Most lists of PR tools are written by the companies selling media databases, so they start from the database and work outwards. A small press office needs a different answer: which jobs a general AI assistant now covers well enough, and where a paid specialist still earns its fee.
These are the tools worth knowing in 2026, organised by the jobs a media relations team does. Every one links to its entry in the Comms With AI tools directory, where you’ll find current pricing, data terms and the full review. Where I use a tool myself, I say so.
What are the best AI tools for media relations and PR?
The short answer, by job: Muck Rack, Cision or Roxhill Media to find the right journalist, with JournoFinder or Medialyst for smaller budgets; Claude or ChatGPT to draft pitches and releases (or Microsoft Copilot if your drafts need to stay in Microsoft 365); Perplexity and Signal AI to spot the story, with Newsjack for teams already working in Claude; Meltwater to monitor at scale, or Brand24 on a smaller budget; Prezly for a newsroom, or your wire’s own platform for distribution; CoverageBook to report; Otterly AI, Peec AI or Profound to track what AI answers say about you; and Granola with Wispr Flow for interviews and briefings.
The Comms With AI Briefing lands on Fridays, with comms and AI news and what’s new on the site, tool guides included.
A note before the list
The tool matters less than the workflow around it. A pitch drafted in seconds still fails if it goes to the wrong person with the wrong angle. Pair anything below with a structure: the Media Pitch Builder, the Press Release Structure and the Key Messages Grid, so AI speeds up the work and the judgement stays yours.
Finding the right journalist
This is the job where specialists still earn their fee. A general assistant will suggest names, but it has no verified contact details and no way of knowing who changed beat last month.
Quote only; plans priced by number of users and modules
A journalist database and monitoring tool in one, built around journalists’ own profiles and recent articles, which makes it quick to check what someone actually writes about before you pitch. It suits a PR team that pitches every week. Per-user pricing climbs as the team grows, so a very small press office may find it hard to justify.
Full pricing, data terms and review Directory entry checked October 2026.
Quote only; every CisionOne package goes through a pricing request
The all-in-one enterprise option: media database, monitoring, distribution and reporting under one contract. It suits a larger team that wants one supplier and one login. If your budget doesn’t comfortably cover an enterprise contract, a database plus a separate monitoring tool usually covers the same ground for less.
Full pricing, data terms and review Directory entry checked October 2026.
Roxhill Media
PaidNot published on its own site; about £3,000 to £25,000 a year on the UK government's G-Cloud marketplace
A UK-built journalist database with monitoring, distribution and a Journalist Assistant. Its strength is UK national, regional and trade media, priced in pounds. Teams pitching across many international markets will find Muck Rack or Meltwater cover more ground.
Full pricing, data terms and review Directory entry checked October 2026.
JournoFinder
FreemiumFree plan; JournoFinder $119 a month and Team $229 a month, both billed annually; 7-day trial
A media database with an AI agent that builds lists, plus alerts for journalist requests. The free plan, which includes request search and three daily alerts, is a useful start for a small team that pitches occasionally and wants to catch reactive opportunities.
Full pricing, data terms and review Directory entry checked October 2026.
Medialyst
PaidFirst list free; Starter $149 a month, or $1,162 a year
Reads journalists’ recent coverage and builds a scored media list with a reason and a suggested angle for each name. It runs on monthly credits. Worth testing on one launch before committing, and alongside a UK database if most of your outreach goes to regional or trade titles.
Full pricing, data terms and review Directory entry checked October 2026.
One caution, whichever you use: never send an AI-drafted pitch to a named journalist without checking their current beat and recent bylines yourself. Databases and AI tools both go out of date, and a pitch to someone who left the beat in the spring tells them you didn’t look.
Drafting pitches and releases
Free; Pro $20 a month, or $17 a month on annual billing
Claude is my main tool. For media work I use it to draft pitches and releases from a brief, to produce versions for different outlets, and to think an angle through before I write a word. It holds tone well across a longer document, which matters when a release has to sound like your organisation.
Full pricing, data terms and review Directory entry checked October 2026.
Free; Plus $20 a month
I use ChatGPT as a second reader: once a pitch is drafted in Claude, I paste it in and ask how a busy, sceptical journalist would take it, and what’s missing. A second assistant from a different maker is a cheap way to get a fresh read. It’s also a strong drafter in its own right, with the widest set of integrations.
Full pricing, data terms and review Directory entry checked October 2026.
