this guide to brand awareness campaigns, complete with examples to spark your creativity.

How do you monitor a brand?

Brand mention monitoring effectively means turning raw mentions into usable insights. Here’s a simple 5-step process to follow:

1. Choose your monitoring tool
   Pick a platform that fits your needs across PR, marketing, or customer teams. Prowly helps automate this process by integrating monitoring with outreach and analytics.
2. Set up keyword and brand name alerts
   Include your brand name, product names, key personnel, relevant hashtags and common misspellings.
3. Track mentions across media types
   Make sure your tool scans online news, blogs, forums, podcasts, review sites, and social platforms for full coverage.
4. Analyze sentiment and reach
   Use built-in AI tools to understand the tone and audience size behind each mention, helping you assess overall brand perception.
5. Take action
   Respond to the press, engage with customers, flag PR risks, and compile internal reports. With tools like Prowly, you can do all of this in one place.

What is a brand tracking tool?

What are brand tracking and monitoring tools? They are based on crawlers - robots that go through (crawl) the Internet, looking for specific information. Depending on the tool or technology it uses, you may access varied sources, such as forums, websites, social media, or offline news, in search of people mentioning your brand.

When you set up a project, choosing keywords, geographical area, or other factors that are important for you, the brand tracking software starts to gather information. In most online monitoring tools, you can get alerts when relevant brand mentions are found.

Most monitoring tools give you access to analytics. These often consist of one main brand tracking dashboard and more detailed views. This way, you can easily compare data for given campaigns or timeframes.

Beware, though, that keeping data for a long time is costly. That's why some news monitoring tools gather data only after you set up a project and store it only for a fixed period. Tools that let you go way back in time usually reflect it in higher pricing.

What is a brand monitoring tool used for? 

Brand monitoring software supports several high-impact use cases across PR, marketing, product, and customer teams. Here’s how companies typically use it:

• Track media mentions
  See where your brand appears across online news, blogs, and media outlets. Tools like Prowly help PR teams identify the best media opportunities and track who’s covering their brand.
• Detect potential PR crises early
  Real-time alerts and sentiment analysis help you catch negative mentions before they escalate into larger issues.
• Analyze brand sentiment
  Understand how your audience feels about your brand over time and spot changes in tone across key channels.
• Measure earned media performance
  Evaluate which media placements delivered the most value in terms of reach, tone, and alignment with campaign goals.
• Monitor campaign impact
  The best brand monitoring tools track how brand mentions increase during campaigns and where your message is landing.
• Identify journalist sentiment and relationships
  Understand which journalists are writing about you, how they frame your brand, and where to build stronger connections.
• Support cross-functional insights
  Sales, product, and support teams can spot patterns in customer feedback and market perception through brand conversations.

Tools like Prowly combine monitoring with outreach and reporting features, making them especially valuable for PR professionals looking to connect insights with action.

Choose your solution

The choice might be difficult, but it's well worth implementing a brand monitoring tool in your daily work. With this kind of intel, you'll be empowered to make better decisions and improve the quality of your PR results.

Read a few more comparisons, try a few chosen platforms yourself, and get the benefits rolling in from brand monitoring. Good luck!

The post 13 Top Brand Monitoring Software for PR Managers Compared (2025) appeared first on Prowly.

A good PR strategy requires being a step ahead of your competitors. So this is why today we're giving you a full list of the very best tools for competitive analysis. Whether it's through social media, SEO, paid ads, or just their website, there's a competitor research tool for everything. 

Read on to discover how to keep your finger on the pulse thanks to the right competitor analysis tool.

What are competitive analysis tools?

Competitive analysis tools help you understand how your competitors are performing and how your industry is evolving. These tools support market research by revealing key metrics such as website traffic, content performance, keyword rankings, and audience engagement. By using competitive analysis software, you can benchmark your efforts, spot emerging trends, and make data-driven decisions to refine your content strategy and stay ahead in your market.

TL;DR: The best 18 competitor analysis tools

Here is the list of the best competitor research systems:

1. Prowly – All-in-one PR tool for media outreach, press release creation, and coverage tracking.
2. Brand24 – AI-powered media and social media monitoring tool.
3. BuzzSumo – Tool for analyzing content performance, finding influencers, and monitoring trending topics.
4. Prowly (Mention Tracking Focus) – Tracks press coverage, social, print, and broadcast mentions with crisis alerts.
5. Upfluence – Platform for identifying, managing, and paying social media influencers used by competitors.
6. Semrush – SEO tool for keyword tracking, backlink analysis, and competitive content research.
7. iSpionage – Tracks competitors' paid traffic, ad copy, and SEO keywords.
8. Boardfy – Pricing intelligence and dynamic pricing automation for e-commerce.
9. VidIQ – YouTube analytics tool for keyword tracking, video performance, and competitor benchmarking.
10. AdClarity – Insights into competitors’ display, video, and social ad campaigns.
11. Rival IQ – Social media competitive analysis software with engagement and content benchmarking.
12. Google Trends – Free tool to analyze search trend data over time and across regions.
13. Social Blade – Free social media analytics across marketing channels like YouTube, Instagram, and Twitch.
14. Similarweb – Web traffic and digital marketing intelligence platform for benchmarking.
15. Mailcharts – Competitor email and SMS marketing campaign monitoring tool.
16. Sparktoro – Audience intelligence platform for discovering where target audiences spend time online.
17. Moz – SEO software suite for keyword tracking, site audits, and backlink analysis.
18. Visualping – Tracks visual and content changes on competitor websites with alerts.

PR & media monitoring competitor analysis tools

Ideal for PR professionals tracking brand mentions, journalist outreach, and media coverage.

#1. Prowly: competitor analysis tool for coverage tracking, PR outreach

Pricing: Basic ($258/month), Pro ($416/month), Enterprise (custom pricing)

Best for: Best for: combining media outreach, press release distribution, and coverage tracking to gauge competitors' PR reach. Well suited for small to medium in-house PR teams and PR or marketing agencies.

What you can do with Prowly

Prowly is the best all-in-one PR tool for creating press releases and reaching out to journalists. Instead of spraying and praying, you can tap into Prowly's media database of over one million contacts.

With advanced filters, you can find journalists who talk about your industry and your competitors and pitch them a story to get the spotlight on your client or brand.

With features such as media monitoring (more on that later), you can find out what kind of reach your competitors' content is getting and learn what you can do better. With Prowly's AI backed PR software, anyone can create an effective press release, even with no public relations experience.

The top features include:

• AI PR software for creating press releases, emails, and tracking engagement
• Media database of over one million contacts
• Online newsroom
• PR reports
• Media pitching tool
• And much more

Pros:

• Comprehensive all-in-one PR tool: media database, press release distribution, media monitoring, reporting, and more
• Database of over one million journalist contacts with advanced search filters
• AI-powered press release creation and engagement analysis
• Transparent pricing and a 7-day free trial

Cons

• Entry-level pricing is relatively high (from $258 per month)
• Best suited for small and medium PR teams or agencies; may be too extensive for freelancers or very small businesses

Overall verdict

Prowly is a versatile PR tool, especially valuable for teams and agencies seeking a comprehensive solution for monitoring, media contacts, and PR analytics.

#2. Brand24: social listening tool for competitor insights

Pricing: Individual ($119/month), Team ($159/month), Pro ($239/month), Enterprise ($399/month)

Best for: AI social listening, getting access to media mentions across platforms such as web, socials, videos, podcasts and more.e.

What you can do with Brand24

Brand24 is the best-in-class brand mention monitoring tool. With access to over 25 million online sources, you can get an overview of your mentions and track them in real time. With features such as advanced sentiment analysis and detailed reporting, managers can have an overview of multiple competitors in one place. Great for in-house social media teams and marketing agencies.

Top features:

• Reach and sentiment analysis
• Personalized reports for in-house teams or clients
• AI-based recommendations for branding and marketing campaigns
• AI topic analysis
• PR metrics such as AVE and presence score

Pros

• Access to over 25 million online sources, real-time monitoring
• Advanced sentiment analysis and detailed reports
• AI-generated recommendations for branding and marketing campaigns

Cons

• Starts at $119 per month, which can be a barrier for micro-businesses
• Focuses mainly on social media and online monitoring with fewer traditional PR features

Overall verdict

Brand24 is a great tool for mention tracking and sentiment analysis, ideal for marketing and PR teams focused on social media and online presence. It is a great social media tracker.

#3. Rival IQ: social media marketing strategy support

Pricing: Drive ($239/month), Engage ($349/month), Engage Pro ($559/month)

Best for: Comparing competitor social media performance, delivering metrics on engagement, follower growth, and content strategies across platforms.

What you can do with Rival IQ

Rival IQ is a competitor tracking software exclusively for social media platforms. Simply add your own account and your competitors' info and you will get a quick rundown of where you're underperforming and what you could do better.

Key features include:

• Head-to-head social media account comparison
• Social media audits with customizable reports
• Social post analysis (top-performing content, hashtags, best time to post, Boolean keyword search and more)

Pros

• Rival IQ specializes in social media competitor analysis, tracking engagement, follower growth, and content performance

Cons

• Focused on social media platforms, so not suitable for SEO or content analysis
• Pricing may be high for small teams

Overall verdict

Rival IQ is a must-have for social media managers who want to benchmark their performance and content against direct competitors.

SEO & website traffic competitor analysis tools

For digital marketers focused on SEO, keyword gaps, and traffic benchmarking.

#4. BuzzSumo: tool for competitor analysis of content performance

Pricing: Content Creation ($199/month), PR & Comms ($299/month), Suite ($499/month), Enterprise ($999/month)

Best for: helping marketers and PR teams track competitor content performance, discover popular topics, and identify high-impact influencers.

