Public relations used to run on relationships and a spreadsheet. In 2026 it runs on software — and increasingly on software that writes, monitors and measures on your behalf. The problem for a PR firm is that the market is split in two: a handful of platforms publish their prices openly, and the best-known names in media intelligence will not quote a number until you fill in a form.

This guide compares 12 platforms a PR agency might buy this year. Eight of them publish real prices on their own pricing pages — those are the figures below, read directly from the vendors in October 2026. Four more are quote-only, and we say so rather than guess.

What changed in PR software in 2026

Two features separate this generation from the last. The first is AI-cited media: tools that track not just where a client is mentioned, but how they appear in AI search and answer engines — the summaries ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google's AI answers produce when someone asks about a brand. Semrush, Prowly, Cision and Notified all now sell this explicitly.

The second is AI-assisted outreach. Journalist databases are being rebuilt around AI matching, and pitch drafting is being automated — Prowly advertises letting AI draft emails and press releases, PressPulse runs an “AI agent built for HARO monitoring”, and JournoFinder markets an “AI agent built for PR”.

1. Brand24 — best for media monitoring on a budget

Brand24 tracks brand mentions across news, blogs, forums and social. Its own pricing page lists five tiers: Individual at $199–$249, Team at $299–$349, Pro at $399–$499, Business at $599–$699 and Enterprise from $1,499 — in each case the lower figure is the annual-billing rate and the higher is month-to-month. The AI features are named as AI Insights, AI Topics and AI Visibility.

For a small agency, Brand24 is the cheapest credible way into monitoring with AI summaries. The catch is that it is monitoring-first: there is no journalist database or pitching workflow, so it covers the “listen” half of PR and not the “outreach” half.

2. Prezly — best for owned newsrooms and pitching

Prezly combines a hosted newsroom with media-list management and email pitching. Pricing is published in euros: Essential at €100 per month and Standard at €250 per month, both billed annually, with Enterprise quoted custom. Its AI is branded “Prezly AI” and “AI Connect”.

That makes Prezly the natural fit for an agency that wants a client-facing newsroom and a pitching tool on one invoice, and it is one of the few mid-market platforms whose prices are genuinely public.

3. Semrush — the all-in-one, and the new home of Prowly

Semrush is best known for SEO, but it now sells PR and AI-visibility features inside the same platform. Its published tiers are Pro at $139 per month ($117 annual), Guru at $199 per month ($165 annual) and Business at $299 per month ($248 annual), with AI and extra add-ons from $10 to $90 per month and a free tier to start. The PR features sit under AI Visibility and AI PR.

Semrush also owns Prowly, which has been folded into what it now calls the Semrush AI PR Toolkit. Prowly's own pricing page publishes no figures at all — only marketing copy — so if you want Prowly's feature set you are buying it through a Semrush conversation.

4. CoverageBook — best for coverage reporting

CoverageBook turns clips into shareable coverage reports for clients. It publishes four tiers: Bronze at $99 per month, Bronze Plus at $169, Silver at $229 and Gold at $599, plus an archive-only plan at $15 or £10 per month. The homepage advertises “AI agents” and AI-powered reporting.

If the thing you dread most is building the monthly coverage deck, this is the single-purpose tool for it — but it does not monitor or pitch.

5. PressPulse — HARO monitoring without the inbox

PressPulse is built specifically around journalist requests — the queries that used to arrive as HARO emails. It offers a free tier, Pro at $36 per month and an Agency plan at $80 per month plus $39 per profile per month. The product is described as an “AI agent built for HARO monitoring” with an AI assistant.

For a boutique agency chasing earned media, the free tier alone is worth testing; the per-profile pricing on the Agency plan is the line to model carefully if you run many clients.

6. JournoFinder — journalist discovery and AI matching

JournoFinder is a journalist-discovery and pitching database. It has a free tier, Standard at $119 per month billed annually, and a Team plan for three users at $229 per month billed annually. Its AI is marketed as an “AI agent built for PR” with AI-matched journalists.

It competes directly with the big media databases on price — roughly a tenth of what an enterprise seat costs — which makes it worth a trial before renewing anything larger.

7. Presspage — enterprise newsrooms, priced in euros

Presspage sells newsroom and PR software to larger organisations. It publishes two headline tiers in euros: Business from €20,000 per year and Enterprise from €35,000 per year. The AI features are AI Share of Voice and AI Benchmarking.

This is enterprise money — and the interesting part is that Presspage, unlike most of its peers at that level, still puts a number on the page.

8. Anewstip — a journalist database with no AI

Anewstip is a journalist and media database with a free tier and paid plans at $200 per month and $400 per month, plus a special plan at $99 per month. Notably, its own site names no AI, GPT or ML capability anywhere.

That is worth stating plainly. If AI matching matters to you, Anewstip is the odd one out on this list — a straight contact database at a mid-market price.

The platforms that won't publish a price

Four of the best-known names in PR software publish no numbers at all. Meltwater lists Starter, Pro, Enterprise and Agency tiers that all say “Contact Sales”; its AI assistant is called Mira AI. Cision routes every visitor to a “Request Pricing” form and advertises AI Visibility and AI Monitoring without a figure. Notified describes itself as an “AI-Powered Public Relations Solutions Platform” and, likewise, quotes only on request. Prowly, now part of Semrush, is in the same position.

Two more could not be verified at all. Agility PR Solutions returned a 403 to every attempt to read its plans page, and Muck Rack sits behind a Cloudflare challenge — both advertise AI (Agility shows an “Agility Agent” in its own navigation) but neither would serve a price, so we have not guessed at one.

How to choose

Start by deciding which half of PR you are buying. Monitoring-only tools — Brand24 at $199–$699 a month — are cheap and fast to deploy. Outreach tools — PressPulse from $36, JournoFinder from $119 — solve the pitching problem. Reporting tools — CoverageBook from $99 — solve the client-deck problem. Only the enterprise suites try to do all three, and that is where the pricing goes opaque.

Then decide whether you can tolerate a quote-only vendor. A platform that will not publish a starting price is usually sold on seat count and contract length, and the negotiation matters more than the feature list. For an agency under ten people, the published-price tools cover most of what you need at a fraction of the cost.

The through-line for 2026 is that AI has stopped being a line item and become the interface. Media monitoring, journalist matching and pitch drafting are all being rebuilt around it — and the platforms that are honest about their prices are increasingly the ones shipping it fastest.

Cover photograph: A S M Jobaer, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.