Mention vs Muck Rack
An independent, review-free comparison compiled by the SaaSTracker editorial team. Both products are profiled in full, and neither can pay for placement here.
The short answer
Editorial assessmentMention compared with Muck Rack
Muck Rack's centre of gravity is the journalist database and the pitching workflow, with monitoring attached; Mention's is the monitoring, with no pitching at all. If your bottleneck is finding and reaching the right reporter, Muck Rack does something Mention cannot. If it is knowing what the internet already says about you across social, forums, and review sites, Mention's index is the broader one.
Choose Mention if
Mid-market and larger comms, PR, and brand teams that need broad multi-source listening with Boolean precision, competitor share of voice, and white-labelled reporting, and that can commit to an annual contract bought through a sales conversation.
Choose Muck Rack if
In-house communications teams and PR agencies with a funded, ongoing earned-media program: teams that pitch journalists most weeks, need defensible coverage reporting for executives or clients, and can commit to an annual contract in the five-figure range.
Side by side
13 attributes| Attribute | Mention | Muck Rack |
|---|---|---|
| Category | PR | PR |
| Starting price | From $599 per month on an annual contract, quoted through a demo (free trial) | Quote only; reported entry points around $5,000 per year for a single-seat Starter license, with most teams reported near $10,000 per year |
| Pricing model | A single Company plan sold through a demo on an annual contract, priced by mention volume and alert count rather than by seat. Users are unlimited. Historical data backfill and API access are paid add-ons quoted separately. The self-serve Solo, Pro, and Pro Plus tiers were discontinued for new customers in July 2025 and are grandfathered only for existing accounts. | Quote-only annual subscription. Three published plans (Starter, Standard, Premier) with a public feature matrix but no public prices; the quote depends on seat count and which modules you take. Print and broadcast monitoring, social listening, press release distribution, Media Intelligence services, Generative Pulse and the API are add-ons rather than base features. No monthly billing option. |
| Free plan | No | No |
| Free trial | A trial exists but is gated behind a demo request rather than a public signup | No |
| Best for | Mid-market and larger comms, PR, and brand teams that need broad multi-source listening with Boolean precision, competitor share of voice, and white-labelled reporting, and that can commit to an annual contract bought through a sales conversation. | In-house communications teams and PR agencies with a funded, ongoing earned-media program: teams that pitch journalists most weeks, need defensible coverage reporting for executives or clients, and can commit to an annual contract in the five-figure range. |
| Setup time | A first alert takes minutes, and results begin arriving immediately. Getting a feed that is actually worth reading takes longer: expect a week or two of tuning Boolean exclusions, language and country scoping, and source filters before the noise ratio settles. Onboarding is scheduled with the account manager rather than self-directed. | Days rather than weeks for the core product. Connecting email, configuring saved searches and alerts, and building the first media lists is same-week work. Reporting takes longer to get right because dashboards, tagging conventions and the coverage score need agreement on what counts as a good placement. |
| Learning curve | Low for reading a feed, moderate for writing good queries. The 2,000 character advanced alert is powerful and unforgiving; a poorly written one either floods the account and burns mention quota or silently misses the coverage that mattered. Plan for someone to own query maintenance rather than treating alerts as set and forget. | Low by the standards of the category; Muck Rack is routinely cited as the easiest of the major PR platforms to pick up. The harder skill is judgment: building tight, evidence-based media lists instead of large ones, and writing pitches the tracking data can teach you to improve. |
| Platforms | Web application, iOS app, Android app, Desktop notifications, REST API (paid add-on) | Web application, Gmail and Outlook integration, Slack alerts, Mobile web |
| Compliance | GDPR | GDPR, CCPA, SOC 2 Type II |
| Founded | 2012 | 2009 |
| Headquarters | Paris, France | Miami, Florida (fully distributed workforce) |
| Ownership | Acquired by Agorapulse (2025), previously owned by Mynewsdesk (2018 to 2025) | Founder-controlled; minority growth investment from Susquehanna Growth Equity (2022) |
Strengths and limitations
Mention
Strengths
- Broad source coverage in one index: social platforms, news, blogs, forums, and more than seventy-five review sites, rather than social alone.
- Advanced Boolean alerts with a 2,000 character query allowance, which is the difference between a signal feed and a noise feed for ambiguous brand names.
- Unlimited users on the Company plan, so read access can be given to support, legal, and executives without a per-seat calculation.
- White-label scheduled reporting that makes listening a saleable agency deliverable rather than an internal cost.
Limitations
- The self-serve tiers are gone. Solo, Pro, and Pro Plus were discontinued for new customers in July 2025, so a small business cannot buy Mention at its historic price point regardless of what third-party pricing pages still say.
- The only published route to purchase is a demo request; there is no public signup and no clearly documented open trial, which makes cheap evaluation impossible.
- Historical data is not included at any tier. A new alert starts collecting from creation, and backfilling up to two years is a separate paid add-on.