What you can do with BuzzSumo

BuzzSumo is an all-in-one tool for content creators. Whether you're a journalist or run a brand, you can use this tool to measure how your content performs in the real world. You can tap into new topics, identify popular content across the web and social media, monitor your brand mentions, find influencers and much more.

Top features include:

• Real-time trending topic research
• Easily find the most viral content
• Competitive benchmarking
• Competitor backlink analysis

Pros

• Content performance analytics, discovery of trending topics and influencers
• Brand mention monitoring and competitor backlink analysis
• Real-time trend tracking

Cons

• Higher pricing (from $199 per month)
• Primarily focused on content analysis, lacking broader PR or media monitoring features

Overall verdict

BuzzSumo is a great choice for content marketing analytics and trend research. It is recommended for marketers and PR professionals who want to provide competitor analysis for content, monitor Google search rankings, and have a search engine's rank tracker at hand.

#5. Semrush: website competitor analysis tool for SEO & keywords

Pricing: Pro ($139.95/month), Guru ($249.95/month), Enterprise (starts at $5,000/month)

Best for: identifying SEO and content gaps, showing keywords competitors rank for, provides content ideas and backlink opportunities.

What you can do with Semrush

Semrush is the all-in-one tool for SEO. Its competitor website analysis tool lets you see what keywords your competitors are ranking for, which pages are driving traffic, how many backlinks they have, and much more.

The top Semrush features are:

• Site audits
• Keyword research
• Content planning, creation, and optimization
• Backlink analysis and tracking
• Rank tracking

Pros

• Offers a comprehensive suite for SEO, including keyword research, backlink tracking, and site audits
• Helps identify what keywords and content competitors are ranking for, revealing valuable opportunities
• Includes detailed reporting and insights for both organic and paid search

Cons

• Pricing can be steep for small businesses or freelancers
• The wide range of features may be overwhelming for SEO newbies

Overall verdict

Semrush is an industry-leading choice for organizations that want to deeply understand and outperform their competitors in search results. It’s best suited for marketing teams or agencies with the time and resources to leverage its full capabilities. Semrush, as a keyword tool, supports you in analyzing traffic sources, outranking your content over competitors' websites, and boosting your blog posts in Google search.

Paid advertising & pricing intelligence competitor tools

For performance marketers tracking ads, budgets, and pricing strategies.

#6. iSpionage: competitor analysis software for paid ad strategies

Pricing: Starter ($59/month), Professional ($99/month), Advanced ($299/month), Enterprise (custom pricing)

Best for: tracking competitors' PPC campaigns, keywords, and ad copy to provide detailed insights into digital advertising strategies.

What you can do with iSpionage

You can see what your competitors are doing in the field of PPC and SEO. Find out what keywords they are targeting organically, which ones they are bidding for, plus the budget and creatives for each of them.

Top features include:

• Detailed competitor analysis
• PPC keywords and ad effectiveness index scoring
• SEO keywords, keyword groupings, and landing page snapshots

Pros

• Provides a snapshot of landing pages and campaign effectiveness

Cons

• Focused on paid search, so less useful if you want broader competitive insights
• Some features require higher-tier plans

Overall verdict

iSpionage is ideal for marketers who want to optimize their PPC campaigns by learning directly from their competitors’ advertising strategies.

#7. AdClarity: digital advertising & competitor campaign analysis

Pricing: not available publicly—you can only book a demo

Best for: detailed insights into competitors’ display, social, and video advertising campaigns, offering valuable data for benchmarking digital ad strategies.

What you can do with AdClarity

AdClarity is a digital ad intelligence platform that lets you compare your performance against competitors' paid ads. It covers everything from display ads, social media, video and in-app ads, programmatic vs. direct ads, and much more.

Some of the best features are:

• Explore competitors' ad activity across platforms from a single dashboard
• Data exports, APIs and custom dashboards
• 25 million human panellists that provide insights on paid ads

Pros:

• Delivers detailed insights into competitors’ digital advertising campaigns across display, social, and video
• Offers benchmarking and creative analysis for paid ads
• Useful for agencies and brands running large-scale campaigns

Cons:

• Pricing is not public and may be expensive
• Focused on advertising, so not a full competitor analysis solution

Overall verdict

AdClarity is a strong choice for businesses that want to benchmark their digital ad strategies against the competition and get creative inspiration.

#8. Boardfy: competitor pricing intelligence software

Pricing: starts at €39/month, depending on the number of products you want to track

Best for: tracking competitor pricing at a glance, making automated pricing changes, optimizing Google Shopping campaigns and more.

What you can do with Boardfy

Boardfy is built for e-commerce stores and brands that want to stay on top of pricing changes for their products all in one dashboard. Track thousands of products or competitors at a time and inform your sales and marketing strategies with real-time data.

Top features are:

• Competitor monitoring, pricing intelligence, feed optimizer, and dynamic pricing AI for e-commerce
• Monitoring distributors and MSRP variations for brands

Pros

• Designed for e-commerce, it tracks competitor pricing and helps you react to changes quickly
• Supports dynamic pricing and can monitor thousands of products at once

Cons

• Focused on pricing, so it won’t cover other marketing strategies
• Final price depends on the number of products tracked, which may add up for large inventories

Overall verdict

Boardfy is a must-have for e-commerce businesses that need to stay competitive on price and want automated tools to help manage pricing strategies.

Influencer & email marketing competitor analysis tools

For brand teams analyzing outreach effectiveness and email campaign performance.

#9. Upfluence: influencer discovery & competitor site analysis tool

Pricing: not available publicly, you have to talk to their sales to get pricing details

Best for: identifying influencers connected to competitor brands, helping PR and marketing teams pinpoint key voices in their industry.

What you can do with Upfluence

This tool allows you to find, manage, track and pay influencers all in one place. You can look into the influencers in your industry that your competitors are using, discover their rates, the performance of their content, and their typical requirements for collaboration. Having this competitor data in hand, you can see which influencers should be involved in your marketing efforts. 

Top features are:

• Finding influencers who already track and love your brand
• Detailed campaign metrics to help you pick and choose the best influencers with the highest ROI
• Managing, hiring and paying influencers directly through Upfluence
• Setting up affiliate campaigns

Pros

• Comprehensive influencer management: discovery, analytics, collaboration, and payments all in one platform
• Detailed influencer data, rates, and campaign effectiveness
• Affiliate campaign management capabilities

Cons

• No public pricing—requires contact with the sales team
• Mainly focused on influencer marketing with few PR or content features

Overall verdict

Upfluence is an advanced tool for businesses and agencies looking to professionally manage influencer collaborations and analyze competitor activity in this space. With this platform, you can gain competitor insights and learn from their lessons or make improvements when it comes to influencer marketing strategy.

#10. MailCharts: competitor analysis tool for email marketing campaigns

Pricing: starts from $149/month and offers a free plan.

Best for: monitoring competitor email strategies, design, and frequency, giving marketing teams insights for optimized email campaigns.

What you can do with MailCharts

Whether you're looking for inspiration for your campaigns or you want a sneak peek at competitors, MailCharts has all the data on email and SMS campaigns. You can conduct competitive research of this marketing channel and, based on the insights, make data-driven decisions.

From complete beginners to email pros, MailCharts gives you a full stack of tools to get started with your next campaign. 

You'll find features such as:

• Historical and competitive data for your industry
• MailCharts Index with 1,000+ brands and their email data
• Lifecycle campaign data for all companies in the database

Pros

• Analysis of competitors’ email campaigns: content, frequency, and design
• Email campaign inspiration and benchmarking
• Useful for e-commerce and marketing teams

Cons

• Limited to email monitoring—does not cover broader PR or social media
• Some advanced features are only available on higher-tier plans

Overall verdict

MailCharts is a niche but valuable tool for teams wanting to monitor and focus on their revenue growth from email marketing by learning from competitors.

YouTube & video content competitor tools

#11. VidIQ: competitor analysis tool for YouTube

Pricing: Boost ($16.58/month), Coaching ($99/month)

Best for: insights into YouTube video performance, including competitor keyword usage, engagement metrics, and content strategies for YouTube-specific growth.

What you can do with VidIQ

If you want to win with YouTube content, VidIQ gives you all the insights you need with their competitive tracking software designed solely for this platform.

Whether you want to do research and come up with new content ideas or find out what competitors are doing, VidIQ offers it all.

You can find features such as:

• Competitor channel analysis (highest viewed videos, views per hour, subscriber growth driven by premium content)
• Exporting top competitor keywords
• Sorting competitors by date, views per hour and other critical data points

Pros

• Tailored for YouTube, offering insights into competitor video performance, keywords, and engagement
• Helps you identify trending topics and optimize your own content

Cons

• Only works with YouTube, so not suitable for broader social or content analysis
• Some advanced features require a paid subscription

Overall verdict

VidIQ is perfect for creators and marketers focused on YouTube who want to understand what’s working for competitors and improve their own video strategy.

Free competitor analysis tools

Looking for a free plan? Here are several analysis tools that can not cost you a single penny.

#12. Google Trends: forecasting search trends and competitor signals

Pricing: free

Best for: real-time data on search trends, helping PR and marketing teams understand rising topics, forecast seasonal trends, and align content with audience interests.

What you can do with Google Trends

Google Trends is a completely free competitor analysis software that should be on everyone's radar. It displays the popularity of search queries over time and lets you see how popular a given term is in web searches.

Some of the many things this tool can do include:

• Showing search interests over time
• Comparing different terms and topics
• Showing regional interest
• Related topics and queries
• Real-time trends
• Seasonal insights

Pros

• Free tool for tracking search interest in topics and keywords over time
• Helps spot rising trends and compare popularity across regions
• Easy to use and accessible to everyone

Cons

• Limited to search trend data, so it doesn’t offer deeper competitive insights
• No direct competitor benchmarking features

Overall verdict

Google Trends is an essential, no-cost tool for anyone wanting to understand what’s trending in their industry and align content with audience interests.

