Medialyst Review 2026: Pros, Cons, Pricing and Alternatives

Medialyst pricing and features at a glance

How we tested Medialyst

We ran the same brief through three setups and asked each one for the fullest list it could produce. Every journalist that came back was checked against their recent articles, and we only counted the ones who'd realistically cover the story.

1. Setup 1

   Medialyst

   The brief pasted in

2. Setup 2

   DIY build

   Claude, a Google News search API and an email finder API

3. Setup 3

   JournoFinder

   Its AI Agent, given the same brief

The DIY build beat Medialyst on relevant journalists for under $6. JournoFinder's lead came mostly from people neither of the others can see. Editors, producers and section heads seldom get a byline, so any tool that builds lists from bylines leaves them out.

Medialyst pros

Medialyst is an AI media list builder for PR teams. It launched in January 2026, and you can have a scored list in about five minutes.

• It explains its picks.

  Each journalist gets a fit score out of 100 and a line on why they made the list.

• You can refine in plain English.

  Ask it to drop outlets or tighten the focus, and it reworks the list.

• Pricing is public.

  Plans are listed on the site, you can pay monthly and there's no contract.

• It works inside AI tools.

  API and MCP access come with every plan, so you can run it from Claude.

Medialyst cons

1. Media lists only cover who's written recently

Medialyst describes its approach as evidence-first. Every time you build a list, it pulls journalist data live from recent coverage, author pages and third-party sources, then scores people on their latest articles.

That keeps it quick, though anyone who hasn't written about your topic lately has very little to be judged on. For a Prime Day savings story, it mixed articles about ICE raids and orchid care in with the Prime Day coverage.

2. About a third of contacts come back without an email

For each journalist, Medialyst tries the author page, an email finder and a premium finder. Its own figure is that 68.3% of lookups return a verified email, which leaves roughly a third of your list without one.

Those finders are services like Hunter, Apollo and Lusha, which anyone can sign up to, so their mistakes carry over.

A first-name address at an outlet's domain can pass verification and still land with the wrong person. An old address can stay active after a journalist moves on, so the pitch never reaches them.

3. Pitch Desk sending is there to tick a box

Pitch Desk is Medialyst's outreach tool, and it only arrived in November 2026. It drafts an email for each journalist, then leaves you to send or schedule them one by one.

There's no option to send to the whole list and no follow-up sequence. Medialyst's guidelines say AI should draft and a person should send, and it argues a small, well-matched list beats a big blast.

That's workable for a dozen reporters. For an agency pitching several clients a week, it means an afternoon of clicking and a spreadsheet to track who still needs chasing.

Medialyst's answer is to sync your list into Instantly or Reply.io, which adds another tool and another bill.

4. Radar news alerts arrive once a day

Radar is the tool for spotting stories your clients could react to. You get one scheduled scan a day, plus up to two extra scans you trigger yourself.

A story that breaks after the daily scan won't reach you until the next day. In reactive PR, the window to comment can close within hours. Our guide to journalist request platforms covers faster ways to find those requests.

Each Radar covers one project. Starter includes one project, Pro five and Scale 20, so more clients usually means a pricier plan.

5. Medialyst pricing and credits keep changing

Medialyst launched in January 2026, and its billing rules have changed most months since. These are this year's changes.

1. 3 Nov 2026

   Exporting lists limited to paid plans

2. 24 Oct 2026

   Plan credits now expire at each renewal. Leftover credits became "lifetime" credits, which you lose if you cancel

3. 11–14 Oct 2026

   Journalist lookups charged one credit, only when a verified email is found

4. 1 Aug 2026

   Plans set at 1,000, 3,000 and 10,000 credits a month

5. 30 Jul 2026

   New credit units introduced

6. Jun 2026

   Enrichment billed at five credits per result with an email

On top of that, AI research columns and third-party data cost extra credits per row. You could sign up under one set of rules and pay more for the same work after the next change.

Credits also go on poor fits. A request for UK journalists returned people in Florida, New York, Washington DC, Sydney and San Francisco, and every one of them used credits.

6. Customer support stops at an email address

On Starter, help comes through an email address and a feedback button in the app. Pro at $299 a month adds a Slack channel, and dedicated support starts with the $800 Scale plan.

