Prowly is now the Semrush AI PR Toolkit. It is the lower published-price choice for a team that wants a media database, pitch tools and some monitoring in one login. Meltwater is the broader enterprise suite. Its own starting range is much higher, but it brings a global contact base, deep monitoring and hands-on support.
So ask one question first. Is your work mostly finding reporters and sending pitches, or do you also need to track coverage across news, broadcast and social? Every price and product fact in the table comes from the vendors' own pages, checked in October 2026.
| Buying question | Prowly, now Semrush AI PR Toolkit | Meltwater |
|---|---|---|
| What it is today | Prowly says it is now the Semrush AI PR Toolkit.1 | A PR, media intelligence and monitoring platform with a media database.2 |
| Published monthly price | Base is $149, Pro is $279 and Business is $499 a month.3 | Its pricing page asks buyers to contact sales. Meltwater publishes indicative annual ranges in its pricing guide instead.45 |
| Published starting point | Base begins at $149 a month, before its contact-export add-on.3 | Starter begins from $10,000 a year in Meltwater's own pricing guide.5 |
| Contact exports | Base includes zero exports. Pro includes 150 and Business includes 500 per month.6 | It does not publish an export allowance.4 |
| Journalist database scale | Semrush describes over 600,000 journalists on its feature page, while its overview says over 1 million profiles.712 | Meltwater says it has 800,000+ global journalists, bloggers and media contacts.2 |
| Finding the right outlet | Search by topic, region, country, city, role, media type or audience, including natural-language queries.8 | Search can use a plain-language request and filters for beat, location, outlet, topics and recent coverage.2 |
| Contact detail on paid plans | Paid plans can show email addresses, phone numbers and social profiles.9 | It pairs contact information with recent articles and social activity.2 |
| Pitch workflow | It offers AI-assisted pitches, campaign metrics and follow-ups on Pro and above.10 | It offers outreach tracking, relationship history and distribution as an add-on.2 |
| Monitoring | Pro and Business cover online news, blogs, discussions and YouTube, with alerts and AI summaries.11 | It monitors news, broadcast, podcasts, print, social and LLMs. This is the stronger choice for monitoring-led work.2 |
| Monitoring capacity | Pro includes 3,000 mentions a month and Business includes 50,000.6 | Its media database page says it monitors 270,000+ news sources.2 |
| AI-specific research | AI-Cited Media ranks outlets by citations in major AI answers and assigns an AI authority score.13 | Mira AI comes on every tier, with depth set by plan. GenAI Lens tracks how a brand shows up in AI answers.45 |
| Trial | It offers a seven-day trial, though viewing and exporting contact information are disabled during it.3 | It offers a human-guided demo instead of a self-serve trial.4 |
| Contract timing | Subscriptions renew for the same period on then-current terms. Cancellation takes effect at the end of the committed term.1614 | Most partnerships are annual with a 12-month minimum. Its community guidance says the standard term is 36 months.415 |
| Renewal notice | Use the logged-in cancellation form before the committed term ends.14 | Auto-renewal contracts need cancellation at least 60 days before term end.15 |
| Support and onboarding | Semrush provides its support center and knowledge base. The PR pages do not publish a setup timeline.3 | It publishes 24/7 multi-channel support and says most teams are running in two to four weeks.42 |
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Start 3-day free trial →Who each tool fits best
Choose Prowly when the work starts with PR outreach and you want known monthly prices. A solo publicist can begin on Base for $149, but should notice that Base exports no contacts. Pro is the meaningful starting point when a list must leave the product. A small startup already paying for Semrush may also value one account for SEO work and PR work.
- Choose Prowly if you need AI pitch help, domain-based sending and a modest outreach workflow.
- Choose Prowly if you want a short path to trying PR software without a sales conversation.
- Choose Prowly if AI-cited outlet research matters to your communications plan.
Choose Meltwater when communications work includes listening and reporting as much as pitching. It is a natural fit for an in-house team that needs broadcast, social and news in the same program. Agencies with large monitoring requirements and clients who expect dashboards also have a clear reason to consider it.