#13. Sparktoro: social behavior & audience intelligence tool

Pricing: free

Best for: ideal for PR and marketing teams looking to identify audience behaviors and improve targeting strategies.

What you can do with Sparktoro

Instead of researching your competitors, Sparktoro researches your target market to find their preferences. If you struggle to determine why your audience behaves in a certain way or why your competitors perform the way they do, Sparktoro can provide many answers.

Key features include:

• Audience research: find the websites, social media accounts, podcasts, YouTube channels, etc., your audience engages with
• Keyword insights and demographic data

Pros

• Helps you discover podcasts, social accounts, and websites that matter to your target audience
• Useful for refining marketing and PR outreach

Cons

• Not a direct competitor analysis tool, it focuses more on audience behavior
• Some features are limited to paid plans

Overall verdict

Sparktoro is excellent for marketers who want to understand their audience’s habits and discover new channels for outreach, rather than just tracking their competitors’ actions.

For content creators benchmarking channels, engagement, and growth.

#14. Social Blade: social media metrics for competitor benchmarking

Pricing: free

Best for: Individuals and teams looking to monitor, compare, and analyze social media growth and engagement across platforms like YouTube, Instagram, Twitch, and more. Especially helpful for creators, agencies, and marketers who want quick insights into their own or competitors’ channel performance.

What Social Blade offers:

It provides a straightforward way to examine public statistics for a wide range of social media accounts. Users can instantly see up-to-date figures such as subscriber or follower counts, video view totals, and engagement rates.

Key features:

• Analytics for multiple platforms (YouTube, Instagram, Twitch, X, Facebook, and others)
• Channel and account comparison tools
• Historical growth tracking and future projections
• Publicly accessible data—no registration needed for basic use

Pros

• Free to use for most analytics and comparisons, you can see how much traffic competitors get
• Easy to get started—just enter a username to see results
• Covers a broad range of popular social platforms in one place
• Helps identify trends, monitor competitors, and discover influencers

Cons

• Limited to publicly available data; lacks deeper analytics or integration with other marketing tools
• Some advanced features require a paid upgrade
• Does not support PR outreach, media monitoring, or in-depth campaign reporting

Overall verdict

Social Blade is a practical, user-friendly resource for anyone who wants a quick snapshot of social media channel performance. While it doesn’t replace more comprehensive analytics or PR platforms, its accessibility and multi-platform support make it a useful addition for creators, marketers, and agencies interested in tracking growth and benchmarking against others in their industry.

#15. Similarweb: website competitor analysis tool for traffic & engagement metrics

Pricing: free

Best for: Entrepreneurs, marketing professionals, and businesses seeking detailed data on website traffic, audience behavior, and multi-channel digital marketing performance to benchmark competitors and understand market trends.

What Similarweb offers:

Similarweb is a digital intelligence platform that provides extensive insights into website performance, competitor strategies, and trends. It aggregates data from millions of websites and apps across more than 190 countries, delivering metrics such as traffic sources, user engagement, keyword rankings, and referral channels.

Key features include:

• Website traffic and audience behavior analysis
• Multi-channel marketing performance 
• Keyword research and competitive benchmarking
• Historical data and trend visualization
• Customizable dashboards and exportable reports
• API access and integration with other business tools

Pros

• Provides a broad and detailed view of competitors’ digital marketing strategies
• Covers multiple marketing channels in a single platform for holistic analysis
• Offers historical data for trend identification and forecasting
• User-friendly interface with clear visualizations and customizable reports

Cons

• Pricing can be high for startups and small businesses, especially for advanced plans
• Some data may be limited or less accurate for low-traffic or niche websites
• The platform’s extensive features may require time to learn and fully utilize

Overall verdict

Similarweb is a robust website competitor analysis tool designed for businesses seeking digital competitive intelligence across multiple channels. With insights into traffic sources, audience engagement, and competitor behavior, it's a go-to platform for marketing teams focused on optimizing online presence. While its pricing and learning curve may be a hurdle for smaller teams, its comprehensive data coverage and flexibility offer significant value for organizations committed to data-driven growth.

#16. Moz: SEO competitor analysis tool for keyword & link tracking

Pricing: free

Best for: small to medium businesses, SEO professionals

What Moz offers:

Moz is a well-established SEO software suite designed to help users improve search rankings, analyze competitors, and optimize website performance. It provides a range of features, including keyword research, backlink analysis, rank tracking, and competitive research.

Key features include:

• Keyword research (with AI-driven suggestions)
• Competitor domain and keyword analysis
• Site audits and page crawling to identify SEO issues
• Backlink tracking and analysis
• Scheduled and branded reporting

Pros

• User-friendly interface suitable for both beginners and experienced SEO professionals

Cons

• Lacks certain content marketing and link-building tools found in competitors like Semrush
• Local SEO support is limited to a few markets (US, UK, AU, CA)
• Does not support keyword clustering, which some competitors offer

Overall verdict

Moz Pro is a solid SEO platform offering a broad range of essential tools for keyword research, competitor analysis, and site optimization at a reasonable price point. It is particularly well-suited for small and medium businesses or marketing teams seeking an easy-to-use yet powerful SEO solution. 

#17. Visualping: competitor website analysis tool

Pricing: free

Best for: tracking visual and content changes on competitors' websites and sending alerts when updates occur. Useful for monitoring pricing, messaging, and new product announcements.

What you can do with Visualping

From small tweaks to major changes on landing and pricing pages, Visualping shoots you an update every time one of your competitors makes a change on their web presentation.

Expect features such as:

• Website change detection and real-time alerts
• Email alerts with screenshots of what changed

Pros

• Great for tracking pricing, product launches, or messaging updates
• Easy to set up with email alerts and browser extensions

Cons

• Only tracks website changes, so it won’t cover social, SEO, or content strategies
• May require manual setup for each page you want to monitor

Overall verdict

Visualping is a simple but effective tool for anyone who needs to stay updated on competitor website changes without manual tracking.

Competitor analysis tools: conclusion 

A competitor analysis tool can give you tons of helpful information without lifting a finger. In the age where a competitive research tool can do the heavy lifting for you, it simply makes no sense to do the manual research yourself.

This is where Prowly's competitive analysis software comes in. We monitor the web for mentions of your and your competitors' brands and target keywords, so you never miss a beat.

The post 17 Top Competitor Analysis Tools to Track Your Competition appeared first on Prowly.

The UK media landscape can be quite varied, with broadcast, print (often hidden behind paywalls), online, and social making for a colourful mix. The problem is that handling everything at once requires a comprehensive media monitoring solution that covers all media channels.

Luckily, we’ve compiled a list of the best media monitoring services for the UK market to help you track mentions, identify trends, and strengthen your earned media strategy. You’ll also learn which features are must-haves for UK-focused tools.

What is UK Media Monitoring?

Media monitoring in the United Kingdom is the systematic process of tracking and analysing print, online, social, and broadcast media to gather insights into how a business, organisation, or individual is represented across the UK media landscape.

How is media monitoring different in the UK?

The UK’s media mix—national press, tabloids, and regional outlets—is fast-moving. But print and broadcast are still leading. Surprised?

Here's the trick: many major outlets—like The Telegraph—restrict content and fall under the UK-specific NLA licence, which governs how print media is shared. That’s why it’s essential to use fully licensed monitoring tools.

So the first thing to look at when planning media monitoring strategy for UK market is–choose a service like Prowly, that tracks all formats, including paywalled print, online, social, and broadcast.

Top 5 media monitoring tools in the UK

We've reviewed the top five media monitoring tools for the UK market, along with their pricing and key features, so that you can find the best solution for your needs.

Note that, unfortunately, most tools do not offer transparent pricing—it’s usually necessary to get in touch with them to receive a custom quote.

UK Media Monitoring Services Overview

#1 Prowly

💸 Pricing: From £209 per month

Prowly is more than just a media monitoring tool—it’s your all-in-one digital PR platform for managing every stage of the PR workflow.

From media outreach and journalist discovery to monitoring coverage and tracking backlinks, it’s tailored for digital PR pros who want maximum impact with fewer tools.

Top features:

• Comprehensive media monitoring across online, print, broadcast, and social channels—helping you stay on top of your brand presence, wherever it appears.
• Backlink tracking so you can measure not just exposure, but also SEO value, by tracking articles that link to your target URLs. Build dashboards with backlink-rich mentions and sort them by domain authority using data backed by Semrush.
• Real-time alerts and sentiment analysis to keep you informed of media spikes and tone shifts.
• Advanced hashtag tracking—monitor #journorequest and other high-value hashtags with precise filters for topics like travel or finance.
• Audience & Traffic insights powered by Semrush, integrated into the Media Database—so you can target high-ranking media outlets based on relevancy, reach, and SEO value.
• Media Database with 1M+ journalist contacts, plus tools for email pitching, tagging, and campaign management.
• Custom dashboards and widgets to report on what matters most—mentions by country, domain rank, sentiment, or category (e.g. Advertising industry).

💡 No need to juggle multiple tools for backlinks, targeting, outreach, and reporting—Prowly brings it all together in one place.

#2 Roxhill

💸 Pricing: Custom pricing

Roxhill is a UK-focused media intelligence tool designed specifically for PR professionals who need deep insights into journalists and media outlets.

Media monitoring features include journalist profiles, real-time media alerts, advanced search filters, and email analytics. It also offers a comprehensive media database with direct journalist contact details.