Copilot Business add-on £16.10 a user a month on an annual commitment, or £19.32 billed monthly (ex VAT)
If your organisation runs on Microsoft 365, Copilot drafts in Word and Outlook inside your existing security perimeter. That in-tenant story is often the deciding factor for a press office handling results, regulatory announcements or anything embargoed.
Full pricing, data terms and review Directory entry checked October 2026.
Two rules for any of them. Never let AI invent a quote or a statistic in a release: give it the facts, tell it to mark anything missing, and check every figure and every quote against its source and its speaker before the release goes. And keep embargoed or price-sensitive material out of any tool your organisation hasn’t approved. The Executive Quote Pack gives you approved lines to draft from, so the quotes start from something your leaders actually said.
Spotting the story and newsjacking
Free; Pro $20 a month
An AI search assistant that cites its sources, which makes it useful for the desk research behind a story: what has already been written, who said what, and when. Follow the citations before you rely on anything it summarises.
Full pricing, data terms and review Directory entry checked October 2026.
Signal AI
EnterpriseQuote only; no public pricing, every route is a demo request
Enterprise reputation and risk intelligence, sold to comms and risk leaders, with AI that surfaces emerging issues and stories across news and other sources. It suits a large organisation that needs early warning and board reporting. For a small in-house team the contract size is hard to justify, and lighter monitoring tools cover the basics.
Full pricing, data terms and review Directory entry checked October 2026.
Newsjack
FreeFree and open source (MIT licence); Medialyst credits for journalist data are extra
A free set of PR skills for AI assistants such as Claude, ChatGPT and Codex. It watches the news for stories you have standing to comment on, generates angles, checks a pitch against a journalist’s recent work and critiques a draft before you send it, and it never sends anything itself. It works best for a press officer who already works in Claude every day. It is something you install, so in many organisations it is an IT and data-protection decision first, and it does not run in Microsoft Copilot.
Full pricing, data terms and review Directory entry checked October 2026.
To sort the ideas these tools throw up, the Story Idea Triage template helps you decide which ones are worth a pitch.
Monitoring coverage and conversation
Quote only; Meltwater's own guide starts plans at $10,000 a year
Broad media monitoring across news, social, broadcast and print, with an AI assistant for briefings and coverage reports, and add-ons for AI visibility and for querying your data from Claude or ChatGPT. It suits a mid-to-large team that needs coverage across markets. Small teams will pay for reach and reporting they won’t use.
Full pricing, data terms and review Directory entry checked October 2026.
Brand24
Freemium14-day free trial; Individual $199 a month billed annually, or $249 monthly
Social listening and online media monitoring at a price a smaller team can consider, with alerts and sentiment that are quick to set up. It covers digital sources well; it won’t give you broadcast or print.
Full pricing, data terms and review Directory entry checked October 2026.
Mention
PaidQuote only since July 2026; free trial available
Real-time brand and competitor monitoring, now sold as a single Company plan with unlimited users. If price is the deciding factor, Brand24 starts lower.
Full pricing, data terms and review Directory entry checked October 2026.
Lumina (Vuelio)
EnterpriseCustom pricing, sold in modules within Vuelio
Vuelio’s AI suite for PR, comms and public affairs, including AI View for tracking how AI answers describe you. Most relevant if you already use Vuelio. Confirm which modules are live before you sign, as parts of the suite are still on the roadmap.
Full pricing, data terms and review Directory entry checked October 2026.
Whichever you use, a monitoring feed only helps if someone reads it with a question in mind. The Weekly Monitoring Brief turns the feed into a short note your team and leadership will read.
Newsroom and distribution
Prezly
Paid14-day free trial; Essential €100 a month, billed annually
A PR CRM, online newsroom and email tool in one, with published prices, which is rare in this category. It suits an in-house team that wants its own newsroom and contact list without an enterprise contract. It has no journalist database, so pair it with one.
Full pricing, data terms and review Directory entry checked October 2026.
PR Newswire Amplify
EnterprisePlatform pricing not published; US wire releases from $355 each
PR Newswire’s distribution and campaign platform, now with reporting on how releases show up in AI answers. Only relevant if you already distribute through PR Newswire.
Full pricing, data terms and review Directory entry checked October 2026.
Notified
PaidQuote only, through a GlobeNewswire distribution subscription
The GlobeNewswire platform, with an AI Press Release Optimizer included for its clients. The equivalent choice for teams on GlobeNewswire.