A Slack channel works for quick product questions. When an email address is wrong, a list breaks or a bill looks off, you need someone who'll dig in and fix it. On the entry plan, you get neither.

7. It works like a spreadsheet you have to program

Lists sit in workflow tables made of columns, formulas and runWhen conditions, and each paid column costs credits per row.

When the same outlet appears twice, Medialyst's help pages tell you to dedupe on a formula field, {{Journalist Profile}}.journalistIdentityId. Paid plans also limit the AI chat to 200 messages a day.

People who like building workflows will enjoy the flexibility. If all you want is a media list, it's a lot of setup.

How to build a media list with Claude for $5.57

If you just need a one-off list of bylined writers, you can skip Medialyst. Behind the scenes it searches recent news, reads the bylines, scores each writer and runs their names through email finders.

Claude can set up the same thing in an afternoon. Our build found 27% more relevant journalists than Medialyst and cost $5.57.

What you need

• The brain

  Claude Code

  Writes and runs the script, turns your brief into searches and scores each writer against it

  Cost: Your Claude plan

• News search

  Serper's Google News results

  Finds recent articles for each search

  Cost: From $0.30 per 1,000 searches, with 2,500 free to start

• Bylines

  The article pages

  Pulls the writer's name from each article

  Cost: Free

• Email finder

  Hunter or Icypeas

  Finds each writer's work email from their name and outlet

  Cost: Hunter gives 50 free credits a month. Icypeas only charges for emails it finds

• Email check

  Hunter's verifier

  Checks each address will land before you send

  Cost: Half a Hunter credit per check

Setup steps

1. 1

   Sign up to Serper and Hunter (or Icypeas) and copy your API keys. Both have free allowances, so a small first list costs little more than your Claude usage.

2. 2

   Open Claude Code in an empty folder and save the keys in a .env file.

3. 3

   Paste in the prompt below and add your brief at the bottom.

4. 4

   Let Claude write and run the script. It builds the searches, pulls the bylines, scores each writer and finds their emails.

5. 5

   Open the CSV it creates, remove anyone who's a weak fit and pitch from your own inbox.

The prompt

Build me a Python script that turns a PR brief into a media list.

1. Read my brief and write 15 to 20 Google News searches that the journalists most likely to cover this story would show up in. Mix the main topic, related angles and the wording outlets actually use.
2. Run each search through the Serper News API (key in .env as SERPER_API_KEY) and keep results from the last 6 months.
3. Open each article and pull the author's name from the page metadata or byline. Skip pages that block you and log them.
4. Group the articles by author. For each writer, keep their outlet, the outlet's domain and links to their matching articles.
5. Score each writer from 0 to 100 on how likely they are to cover my story, based on those articles, and write one line on why.
6. For anyone scoring 60 or more, find their work email with the Hunter Email Finder API (HUNTER_API_KEY) using their name and outlet domain, then verify it with the Hunter Email Verifier.
7. Save everything to media_list.csv with name, outlet, score, reason, article links, email and email status, sorted by score.

Stay inside my free API limits where you can and print the total cost at the end.

My brief:
[paste your press release or pitch here]

Why JournoFinder is the best Medialyst alternative

JournoFinder is an AI-powered media database and outreach platform for PR teams. In our test it found 2.5 times as many relevant journalists as Medialyst, and far more of them had an email address.

• A maintained database underneath. Every journalist has a profile with their article history, including editors and producers who rarely get bylines, so lists aren't limited to whoever filed last week.

• Live news on top. The AI Agent searches that database alongside live Google News results, so writers who've only just picked up a story still appear.

• Emails checked on the way in. Each address is re-verified when it's added to a list, and the result shows in your export.

• Whole campaigns in one go. Connect your inbox, pick a list and send. Follow-ups go out on their own, stop when someone replies and pause for out-of-office messages, and every reply lands in one Unibox.

• Alerts while the story is live. Reactives sends an instant alert when a relevant story breaks for one of your clients.

• People you can talk to. Support is live chat with the team that built it, and you can ask for any journalist's profile to be checked and updated.

Who should use Medialyst

Medialyst fits a narrow job, and there's a cheaper way to do most of it.