Top features:

• Smart Folder Organization: Automatically categorizes media mentions into Smart Folders based on brand pillars, spokespeople, and themes. 
• Automated Metrics & Sentiment Analysis: Assigns sentiment, campaign themes, and other custom metrics to coverage, streamlining reporting processes. 
• Integrated PR Tools: Combines media monitoring with a comprehensive media database and outreach tools, enhancing the efficiency of PR campaigns.  

#3 Vuelio

💸 Pricing: Custom pricing

Vuelio is a comprehensive media monitoring and PR management tool that provides strong coverage of the UK media landscape.

Media monitoring features include real-time news tracking, social media listening, sentiment analysis, and broadcast monitoring. It also offers a robust media database with journalist and influencer contacts, press release distribution, and a built-in PR CRM.

Top features:

• Unlimited Keyword & Coverage Monitoring: Offers flat-fee plans with no limits on keywords or coverage, tracking across online, print, broadcast, and social media. 
• Integrated Media & Political Databases: Provides access to extensive media and political contact databases, facilitating targeted outreach. 
• Customizable Reporting Tools: Enables users to generate tailored reports and dashboards, enhancing the evaluation of PR efforts. 

#4 Meltwater

💸 Pricing: Custom pricing

Meltwater is a global media monitoring and intelligence tool that provides in-depth insights across news, social media, and broadcast channels.

Media monitoring features include real-time alerts, AI-driven sentiment analysis, social listening, and competitive benchmarking. It also offers a vast media database with journalist contacts, press release distribution, and advanced analytics to measure PR impact.

Top features:

• AI-Powered Monitoring with Mira: Utilizes AI assistant ‘Mira’ for real-time media monitoring and insights across various channels. 
• Comprehensive Media Intelligence: Covers over 270,000 online news sources, print publications, TV/radio broadcasts, and social media platforms. 
• Advanced Sentiment & Trend Analysis: Offers sophisticated tools for sentiment analysis and trend detection, aiding in strategic decision-making.

#5 Cision

💸 Pricing: Custom pricing

Cision is a leading media monitoring and PR platform in the US with extensive global coverage, offering powerful tools for tracking media impact and managing press outreach.

Media monitoring features include real-time news alerts, AI-powered sentiment analysis, social media tracking, and broadcast monitoring. It also has a vast media database with journalist contacts, press release distribution, and a PR CRM for campaign management.

Top features:

• Extensive Media Coverage: Monitors a vast array of sources, including print, broadcast, online, and social media, offering real-time tracking. 
• Cision Communications Cloud®: Combines media monitoring, database management, analytics, and social media distribution in one platform. 
• Advanced Analytics & Reporting: Delivers in-depth insights into media coverage, including sentiment analysis and share of voice metrics.  

12 features to look for in UK media monitoring services

If you're looking to monitor your brand's reputation online and aren't sure what to look for in a media tracking service (especially for the UK), here are some features to pay attention to when shopping around.

#1 Coverage

When we say "coverage," we mean two things.

One, the area it covers, as some tools focus on specific regions of the world. Furthermore, some services will be better at providing mentions from the UK, while others are focused more on the US market.

Two, coverage of available platforms, such as Facebook, X, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram, TikTok, print and broadcast, and others.

💡 Ideally, you should choose a platform that provides access to your most important channels and regions for a holistic view of your brand presence.

#2 Content behind paywalls, NLA licence, and UK media coverage

Many UK media outlets – especially established print outlets like The Telegraph – limit online content access with subscription models. They are covered under the NLA licence (Newspaper Licensing Agency), which governs how copyrighted articles are shared.

This can pose a serious blind spot for brands, as influential stories or industry mentions may go unnoticed if your media monitoring tool doesn’t have licensing agreements in place.

And if you're working in the UK market one thing is sure–you’ll need access to this licensed press content.

Ideally, you should choose a platform that provides access to both mainstream and hard-to-reach sources, including those behind paywalls–like Prowly that supports NLA content for every Pro member.

💡 Prowly offers print monitoring powered by licensed content from 7,000+ outlets total, including national and regional UK press. Through its integration with LexisNexis, you get compliant access to premium print coverage—all in one place.

Whether it’s a feature in the national magazine or a niche mention in a local daily, Prowly helps you spot it, measure its value, and incorporate it into your reporting.

👉 Want to make the most of your print coverage? Discover how to turn print media monitoring into a powerful part of your PR strategy.

#3 Real-time alerts

When set up for the right keywords or hashtags, the real-time insights let you prevent minor problems from escalating into crises as well as find opportunities in your competitors' problems. You can find out if a major crisis is brewing not just around your brand, but also - your competitors.

Of course, you may also get daily, weekly or monthly summaries according to your needs.

👉 Strategy example: media monitoring for reactive PR

One of the most effective ways to practice reactive PR is by tapping into live journalist requests.

💡 Social media hashtags like #journorequest and #bloggerrequest are goldmines for spotting real-time media opportunities—and media monitoring tools help you to never miss a beat.

With Prowly, you can take this a step further by setting up precise hashtag filters for niche topics, like travel or finance. This way, you cut through the noise and only see the most relevant media requests for your brand or client.

Want to make it even easier?

Create email alerts based on these filters and get relevant requests delivered straight to your inbox.

💡 While alerts are often associated with crisis monitoring (such as spikes in negative mentions), you can also use them as your personal opportunity tracker—a kind of curated "newsletter" that helps you jump on journalist requests before anyone else.

#4 Sentiment analysis

When someone mentions you, it's pretty easy to tell how they feel about your brand at a glance. But you don't always have the time to spare it.

Choose a tool with sentiment analysis: the ability to automatically decipher how people perceive your brand.

This not only saves massive amounts of time but can also send you alerts when there is a sudden spike of negative mentions, which is a tell-tale sign of a crisis in making.

#5 Reporting and analytics

Good media monitoring tools let you create dashboards and reports with key metrics that are relevant to your client or business. You should get an overview of your mentions, the sentiment behind them, the total reach, share of voice, and other important PR metrics.

But it doesn’t end there.

For PR professionals who care about impact beyond exposure, tracking backlinks is crucial.

#6 Backlink tracking for smarter PR measurement

Backlinks in media coverage are more than just vanity metrics—they directly influence your SEO performance and domain authority. With backlink tracking, you can monitor not just how many articles mention your brand, but how many actually link back to your website or product page.

In Prowly, this is made simple. When building a monitoring query, you can specify your target URL—like your homepage or a specific landing page. This allows you to track only those mentions that include a backlink.

From there, you can analyse:

• The quantity and quality of those backlinks
• The domain authority of referring media outlets (powered by Semrush data)

For reporting, you can set up a dedicated dashboard that lists all articles with backlinks, filtered and sorted by key criteria—such as media category, country, or domain rank. This gives you a clear picture of which PR efforts drive real SEO value.

💡 If you're running a backlink acquisition campaign, use Prowly’s Media Database to group targets by audience demographics and traffic insights, assign tags to track progress, and monitor results directly in your custom dashboards. You’ll know exactly which media tiers are delivering valuable links—and which ones aren’t.

#7 Domain authority: The SEO twist to digital PR

Modern digital PR combines the storytelling power of traditional media outreach with an online spin that benefits search visibility.

One key performance indicator? The domain authority of the media outlets where your stories appear.

In Prowly, you can create widgets to display top-performing mentions based on the criteria that matter most to your strategy. For example:

• Show only mentions from high-authority domains
• Filter by country, estimated reach, or sentiment
• Highlight mentions from specific verticals—such as the Advertising industry—that offer the most value to your brand

How can you measure how well your PR campaign landed with high-quality, reputable outlets?

💡 You can simply generate a report that lists positive or neutral mentions, sorted by domain authority. This allows you to tie your PR success not just to visibility, but to the long-term SEO benefits it brings.

#8 Support and onboarding

Configuring queries can be time-consuming and complex, especially when aiming for precise results.

Hands-on onboarding assistance and quick access to a real person can make or break your experience. And when coverage is missed (because it happens), you'll want a reliable customer support team that doesn’t keep you waiting.

That's why the best media monitoring tools offer more than just software; they come with a knowledgeable and responsive support team to help you get the most out of the platform.

💡 Before choosing a tool, ask what’s included in onboarding, how support is handled, and whether it's part of basic pricing or an add-on.

#9 Custom query building

Whether you’re tracking a product launch or analysing competitor buzz, query flexibility is key.

Getting relevant results starts with setting up custom monitoring queries that go beyond basic keywords. A powerful media monitoring tool should let you fine-tune your searches with:

• Boolean operators
• Inclusion/exclusion filters
• URL tracking
• Domain rank prioritisation
• Language or region-specific parameters

This helps you focus on what really matters, avoid irrelevant noise, and tailor your monitoring to specific campaigns, verticals, or target audiences.

#10 Organizing and working with mentions

Monitoring hundreds of mentions is one thing. Making sense of them is another. Look for tools that help you organize and prioritize your results so you don’t get overwhelmed.

In Prowly, you can:

• Assign Tiers to mentions based on media outlet value
• Mark key mentions as Favourites
• Add Tags for campaigns, clients, or sentiment
• Filter mentions by region, category, domain authority, and more

This structure allows you to quickly zero in on what’s important and create segmented reports that actually tell a story—perfect for multi-client agencies or brands juggling many campaigns.

#11 Ease of use (User experience)

Don’t overlook the day-to-day usability of the platform, because media monitoring is a task you and your team will be doing daily. If the interface is clunky, slow, or hard to navigate, adoption suffers and so does your ROI.

Choose a tool with a clean, intuitive UX that’s easy to learn with thoughtful design choices that support productivity. A well-designed dashboard, drag-and-drop functionality, and clearly labelled filters can cut hours from your reporting and daily workflows.

