Media List vs Prowly (Semrush AI PR Toolkit)

Prowly is now sold as the Semrush AI PR Toolkit, so a Prowly price today is a Semrush price.¹ The biggest gap is exports. Semrush Base costs $149 a month and lets you export 0 contacts.³ Media List Basic costs $99 a month and lets you export 2,500 new contacts a month, and its trial shows real contacts before you pay.

Media List and the Semrush AI PR Toolkit, row by row

Every Semrush fact below comes from Semrush's own help pages and terms, checked in October 2026. The small number after each cell links to its source.

Who each tool fits best

You can buy either tool online with a card. The real split is whether you need the list itself or the whole PR workflow wrapped around it.

Choose Media List if

• You are a solo publicist who exports a few hundred new contacts a month. On Semrush, that volume needs Business or paid export packs.³
• You run a small agency and want up to 3 seats and email campaigns on Professional for one monthly price.
• You are a founder whose buyers listen to podcasts and watch YouTube, not only read the news. Creators come in every Media List plan.
• You want to judge the data during the trial. You can search real contacts and unlock or export up to 25 before your plan starts.
• You want Claude or another AI assistant to look up contacts for you through the Media List MCP server.

Choose the Semrush AI PR Toolkit if

• Your agency reports on coverage for clients. Pro and Business include media monitoring, and Business adds share of voice against competitors.⁹²
• You pitch reporters in many countries. Semrush lists between 600,000 and over 1 million journalist profiles worldwide.⁴⁶
• You are a founder with no PR background who wants AI to draft pitches and send them from Gmail or Outlook.⁶
• You want to know which outlets ChatGPT, Gemini and Google's AI answers cite most often in your topic.¹⁰
• Your team already pays for Semrush for SEO and wants PR inside the same account.⁷

Can you see the contacts before you pay?

This is the question that matters most in any trial. Semrush lets you try Base, Pro or Business for 7 days.² During that week, viewing and exporting contact information is switched off. Email sending is limited too.² When the week ends, the trial becomes the plan you picked unless you cancel.²

Media List works the other way around. The 3-day trial costs $0 today and needs a card or PayPal. You can search everything, build lists and export up to 25 contacts. If the list fits your beat, your plan starts with its full export allowance. If it does not, cancel before the trial ends and you are not charged.

Exports decide the bill

Semrush caps several things each month. List adds, email sends and exports each have their own cap.³ Exports are the tightest of these. Base lets you add 250 contacts to lists, yet it lets you export none of them.³

Each contact you export counts against the monthly cap once, even if it sits in several lists.³ Contacts you imported yourself do not count.⁵ Anything past the cap is bought in packs of 200 for $149.³

In Media List, each new contact you download or unlock uses one export. A contact you already exported never counts again. Your allowance resets each month on your billing date. If an exported email bounces, we replace that export at no cost.

What a year costs, with the math shown

These totals use monthly list prices from October 2026, before tax. Semrush says annual billing saves up to 17%.⁷ We found no yearly price for the PR toolkit on its pages, so the Semrush side uses monthly prices.

A solo publicist who needs 500 new contacts a month

• Semrush Business is the first plan that includes 500 exports. At $499 a month, that is $5,988 a year.²³
• Semrush Pro with two extra export packs gives 550 exports. That costs $279 plus $298, or $577 a month.³
• Media List Basic includes 2,500 exports a month. Twelve monthly payments come to $1,188.
• Paid yearly, Media List Basic is $990.

Assumptions. One person pitches by email and does not need monitoring. The Semrush Business price also buys monitoring of up to 50,000 mentions a month.³ Count that in if you would use it.

A 3-person agency that needs 2,000 new contacts a month

• Semrush Business includes 500 exports. Eight extra packs of 200 add $1,192 a month, for 2,100 exports in all.³
• That brings Business to $1,691 a month, or $20,292 a year.
• Two more users cost $20 each on an account without the SEO Toolkit. With the SEO Toolkit, extra users start at $45 a month each.⁷
• Media List Professional includes 10,000 exports and up to 3 seats. Twelve monthly payments come to $4,788.
• Paid yearly, Professional is $3,990.

Assumptions. Three people share one account and send their own pitches. Semrush's PR pages do not say which seat rule applies to a PR-only account, so ask before you buy.⁷ At full use of Professional, Media List works out to about $0.04 per exported contact.

What buyers say about Prowly

Most reviews still use the old Prowly name. Here are four short quotes from public Reddit threads, with dates and links.

• "I get alerts, send out pitches, track engagement, and the media list is solid with a bit of manual filtering." A Reddit user, 2025.¹⁸
• "They are low cost (and you can negotiate) vs Meltwater/Cision" A Reddit user, 2022.¹⁶
• "it was missing some of the journalists I needed." Another Reddit user in the same 2022 thread.¹⁶
• "their chat support just says no one is available" A Reddit user, January 2026, after the move to Semrush.¹⁷

On Trustpilot, Prowly shows 2.7 out of 5 from 4 reviews.¹⁴ G2 lists about 112 Prowly reviews that average 4.2 out of 5. That G2 figure is per search results, not checked on G2.¹⁵

Journalists plus creators in one plan

Semrush's database covers journalists and outlets, with a toggle to switch between the two.¹² Its help pages do not list podcast hosts or YouTube creators in the database.

Media List puts 1.2 million podcasts and 189,000+ YouTube channels in every plan, next to 31,000+ journalists, editors and producers. A wellness founder can pitch health reporters, podcast hosts and YouTube creators from one plan, with no add-on to buy.

Semrush wins on reach inside the newsroom. If most of your pitches go to reporters outside the US, its larger worldwide base is the stronger pick.

Already a Semrush customer?

Then the toolkit may be the easy add. Semrush adds users at the account level, so PR sits next to the tools you already pay for.⁷ Its natural language search lets you describe who you want, with examples such as "US journalists writing positively about Tesla".¹¹

You can also use both. Keep Semrush for SEO and monitoring, and use Media List to find and export the people you pitch. Media List lists can move into Google Sheets, Notion or Webflow, or into your own tools through the read-only API and Zapier (beta).

What happened to the old Prowly prices?

Old Prowly prices still turn up in search results. Prowly's own magazine still says "Plans start at $258/month, billed annually".¹⁹ The Semrush help center now lists $149, $279 and $499 a month.² Use the Semrush numbers when you budget.

How to switch from Prowly or Semrush

Semrush plans renew on their own for the same period unless you cancel.¹³ A cancel takes effect at the end of the term you committed to, and Semrush says month-to-month plans are not refunded.⁸ So plan your move around your next billing date.

• Start a Media List trial at least 3 days before that date. Run your three most common searches and compare the contacts you would really pitch.
• Take your own contacts with you. Contacts you imported into Semrush do not count against its export cap.⁵
• Save anything else you need. Semrush deletes projects 90 days after you unsubscribe.²
• Send the Semrush cancellation form while logged in, and answer every question on it.⁸
• Rebuild each list in Media List with filters. Choose a beat, add outlets or a media type such as TV, newspapers, podcasts or YouTube, and narrow by US state.
• Filter to verified emails, then export a CSV or start a campaign on Professional.