Full pricing, data terms and review Directory entry checked October 2026.
Reporting coverage
CoverageBook
PaidFree trial; Bronze £69 a month ex VAT, for 100 clips
Turns a list of coverage links into a presentable report with reach and engagement attached, quickly. It sits at the reporting end of the workflow, presenting what your monitoring finds. If your monitoring platform already reports well, paying for both is duplication.
Full pricing, data terms and review Directory entry checked October 2026.
For what goes in the report, the Earned Media Report template covers tone and message pull-through as well as volume, and the Comms Reporting & Insights toolkit builds it into a monthly rhythm.
How AI answers describe you
This is the newest media relations job. Journalists, customers and candidates now ask ChatGPT, Copilot or Perplexity about your organisation, and the answer draws on coverage and web pages you may never have checked. Start with the free manual method in Gullible engines, then decide whether you need a tracker.
Lite $29 a month for 15 prompts, or $25 billed annually
The accessible entry point: it runs a set of questions across ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity and Copilot and reports how often you are named and which sources are cited. Claude, Gemini and Google AI Mode are paid add-ons. Costs climb once you track more than a handful of questions.
Full pricing, data terms and review Directory entry checked October 2026.
Peec AI
PaidStarter €85 a month, or €70 billed annually
AI search analytics across ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews and AI Mode, Gemini and Copilot, with plans built for agencies running several brands. A good fit if you report AI visibility to several clients or business units.
Full pricing, data terms and review Directory entry checked October 2026.
Profound
Enterprise7-day free trial; ongoing tracking on custom Enterprise pricing
An enterprise platform tracking visibility across a wide set of AI engines, with agents for content and reporting. Since September 2026 ongoing tracking is sold through Enterprise contracts, which puts it beyond most small in-house teams.
Full pricing, data terms and review Directory entry checked October 2026.
A caution from my own month with a paid tracker, written up in The dashboard said we were winning: a high score on questions that contain your name says little about whether AI names you when someone asks without it. Keep those two kinds of question apart in any report.
Interviews and briefings
Free with 30 days of history; Business $14 a user a month
Granola is what I use for most calls and briefings. It transcribes without keeping the audio, which suits confidential conversations: there’s no recording left afterwards. For a media interview you’re giving, it’s a quick way to check exactly what was said before the piece runs. Say at the start that you’re transcribing.
Full pricing, data terms and review Directory entry checked October 2026.
Free allowance; Pro $15 a month, or $12 on annual billing
I use Wispr Flow for dictation every day. Talking a story through out loud and then handing the text to Claude is often the quickest route to a first draft of a pitch.
Full pricing, data terms and review Directory entry checked October 2026.
How to choose without over-buying
The common mistake in PR is buying an enterprise platform when a database and a £69 reporting tool would do, or the reverse. Four steps keep you honest.
-
Name the job first
Finding journalists, drafting, monitoring, reporting: name the bottleneck before you look at tools. Plan Comms With AI turns a described need into a brief and a route through the library.
Describe your need in Plan -
Check the data policy before the feature list
Media lists hold personal data and releases are often embargoed, so what your organisation permits matters more than what the tool can do. Log what you approve as you go.
Open the AI Tool Register -
Score the shortlist the same way
Judge every candidate against your own workflows and risk appetite, on one framework, so the loudest demo does not win.
Use the evaluation framework -
Know where your team stands
A five-minute scored test gives a fast read on readiness before you spend anything; the full worksheet follows when you want the whole picture.
Take the AI Readiness Scorecard
More guides by comms stream, each organised by job and dated.
Next steps
Put it to work
- Free Plan Comms With AI Describe the media job in front of you and get a brief, a route through the library and a copy-ready prompt. Start a plan
- Free Test a release before it goes Run a release or pitch through Message Test to see how a journalist and other readers are likely to take it. Open Message Test
- Toolkit Launch Campaign The templates for a launch or major announcement, in order, from strategy to the post-launch review. Open the toolkit
- Directory Every tool, with data terms Pricing, governance notes and first-hand reviews for the tools above and many more, dated so you know how fresh they are. Browse the tools directory
- Reading The dashboard said we were winning A month of paid AI visibility tracking on my own firm, and what the score left out. Read the Applied piece
- Help for your team Want it set up properly? Consult, Deploy, Training and Manage for in-house comms teams putting AI to work, delivered directly by Michael MacLennan. See how we can help