💡 Always take the free trial. If it feels frustrating to use within the first hour, it’s not the one.

#12 Pricing structure and hidden costs

Media monitoring pricing can be tricky. Some tools offer a low starting price—but only for a limited set of features. Others might charge extra for:

• Additional users
• Backlink or sentiment data
• Media database access
• Mentions volume
• Premium support or onboarding

💡 Before committing, ask what’s included in the base price, what add-ons are charged separately, and how flexible the pricing is as your needs grow. Also, check whether NLA-licensed content (for UK coverage) is included or requires an extra fee.

Transparency in pricing = fewer surprises down the line.

Tips for effective media monitoring in the UK

Once you have your tool for media monitoring, it's important to know that just having the right toolset is not quite enough. Here are some tips to ensure you get the best value from media monitoring software.

Set up relevant keywords

Besides your brand name, make sure to cover relevant keywords around your product.

For example, if you represent a shoe brand, you'll wish to track your brand name and keywords such as "running shoes," "outdoor footwear," "lightweight shoes," and others that are relevant for your target audience.

Monitor regional and national press

To understand the bigger picture, monitor the entire UK media landscape, but don't forget to include regional papers and press.

Track your competitors

Add your competitors' brand names to the mix so you can stay on top of their online presence. Thanks to real-time mentions, you can track an ongoing crisis that you can use to your advantage.

Track TV and radio mentions

While online media monitoring should be your primary concern, the UK still has strong TV and radio landscapes that are worth dedicating time and attention to.

Analyze sentiment regularly

Great media monitoring software does sentiment analysis by default for each mention. As these analyses come in, monitor for major trends and changes to see how your target audience perceives you.

Regularly review data and adjust strategies

Based on the metrics in your dashboards, you may adjust your public relations strategy. For example, a great response to a particular campaign can be a sign to continue with similar messaging and platform placement.

Time to get moving

The UK is a unique market for media monitoring because traditional press and TV are very much alive and play a pivotal role in public perception.

While monitoring online sources is a great start, it often won't be enough to give you a clear overview of how your target audience perceives your brand.

A good media monitoring tool does all of the heavy lifting while you analyze and interpret your results, allowing you to adjust your strategy on the go.

With Prowly, you get all the features needed to monitor your online and offline presence, build relationships with journalists, and create and send great press releases all in one place.

The post Top 5 Media Monitoring Services & Tools in The UK (2025 Guide) appeared first on Prowly.

Whether you're a growing agency juggling multiple clients or an in-house team looking to pitch smarter—not harder—this guide covers the best Muck Rack competitors in 2025. We break down each tool’s strengths, pricing, and who they’re best suited for—so you can find the one that meets your real needs, not just a bloated feature list.

TL;DR: Why consider Muck Rack alternatives?

Muck Rack is a well-known PR platform offering media outreach, a journalist database, and media monitoring. However, it may not be the optimal choice for every team.

1#. High cost: Muck Rack's pricing starts around $15,000 per year, which can be prohibitive for smaller teams or agencies operating on tighter budgets.

#2. Annual contracts: The requirement for yearly commitments reduces flexibility, making it challenging for teams that prefer monthly or more adaptable plans.

#3. Feature set: While Muck Rack excels in its media database and monitoring, it lacks integrated tools for press release creation, online newsrooms, or AI-driven features that can enhance efficiency and outreach effectiveness.

#4. Database-heavy, but not always precise: While Muck Rack is known for its vast media contact database, today’s PR landscape demands more than quantity. The real value lies in identifying the right journalists—especially for niche topics—which is where tools like Prowly’s AI-driven search and Semrush-powered audience insights come in.

When to explore Muck Rack competitors

Consider exploring other PR tools if:

• You're a small to mid-sized team seeking a more affordable solution without compromising on essential features.
• You require integrated tools for press release creation, PR outreach, and newsroom management.
• You value AI-powered functionalities to streamline your PR processes.
• Flexibility in contract terms is important to your team.

Muck Rack alternative #1: Prowly

Prowly is an all-in-one public relations software solution that helps small and medium PR agencies and in-house PR teams manage media relations, create press releases, pitch the right journalists, and monitor PR campaigns all backed by the power of AI.

Best for: Small to mid-sized PR teams looking for smart journalist targeting and built-in PR tools.

Pricing: Starts at $258/month, billed annually.

Free trial: Free 7 day trial available.

Key features:

• Global media monitoring (blogs, forums, print, broadcast)
• AI-powered journalist search with keyword expansion to uncover niche topics and contacts
• Semrush-powered audience insights for smarter outlet targeting based on traffic data
• Generative AI tools to help draft press releases, pitches, and other content faster
• Advanced email analytics—track open rates, engagement, and follow-up timing
• Online newsroom builder to host press kits and stories in one branded place
• Easy onboarding and standout usability, ideal for fast-paced teams

Prowly vs. Muck Rack: which one’s right for you?

If you're a small or mid-sized PR team, both Prowly and Muck Rack might be on your radar. While they serve a similar audience, their approaches to media relations are very different.

Why PR teams choose Prowly

• Smarter media discovery: Not just who’s in the database, but who’s actually relevant. AI keyword search and Semrush audience data help uncover niche journalists and media outlets.
• Tools built for content creation: Save time by creating and distributing press materials all from one platform—press release editor, newsroom builder, and email outreach included.
• Transparent, flexible pricing: Starts at $258/month. No lengthy contracts or custom quotes needed—ideal for teams with changing priorities or client mixes.
• Faster onboarding: Get your team pitching and publishing in hours—not weeks. No steep learning curve, just immediate usability.

“As a fast-moving agency, we needed a tool that scaled with us—not slowed us down. Prowly gave us speed, flexibility, and access to niche media that larger platforms just didn’t.” — She-PR agency team. Read the full case study →

Muck Rack vs Prowly: pricing

Muck Rack alternative #2: Meltwater

Meltwater is an enterprise-grade media intelligence platform that combines traditional PR capabilities with advanced marketing analytics. It’s designed for large organizations that require deep insights, expansive media monitoring, and global scalability.

Best for: Enterprise teams and global agencies needing extensive media tracking and data-rich reporting.

Pricing: Based on our research, Meltwater costs an average of $15,000 to $20,000 per year.

Free trial: No, you can only request a demo call.

Key features:

• Global media monitoring (online, print, broadcast, social, podcasts)
• AI-powered sentiment analysis and brand tracking
• Influencer identification across earned and social media
• Competitive benchmarking and market intelligence tools
• Collaboration and workflow features for large comms teams

Standout value:
Meltwater goes far beyond media outreach—its strength lies in comprehensive monitoring, marketing intelligence, and campaign analytics. It's a robust option for organizations managing multi-regional or cross-channel communications, but likely overkill for smaller PR teams or budget-conscious agencies.

Muck Rack vs Meltwater: pricing

While pricing often depends on team size and features, here’s a quick look at how Muck Rack and Meltwater typically compare to each other:

✅ Pros

User reviews on G2 highlight that Meltwater helps identify appropriate media contacts for pitches and provides robust media monitoring features, along with the following advantages:

• the quality of mentions
• no limits on queries
• the customer service is often praised

🔻Cons

Users have mentioned encountering the follow problems:

• outdated information in the media database 
• experiencing slow customer service responses

Muck Rack alternative #3: Cision

Cision is one of the most established names in PR software, offering a full suite of media database, outreach, distribution, and monitoring tools. Designed for large-scale organizations, it’s often bundled with legacy services like PR Newswire and TrendKite.

Best for: Enterprise comms teams and large agencies with complex PR workflows, global outreach, and big media budgets.

Pricing: Cision plans start at $10,000 per year can go up to $30,000 per year.

Free trial: No, you can only request a demo call.

Key features:

• Extensive global media database and influencer network
• Press release distribution via PRNewswire
• Multi-channel media monitoring (print, broadcast, online, social)
• Advanced reporting and analytics dashboards
• Integration with enterprise CRMs and marketing stacks

Standout value:
Cision delivers an expansive toolset and legacy integrations, but it comes with high cost and longer onboarding cycles. For teams that need enterprise reach and don’t mind complex systems, it’s a powerful—if heavy—alternative to Muck Rack.

Muck Rack vs Cision: pricing

✅ Pros

• extremely comprehensive PR toolset covering media database, monitoring, distribution, and analytics
• offers access to PRNewswire for wide-scale press release distribution
• strong global reach with support for multi-market communications
• integration-ready for enterprise CRMs and marketing platforms

🔻Cons

• pricing is high and non-transparent, starting around $10,000/year
• annual contracts and long-term commitments required
• complex onboarding and feature setup—may be overwhelming for smaller teams
• interface and usability can feel dated compared to more agile tools

Muck Rack alternative #4: AgilityPR

Agility PR offers a traditional PR toolkit with access to a large media database, press release distribution, and monitoring tools. It's a solid option for teams looking for a more classic media outreach workflow with some customization flexibility.

Best for: Small to mid-sized PR teams looking for an all-in-one outreach and monitoring platform with familiar workflows.

Pricing: Unknown—you need to request a demo call to find out.

Free trial: No—you can only schedule a demo call.

Key features:

• Global media contact database
• Press release distribution via AgilityWire
• Media monitoring and sentiment tracking
• Customizable coverage and performance reporting
• Email outreach tools with limited automation

Standout value:
Agility PR sits between modern PR tools and legacy platforms, offering more flexibility than enterprise tools.