- Choose Meltwater if monitoring across many channels is the main job.
- Choose Meltwater if global database depth and a large coverage footprint matter more than self-serve pricing.
- Choose Meltwater if your team needs formal onboarding, 24/7 support and enterprise reporting.
What the price difference means in practice
For a solo publicist, Prowly Pro at $279 per month works out to $3,348 for twelve months, before optional additions. That plan publishes 150 exports per month. Meltwater's published Starter indication begins at $10,000 a year. The two products are not identical, since Meltwater includes a wider intelligence suite, but the gap changes a small team's budget.
For a three-person agency, Prowly Business at $499 per month is $5,988 for twelve months before extra users. It publishes 500 exports a month and 50,000 monitoring mentions. Meltwater does not publish a matching three-user package. Its own Pro indication is $25,000 a year, and final pricing depends on the number of users and other factors. Ask for the quote in writing and compare included users, data access, monitoring scope and onboarding charges.
Questions worth testing before you buy
Use the same brief in both products. Pick a live campaign, then look for ten reporters in the same country, beat and outlet type. Check whether the results are useful before comparing the headline database totals. A large global number is valuable only when it produces people your team can actually contact.
Next, test the work after the list is made. In Prowly, see whether the pitch workflow, domain setup and plan allowance fit the number of people you expect to reach. In Meltwater, ask for a monitoring example that includes the channels you need. A broadcast-heavy team and a team tracking online news will not judge the same demo in the same way.
Finally, put the commercial details beside the workflow. Confirm the number of users, included contacts, exports, saved searches, reports, onboarding fees and renewal deadline. For Meltwater, ask how the 60-day notice rule applies to the proposed order. For Prowly, confirm the committed term and the cost of any additional users. This makes a fair comparison possible even when the plans are built for different sizes of team.
What buyers say about Prowly and Meltwater
Review comments are individual experiences, not a measurement of every account. They can still show the questions to ask in a demo or trial.
- A Prowly Trustpilot reviewer wrote in June 2026 that “most of the contacts either don’t exist or result in bounce-backs.”17
- A Reddit commenter who says they once freelanced for Prowly wrote, “The UX is great and even without a PR background, I managed to set everything up in 15 minutes.”18
- A September 2026 Reddit commenter wrote, “Meltwater has a more robust monitoring platform.”19
- A March 2025 Trustpilot reviewer said, “Their renewal practice is built around you not paying attention to the contract.”20
How to move without rushing a renewal
Start by finding the renewal date in your current agreement. Meltwater says an auto-renewing agreement must be cancelled at least 60 days before term end. Its stated standard term is 36 months, with a 12-month minimum. That makes timing an early task, not a last-week task. Semrush says cancellation takes effect at the close of the committed term, so record the plan, renewal date and any seats before changing it.
Save a working list of the contacts and outlets your team already uses, subject to your agreement and permissions. Then run a small comparison with the same beats and outlets rather than trying to rebuild every list at once. In Media List, filter by beat, outlet, state and media type. You can also filter to verified contacts, and every contact shows its verification status before export.
A Media List option for a list-first team
Neither Prowly nor Meltwater is the only route for a team that mainly needs contacts. Media List starts at $99 a month and includes 2,500 exports a month. It has 31,000+ journalists, editors and producers, including 22,000+ in the US, plus 1.2 million podcasts and 189,000+ YouTube channels. That makes it a practical third option when export volume, monthly billing and a list-first workflow matter most.
A card or PayPal starts a 3-day trial at $0 today, with up to 25 exports. Media List is self-serve and can be cancelled anytime from the billing page. Professional adds campaigns with follow-ups plus open and click tracking for up to 3 seats. Scale adds private-label reports and up to 10 seats.
The short answer
Prowly is the better middle ground for a small PR team that wants software for pitches, lists and limited monitoring with public monthly prices. Meltwater earns its higher starting point when monitoring, reporting, global scale and support are real requirements. If the immediate need is a US-focused media list with high export volume, compare both with Media List before committing to a longer term.