- API access is also an add-on rather than a plan feature, which raises the real cost of any integration project above the headline price.
Muck Rack
Strengths
- Journalist-maintained profiles keep beat and outlet data fresher than databases built purely from scraping and phone verification.
- Search operates over what journalists have actually written recently, so lists are built from evidence rather than stale beat tags.
- Pitching, monitoring and reporting live in one place with a shared team history, which removes the duplicate-pitch failure mode agencies dread.
- Podcast and newsletter monitoring cover channels many competing tools still treat as an afterthought.
Limitations
- No free plan, no self-serve trial, and no monthly billing; every buyer goes through a demo and signs an annual contract, which excludes most small businesses outright.
- Prices are not published at all, so comparable teams are quoted very different numbers for the same feature bundle depending on size and leverage.
- The reporting features that justify the platform to executives (custom dashboards, AI sentiment, auto-tagging, PR Hit Score, Google Analytics tie-in) are Premier-only.
- Capabilities buyers expect to be included are separate paid modules: print and broadcast monitoring, social listening, press release distribution and the API.
Pricing compared
Mention
A single Company plan sold through a demo on an annual contract, priced by mention volume and alert count rather than by seat. Users are unlimited. Historical data backfill and API access are paid add-ons quoted separately. The self-serve Solo, Pro, and Pro Plus tiers were discontinued for new customers in July 2025 and are grandfathered only for existing accounts.
- CompanyFrom $599
- Historical data add-onQuoted
- API access add-onQuoted
- Legacy self-serve tiersNo longer sold
As a listening engine at the $600 to $1,500 a month level, Mention is competitive: broad source coverage, real Boolean control, unlimited seats, and reporting an agency can put a client logo on. The problem is the shape of the offer rather than the number. A tool that built its reputation on a $49 entry point now requires a demo, an annual commitment, and two paid add-ons before it does what a buyer assumes it already does. For a small business that reads about Mention in a listicle and expects a card-and-go signup, the value question does not really arise, because that route no longer exists. For a mid-market comms team already budgeting five figures a year for monitoring, it is a reasonable buy that undercuts the traditional media intelligence vendors by a wide margin.
Muck Rack
Quote-only annual subscription. Three published plans (Starter, Standard, Premier) with a public feature matrix but no public prices; the quote depends on seat count and which modules you take. Print and broadcast monitoring, social listening, press release distribution, Media Intelligence services, Generative Pulse and the API are add-ons rather than base features. No monthly billing option.
- StarterCustom quote
- StandardCustom quote
- PremierCustom quote
Per dollar, Muck Rack is usually the better-liked of the major PR platforms: the interface is markedly cleaner than the legacy incumbents, the journalist data is fresher because journalists maintain much of it, and the reporting is credible enough to survive an executive review. But the entry point is an annual five-figure commitment with no trial, and the analytics that make the reporting genuinely good sit on the top tier. For a communications team with a real budget and a weekly pitching cadence, it is defensible and often cheaper than the incumbent it replaces. For a small business doing PR a few times a year, the math does not work, and a lighter tool with published monthly pricing will do the job.
Editorial verdict on each
Mention
Mention still does the thing it became known for, and does it well: a broad, fast index across social, news, forums, and review sites, with Boolean control good enough to make an ambiguous brand name workable and reporting polished enough to bill a client for. What changed is who is allowed to buy it. The self-serve tiers that made Mention a default recommendation for small businesses were retired in July 2025, publishing and replying were removed in January 2026, and the only published route now is a demo leading to an annual Company contract from $599 a month with historical data and API access priced on top. For a mid-market comms team that would otherwise be quoted five figures by a traditional media intelligence vendor, that is a fair deal and worth a bake-off against Agility PR. For the small business this directory is written for, Mention is now a tool to know about rather than one to buy, and Brand24 or a monitoring module inside a platform you already pay for will get you further for the money.
Read the full Mention profileMuck Rack
Muck Rack is the best-liked of the serious PR platforms for good reasons: journalists maintain much of the database, search runs on what reporters have actually written rather than stale beat tags, the interface does not feel like enterprise software from 2009, and the company has been early and substantive on measuring how AI answers cite the media. Generative Pulse and the AI Visibility Badges built on it are the most credible attempt any PR vendor has made to attach earned media to LLM visibility. The commercial model is the problem for anyone reading this site's usual audience. Nothing is published, nothing is self-serve, there is no free plan and no trial, the contract is annual, and the reported floor is about $5,000 a year for one seat, with the reporting features that make the platform persuasive gated to the top tier and several expected capabilities sold as add-ons. If you have a funded comms function and pitch most weeks, get the quote and negotiate hard on multi-year terms. If you are a small business doing PR a few times a year, this is not your tool yet, and a competitor with a published monthly price will get the same three placements for a fraction of the money.
Read the full Muck Rack profileMention profile last reviewed 2026-08-23; Muck Rack last reviewed 2026-08-23. Pricing is compiled from public sources and can change without notice. See our methodology.