Muck Rack vs Agility PR: pricing

✅ Pros

• packages covering particular PR areas
• professional editorial review for press releases
• recognized for its exceptional customer support
• awarded multiple G2 badges

🔻Cons

• annual contracts mean poor flexibility
• their message personalization capabilities are limited
• as per user reviews, it's pricey

Muck Rack alternative #5: Critical Mention

Critical Mention is a media monitoring solution best known for its real-time tracking of TV, radio, and digital news. Now part of the Onclusive platform, it’s ideal for teams who need to monitor broadcast mentions alongside online and social media content.

Best for: PR professionals and organizations who rely heavily on TV/radio coverage or need full-spectrum media monitoring—including broadcast.

Pricing: Based on our research, Critical Mention costs between $2,500 and $10,000 per year.

Free trial: No, you can only request a demo call.

Standout value:
Unlike Muck Rack, which emphasizes journalist outreach, Critical Mention is built primarily for tracking—not pitching. It’s best for brands or agencies who need to see and measure media coverage, especially in broadcast, in near real time.

Muck Rack vs Critical Mention: pricing

✅ Pros

• different sources available: from broadcasts to paywall content

🔻Cons

• little info available without a demo call (like media database, pricing)
• you'd need more tools to cover all your PR activities

Muck Rack alternative #6: Presspage

Presspage is a PR platform built for companies that need professional, secure newsroom management and reliable crisis communication workflows. It’s a great fit for teams that want to centralize their communications and manage approvals with ease.

Best for: PR teams that prioritize crisis communications and need robust newsroom management tools.

Pricing: Custom pricing; requires contact with sales.

Free trial: No, you can only request a demo call.

Key features:

• Branded online newsrooms with multimedia content support
• Centralized media contact database and email distribution
• GDPR-compliant media lists and campaign tracking
• Collaboration tools for distributed or large teams
• Support for internal approvals and publishing workflows

Standout value:
Unlike Muck Rack, which focuses on robust media database and outreach, Presspage shines in newsroom creation, compliance, and team coordination—ideal for larger PR operations or companies with high reputational sensitivity.

Muck Rack vs Presspage: pricing

Presspage doesn’t share their pricing before a demo call—just like Muck Rack. Here’s what we can estimate based on public sources and customer feedback:

✅ Pros

• easy to use
• seamless integration into pages
• excellent customer support

🔻 Cons

• it's mostly focused on their online newsroom, so you lack vital options like media monitoring that are included in Muck Rack
• some users claim its customization options are limited
• they don't share details on their pricing

Muck Rack alternative #7: Prezly

Prezly is a modern PR platform focused on storytelling, relationship building, and visual communication. It’s especially popular with agencies and in-house teams that value beautiful newsrooms, content-rich press kits, and streamlined pitching—all in one place.

Best for: Agencies and brand teams that prioritize visual storytelling, journalist experience, and owned media control.

Pricing: Starts at $90/month; plans scale based on users and newsroom features.

Free trial: 14-day free trial.

Key features:

• Branded online newsrooms and multimedia press kits
• Built-in email pitching with click/open tracking
• Media contact management with relationship tracking
• Simple CRM functionality for press outreach
• Collaborative workflows for internal team

Standout value:
Unlike Muck Rack, which emphasizes database breadth, Prezly focuses on delivering a polished journalist experience and strong owned content presence. It’s a good fit for teams wanting integrated storytelling tools without an enterprise-grade budget.

Muck Rack vs Prezly: pricing

For a full understanding of how much Prezly costs, read this article about Prezly Pricing in 2025.

✅ Pros

• transparent plans and pricing page
• great customer service
• great, clear UI

🔻Cons

• analytics could be developed, as there's no tools to build reports that can be shared with clients
• little flexibility with the layout
• there are few recent reviews on G2 and Capterra, so there might be more - both to the pros and cons

Final thoughts: which Muck Rack alternative is right for you?

Choosing the right PR software comes down to your team size, workflow complexity, and budget flexibility.

And if you’re a small to mid-sized team looking to scale your outreach with smarter targeting, AI support, and flexible pricing—Prowly stands out.

If you’re running a large comms operation, platforms like Cision or Meltwater offer enterprise-grade monitoring and distribution—at enterprise pricing.

If you need broadcast coverage, Critical Mention and Prowly might be the better fit.

The post The Best 7 Muck Rack Competitors & Alternatives for 2025 (Features & Pricing) appeared first on Prowly.

In this article, you'll find what metrics and data a good PR tool should have, so that you can make your work easier when drafting data-driven strategies and showing off your progress to stakeholders and clients.

List of PR analytics tools

Here’s a brief table comparing the most popular PR analytics tools, their pricing, contract length and whether they have a free trial or not.

What to consider when choosing a PR analytics tool?

We know data is king, so choosing between all the PR analytics tools on the market is a big task. Collecting mentions is one thing, but making sense of them is another.

With a solid PR analytics tool, you should be able to:

• Gather data from a wide range of media sources to get a holistic view of your brand's and competitor's presence in the media landscape.
• Get dozens of industry-relevant metrics such as sentiment analysis, share of voice, estimated reach, and advanced engagement metrics.
• Create easily customizable visual aids such as graphs, bar charts, and more, to make it easy for you and stakeholders to spot general trends and outliers.

Here is a more detailed breakdown of what you need to look for when browsing through PR analytics tools:

Data sources

By tracking mentions across various platforms, you can uncover opportunities to engage with different audiences and see if the strategy you have in place makes sense. This comprehensive approach allows for the identification of both high-performing content and areas where engagement is lacking, offering a clear roadmap for adjustment.

Therefore, finding analytics tools that cover as many data sources as possible is crucial in capturing wins, understanding failures, and everything in between. This broad data coverage helps ensure that no vital insights are overlooked, enhancing strategic decision-making.

For example, an up-and-coming tech company might focus on industry and tech blogs, whereas a niche fashion brand would look more toward social media channels. Tracking different platforms helps pinpoint where the conversations are most vibrant and relevant to your specific sector.

Or, what if the marketing department is focused on TikTok, but you see that your target audience is actually on Instagram? Having this knowledge can give you an edge in building a strategy that works. This ability to adapt based on real-time data can significantly impact your brand's relevance and engagement levels.

At Prowly, you can monitor:

• News
• Blogs
• Discussion forums
• X (previously Twitter)
• Facebook
• Instagram
• TikTok
• Youtube

1. News and online outlets

If you're interested in monitoring news only, you can do just that at Prowly as well. Whether it's a new product announcement, breaking news about a celebrity, or a political statement and you're waiting on the public's response, there are things you can do to help you analyze the landscape.

First, start with creating a search query for several keywords related to your event. It could be a regular keyword, brand, a person that's involved in whatever is going on, and more. Then, you can create a dashboard to visualize what's happening in real time.

You can set up widgets that show mentions with positive sentiment, negative sentiment, quickly assess top mentions from tier 1 or tier 2 publications, see the audience reach of such an announcement, compare share of voice, and many more. Possibilities are endless, depending on what you need to track.

To sum it up, you should consider only the PR analytics tools that have comprehensive media monitoring capabilities with dozens of metrics available. That's the only way you'll be able to get the value PR analytics tools provide.

2. Social media monitoring

It's a given you can't do detailed media monitoring for your client and get them the PR analysis you want without tracking what conversations are happening on social media.

Understanding these dialogues is crucial in crafting PR strategies that highly resonate with current trends and public sentiment. Without these insights, agencies, in-house teams, and freelancers might miss critical opportunities to manage brand reputation and counteract negative perceptions as fast as they can.

In order to see what kind of data you can get with the PR analytics tools, take a look at Prowly's dashboards.

In this specific example, we're comparing Red Bull and Ferrari's metrics. Since data visualization makes it easy to spot trends, you can instantly see that Red Bull has a much bigger share of voice in the news, and Ferrari takes the crown when it comes to the share of voice in social media channels.

However, what's interesting is that Red Bull's content on social media is much more engaging and generates more reactions. When it comes to sentiment, there isn't much of a difference in either of the channels for either of the brands.

While this is just a short sample analysis, the best PR analytics software will help you get such data to help you draw conclusions about your strategy early, so you can adjust it as you go.

Types of metrics

▪️AVE - short for Ad Value Equivalency, is a metric used to estimate the monetary worth of media coverage, benchmarking it with what the campaign or activities would cost if they were paid advertisements as opposed to organic.

While this is not a metric loved by many due to a plethora of limitations, AVE continues to be a prevalent method for evaluating the impact of all kinds of PR efforts.

▪️Backlinks - by using this metric, you can track the number of backlinks that direct back to your desired landing page. That way, you can assess the importance and popularity of your domain and potentially spot opportunities to get backlinks where they're lacking.

Although PR specialists say it's rare journalists would edit anything they wrote, it never hurts to try (you might have much more luck with more "lenient" publications though!).

▪️Domain authority score - here you can see a distribution of rankings of all media outlets where mentions were found. Generally, it's a search engine ranking score that determines how important a website is by measuring its potential to rank higher in search engines.

▪️Domain rank - this metric shows the domain ranking of outlets and news sources where you have been mentioned, assessing organic visibility based on their estimated monthly traffic. The lower the ranking number, the more significant the domain.

Keep in mind that mentions on higher-ranked domains can increase your chances of getting greater visibility, since these online sources have a wider audience.

▪️Domain reach - think of this as a quick snapshot of the outlet's traffic over a specific period. It tells you how many visitors have checked out a domain with your mention. Basically, if the number is high, that means a larger number of people are seeing the mention of your brand or selected keyword.

With this, you can strategically plan ahead to see what kind of publications are giving you more traction and compare this metric with others - maybe you have a niche subject and, although the domain reach of the website that has mentioned you is low, your impact is sky high?

▪️Estimated reach - here you'll simply see an estimate of the potential size of your audience for an article that contains the keyword you're interested in over the past month.

In order to evaluate the effectiveness of your strategy, you need a PR tool that will let you compare this metric across different campaigns or timeframes. Such an analysis will help you identify which publications may require more targeted outreach.

▪️Number of mentions - a sum of all the mentions for a given query. Prowly gives you the option to refine these results using filters like sentiment, estimated reach, domain rank, and more, allowing for a more detailed analysis.

▪️Sentiment - as one of the most important metrics for any type of PR analytics, filtering results by sentiment is a valuable tool for understanding the public's perception of your specific campaign, brand, competitors, or just about anything else you're tracking.

It allows you to see whether your strategy, especially during events that involve a PR crisis, are influencing people's perceptions. Since this is a valuable metric, it's crucial to analyze it from each side.

You can do it with Prowly's filters and, for example, get a clear understanding of how sentiment looks as sorted by country to get deeper insights into how different regions might perceive your brand.

▪️Share of Voice - also commonly known as SoV, this metric measures your brand's visibility and awareness by tracking the number of times your brand is mentioned in the media.

High-quality PR analytics tools will provide the option of breaking it down by the different media and channels you use so that you get a clear understanding of where your share of voice is high and where it needs work.

It's a clear indicator of a campaign's effectiveness and can show how mentions increase post-campaign in comparison to previous periods. Actually, there are many ways in which you can implement it, all depending on your strategy.

It also helps assess your brand's competitive authority. By comparing your own SoV to that of your competitors, you can easily identify which brands are the most influential, which topics resonate with your target audience, and so on.

▪️Top mentions - a metric that shows top mentions helps to easily spot top-performing articles. At Prowly, you can filter by AVE, estimated reach, domain reach, domain rank, and domain authority score. It will contain all the mentions you've found in a media monitoring query for a brand, person, competitor, or keyword of your interest.

Additional metrics for social media

▪️Engagement type - this metric measures the extent of user interactions with social media content, while focusing on how actively users are engaging with it rather than just passively scrolling. It considers interactions such as comments, reactions, and shares - depending on the social media platform.

Tracking this metric can provide you with a level of audience engagement, providing insights into how interesting or relatable content is. Without it, it's nearly impossible to understand the effectiveness of PR social media strategies.

▪️Post sentiment - this one works exactly the same as sentiment for news and other types of sources, but you can divide it per social media platform you're interested in. Basically, you can compare sentiment across Instagram vs. Facebook, or other media channels, if that's what your campaign requires.

▪️Top posts - find the top 10 social media posts for your query. Such features in a media monitoring tool can help you quickly assess best-performing posts in terms of engagement and evaluate whether or not your strategy is working.

It's also a great way to see what post has a chance to reach a wider audience. To make it even more useful, you can sort it by either the number of followers a particular account has or engagement (which is a formula based on the sum of likes, comments, and shares).

Data visualization

Illustrating the effectiveness of public relations with hard numbers has traditionally posed a challenge, yet visual representations significantly aid in making this clearer. 

Nothing, but I mean absolutely nothing beats visualizing metrics.

Because some of them might not mean a lot to your stakeholders, seeing a simple graph or a chart with all the information can help identify patterns, trends, and anomalies you wouldn't have seen otherwise. Visual data presentations not only clarify the impact of PR efforts but also substantiates the strategic decisions behind them, making it easier for stakeholders to appreciate and understand the ROI.

Prowly's PR analytics software helps you create a dashboard for each project and customize it to your preference. There are lots of metrics you can choose from, such as estimated reach, SoV, sentiment analysis, engagement type, and many more.

This customization allows users to focus on the most relevant metrics to their specific needs, enabling a more targeted and effective analysis. Additionally, having all these metrics in one place simplifies the reporting process and increases the efficiency of communication with team members and clients.

Once you're done finding mentions in Prowly's Media Monitoring, you can create comprehensive dashboards which not many PR analytics tools provide. To visualize data even more easily, you can view:

• Line graphs - beneficial when you want to see staggered data, like the comparison of a domain's estimated reach vs. their rank, and then further filter it by a selected date range.
• Bar graphs - great for breaking down sentiment and visually assessing how much positive, negative, and neutral sentiment your query has received.
• Donut chart - can be used similarly to the above examples, depending on the visualization you prefer.
• Stacked area graph - similar to line graphs, but can show trends across time. Great to use with additional breakdowns for even more meticulous PR analytics.
• Column chart - another way to visualize data, for example, to show the estimated reach of a campaign divided by media sources.

Reporting capabilities

Picture this: you're up against a deadline, coffee in one hand, mouse in the other, and you're racing to put together a presentation that will impress your clients. You find yourself shuffling between different programs, and the entire process looks more like navigating through different tools instead of creating a simple report.

This juggling act can be frustrating and inefficient, often leading to errors and consuming valuable time. However, it doesn't need to feel like this. With the right tool, you'll be able to create an engaging presentation quickly and efficiently, with data-driven insights, all in one place.

You should never need to use external platforms, manually search for clippings, take screenshots, and use PowerPoint to design your reports. By streamlining these processes into one tool, you can focus more on the content and quality of your presentation, rather than on the mechanics of assembling it.

What you want is a tool that will allow you to effortlessly integrate screenshots and then social media posts and even include videos right in your report. The idea is to have everything you need in one integrated space.

This not only simplifies your workflow but also ensures that your final presentation is both comprehensive and professional, making it easier to communicate your insights effectively. Such a tool can transform the challenge of report creation into an opportunity for showcasing your analytical and creative skills.

The best PR analytics tools

Below you can find the list of the most popular PR analytics tools on the market: 

• Prowly
• MuckRack
• Meltwater
• Cision
• Propel 
• Prezly
• Agility PR
• CoverageBook
• Releasd

PR Analytics tool #1: Prowly

Prowly stands out because it's sort of a comprehensive tool kit equipped with a dedicated reporting feature that streamlines the creation of visually beautiful coverage reports without hassle.

It offers the flexibility to incorporate interactive elements, making sure your reports not only deliver information but also engage their recipient. With different sharing options and an option to protect your report with a password, you'll never have to worry about leaking any confidential information or putting stats in the hands of someone who shouldn't have them.

The convenience of automatically tracking metrics and including press clippings directly from Prowly's Media Monitoring tool also saves time and ensures all the data is accurate and free of any errors. That way, you can enrich your content and provide a broader view of your impact as a PR expert.

There are several pages in Prowly's coverage reports:

• #1 Home page - here you can customize the title and description, add your own logos, and change colors to match your brand's visual identity.
• #2 Coverage page - where you can automatically transfer mentions from Media Monitoring and paste any additional links you want, as well as offline coverage. All of these clippings will be evaluated and their statistics will be added to the metrics page. Prowly's PR Reports are connected to the Media Database, so just in case you're looking to add an author or the name of an outlet, Prowly’s analytics tools will find it in the database.

• #3 Metrics page - on this page, you'll be able to present any public relations analytics, important data, charts, and social media content. You can present the included coverage visually using metrics such as:
  • Online and offline clippings
  • Total estimated views
  • Average sentiment
  • Average domain authority
  • Total AVE
  • Total number of backlinks
  • Social media statistics

• #4 Performance page - this page offers options for showcasing email pitch statistics. You can either aggregate data by selecting multiple emails, which averages the data on the page or display the performance of individual emails by selecting one at a time.

• #5 Custom widgets - just in case there isn't a metric available, but you want to display a certain number, you can do so using custom widgets. For example, include conference attendees, number of tickets sold, etc.

Last, Prowly offers several ways to publish or share your report with clients and stakeholders. Whether you'd rather send it in a PDF, Excel, or PPT format, or publish it online with a link and password-protected access, you can choose how you want to send it out and show off your successes.

Here is a brief example of the kind of report you can do with Prowly’s PR Reports:

PR analytics tool #2: Muck Rack

Muck Rack has a robust suite of PR metrics you can use. From AVE to SoV, you can also show the value of your strategy with a media impact analysis or competitive analysis. In terms of metrics, it’s safe to say they’re one of the best tools on the market.

One of the most talked about downsides when it comes to Muck Rack is their price. Smaller companies and agencies don’t usually have the budget to afford such a tool. Many reviews online have also said the tool might be hard to learn and it can be difficult to get help from their support team.

Need a bit more info? Check out this article about Muck Rack pricing or an in-depth analysis of Muck Rack alternatives.

PR analytics tool #3: Meltwater

Meltwater provides metrics on estimated views, reach, sentiment, AVE, engagement metrics from social media listening, and more. In comparison to other popular PR tools, Meltwater is one of the leading providers of metrics in public relations. 

When it comes to the downsides, reviews say it might be a difficult tool to use and there’s a steep learning curve. One review even said that their high-volume data delay took 2 hours. Considering the urgency PRs need to work in, this is quite a long time (and something to consider). 

Learn more about:

• Meltwater pricing 
• Meltwater alternatives

PR analytics tool #4: Cision

Cision is one of the best known PR tools on the market, with a long history of helping public relations professionals prove their value. They have dozens of brand metrics that can help you understand mention reach, unique views, and conversions when it comes to content such as downloads, page visits, purchases and more.

Reviews say Cision lacks reporting functions that can help PRs assess their strategies against their competitors and that the new version of the interface isn’t as user friendly as the old one. 

Learn more about:

• Cision pricing
• Cision alternatives
• Cision vs Meltwater vs Prowly

PR analytics tool #5: Propel

According to their website, Propel can help you analyze things such as website traffic, online purchases, and form completions. You can also get a closer oversight on the number of articles published, pitching metrics, and others.

However, if you’re looking for an all-in-one tool, reviews say that their database lacks contacts and users had a difficult time building lists. Some also said the tool is a bit buggy here and there and their UI might be confusing.

PR analytics tool #6: Prezly

Prezly is an all-in-one tool that offers campaign analytics. You can check which contacts are the most engaged with your press releases and report on coverage using another of their features. 

Although the tool looks promising, reviews say the tool isn’t as intuitive as they’d like it to be. Users say there’s little wiggle room for things like fonts and formats in email sections and not enough options for personalization.

PR analytics tool #7: Agility PR

Agility PR is big on media analysis and pulling data from media monitoring. It helps evaluate traditional metrics, such as AVE, and examine more in-depth ones to see the value in brand awareness, engagement, reputation and more. 

When it comes to the negatives, reviews say their UI could be improved for more efficient workflow. In addition, they say the website can be a bit slow. While this isn’t a dealbreaker, it’s important to be able to use your tool with ease, especially when it comes to the work you do, and you don’t have time to spend hours on learning a tool.

PR analytics tool #8: CoverageBook

This platform is one of the most popular coverage reporting tools on the market. It has features that make it easy for users to simply insert links from your coverage and lets it do all the work, including tracking readership numbers and estimating an article's total reach.

While it's awesome for reporting, users say it can sometimes get glitchy or clunky when both importing links and editing. It also doesn't provide media monitoring, which means you'd have to manually enter clippings into the tool in order to get a report ready.

Although it's a great tool, it's not an all-in-one for PR professionals and only offers reporting capabilities.

For a more in-depth comparison, check out this article comparing Prowly, Releasd and CoverageBook.

PR analytics tool #9: Releasd

Releasd offers user-friendly, drag-and-drop layouts for PR reporting and efficiently pulls coverage from websites and social media platforms onto a single, easily digestible page. They also have automated metrics and highlight their unique "coverage impressions" as a key feature.

While they do have a 15-minute demo to showcase the product, they don't offer a free trial. Additionally, according to user reviews, the tool is said to have poor customer service, difficulties in adding images, and not enough analytics tools to gain deeper insights into readership.

Conclusion

Selecting the right PR analytics tools is crucial for gaining deep insights into your brand's or competitor's media presence. An ideal analytics tool should not only collect data but also analyze it across multiple metrics, like sentiment, share of voice, audience reach, and others, to help form a complete picture of your PR impact.

The post How to Choose the Best PR Analytics Tools in 2025: Metrics That Matter Most appeared first on Prowly.

Unfortunately, Meltwater pricing is impossible to find on their website. Based on research and user reviews, though, we estimated its cost.

Given that you're Googling their pricing, you probably want to buy a powerful PR software platform without straining your budget. Naturally, we want to help you find the answer to your question and introduce Prowly as a smart alternative. Ready when you are.

Meltwater pricing

Based on our research, Meltwater costs an average of $15,000 to $20,000 per year.

Unfortunately, Meltwater pricing is not publicly disclosed, and potential customers must talk to sales to get a custom quote.

Key takeaways:

• For a basic, 1-user subscription, expect to pay around $7,000 per year and up.
• The average subscription costs around $15,000/yr to $20,000/yr, while enterprise plans can cost $40,000/yr or more!
• Meltwater offers three distinct plans—Essentials, Suite, and Enterprise.
• You can only access Meltwater with an annual contract; monthly subscriptions are unavailable.
• More affordable alternatives, like Prowly, start at $258/per month.

How we found this data

To get accurate information about Meltwater pricing, we searched the Internet to find what real Meltwater users were saying about their monthly costs.

Here's what people are saying in 2025:

One user, expressing their frustration, mentioned that Meltwater and Cision cost around $15,000 to $20,000. And if you're looking for enterprise reports, be prepared to pay up to $100,000!

Another user claimed she pays $13k per year and that she had her plan auto-renewed despite not planning to.

User #3 claims to pay $16,000 per year for reporting and insights.

Another user mentions paying only $6,900 per year, and using it only for media monitoring—possibly why the price is so low.

A different commenter claims paying $43,000 per year, mentioning that the price seems to be too much.

Many users have reported being able to negotiate prices with Meltwater or similar tools that don't offer transparent pricing.

Finally, user #6 mentions paying $33,000 per year for 20 users.

Ultimately, with Meltwater's custom pricing, the cost can depend on the specific features required, the number of users, and simply how well you negotiate your final price.

Plans explained

Meltwater’s pricing plans are designed to accommodate a variety of business needs, offering flexible options that scale as your media monitoring and PR efforts grow.

Here’s an overview of the different pricing tiers:

1. Essentials plan
   Perfect for smaller teams or businesses just starting with media intelligence. The Essentials plan gives you access to basic media monitoring tools, allowing you to track your brand’s mentions and stay informed about industry trends without the complexity of advanced features.
2. Suite plan
   The Suite plan is designed for businesses that need more advanced monitoring and analysis. In addition to comprehensive media coverage, this plan includes Meltwater's powerful social media management tools, allowing you to track social mentions, engage with audiences, and analyze performance across social platforms. It’s ideal for growing teams that want to consolidate their media and social media efforts onto one platform.
3. Enterprise plan
   For large organizations or agencies, the Enterprise plan offers a fully customizable suite of tools, designed to handle high volumes of data and provide enterprise-level insights. With tailored solutions and priority support, it’s perfect for teams that need the full power of Meltwater’s platform to scale their PR efforts globally.

Meltwater also provides tailored pricing for businesses with unique needs. To get a precise quote and find a plan that best fits your goals, it’s best to reach out to their sales team directly. And don't forget to negotiate!

Meltwater alternatives

Tired of searching for Meltwater monthly pricing and want a tool that shows you how much it costs right on their website?

Keeping your options open is always a great idea, and here are some Meltwater alternatives you should consider for PR.

→ If you want to learn more about other PR tools' pricing, feature sets, pros, and cons, you can check out these guides:

• Top 5 Meltwater alternatives
• Muck Rack pricing and alternatives
• Cision pricing and alternatives
• Roxhill pricing and alternatives
• Prezly pricing and alternatives
• Agility PR alternatives
• Propel alternatives
• Vuelio pricing
• JustReachOut pricing

How does Meltwater compare to Prowly?

The main contrast is in the pricing plans. Prowly offers flexible pricing options suitable for any organization size, making it a great choice if you're looking for affordable PR software without compromising on features.

Media database

Both providers offer high-quality media databases with contacts from local and international media sources.

If you're only interested in finding a media database, check out our guide on picking the best one for PR.

With Prowly, you can access more than 1 million contacts; Meltwater has about 400 thousand.

The distinctive factors among various media databases are their contact quantity, update frequency, and pricing. But it's crucial to consider not just the quantity but also the quality of media contacts. This can vary based on the location and beat you're interested in. This can especially be the case outside of the US, where the relevance of contacts may vary. 

To determine which option best suits you, ask for a sample or sign up for a free trial.

With Prowly, you get a free 7-day trial with full search access.

It's unclear if Meltwater offers a free trial. Although its product pages suggest you can find out more during a demo call, it's not clear if this will give you a complete view of its contacts.

Media monitoring 

Meltwater and Prowly provide essential media monitoring tools for tracking news and online mentions. They also include social media listening features.

Here’s a list of the best social media listening tools to choose from.

Print and broadcast monitoring in Meltwater and Prowly

Both Meltwater and Prowly offer robust tools for monitoring print and broadcast media, allowing you to track mentions across a wide range of platforms:

• Meltwater provides comprehensive coverage for print and broadcast media, including access to national and global newspapers, trade publications, and television or radio mentions. With Meltwater, you can track and analyze print articles, broadcast clips, and digital content, providing valuable insights into your brand's media presence across multiple channels.
• Prowly, on the other hand, focuses on delivering detailed print and broadcast monitoring by integrating with services like LexisNexis and TVEyes. This allows users to access mentions in print media, even paywalled content, as well as real-time tracking of TV and radio broadcasts. Prowly also offers the ability to filter data based on outlet categories, sentiment, and reach, ensuring that you have the most relevant insights at your fingertips.

Both platforms offer powerful monitoring tools, but Prowly’s integration with LexisNexis and TVEyes enhances its ability to provide in-depth, global coverage for print and broadcast media.
→ Read more here on print media monitoring and broadcast monitoring.

PR reports 

Both platforms provide PR reporting tools, streamlining the creation process for PR reports.

However, user reviews on G2 indicate that Prowly has slightly better results in measurements, monitoring data, and the transformation of media monitoring into visually appealing PR reports.

The availability of a free trial for Meltwater remains uncertain, making it challenging to assess their PR report creation functionality. However, with Prowly, you can use the 7-day trial period to explore and create your PR reports.

Additional features

Meltwater doesn’t provide a press release creator or online newsroom, which are valuable for businesses of any size. 

On the other hand, Prowly offers an AI-based press release creator, empowering PR professionals to input essential information and generate a polished press release within moments, requiring only minor editing.

Prowly provides an online newsroom, offering a centralized space to showcase key information for your company and clients. This feature facilitates easy access for journalists and media members when covering stories related to your brand.

Conclusion

Meltwater offers a rich feature set for media professionals, whether in an agency setting or as part of a business's PR team. Unfortunately, without transparent pricing, it’s hard to evaluate if you're on a budget or just trying to compare it to the alternatives, as you have to sit through lengthy sales calls to discover the pricing for your use case.

Prowly offers a media database, press release creator, and media monitoring that lets you manage all aspects of your PR strategy in one place. Its pricing is transparent and easy to understand.

We hope this comparison has answered some of your inquiries and simplified your decision-making process regarding selecting appropriate PR software.

If you're ready to begin evaluating PR platforms, you can explore Prowly for a full 7 days at no cost. No credit card information is needed, and there are no strings attached.

The post Meltwater Pricing—How Much Does Meltwater Cost in 2025? appeared first on Prowly.