Muck Rack vs Qwoted
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
Both sides assessedMuck Rack compared with Qwoted
Not really competitors, though they get shortlisted together. Qwoted is a marketplace where journalists post source requests and experts respond, an inbound motion with a low or free entry point. Muck Rack is an outbound platform where you choose targets and pitch them. A small team with no budget should work Qwoted first; a team running a planned campaign around launches and announcements needs the database and reporting Qwoted does not attempt.
Qwoted compared with Muck Rack
Not really the same purchase. Muck Rack is a full media relations platform with a comprehensive journalist database, monitoring, and reporting, priced in the thousands per year and sold on annual contracts. Qwoted is a marketplace with a free tier. A small business that cannot afford Muck Rack loses very little by running Qwoted plus a monitoring tool; a comms team that needs to build targeted media lists and prove share of voice will eventually need the database, and Qwoted does not replace it.
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.
Choose Qwoted if
Founders, consultants, and subject matter experts in business, finance, technology, and health who want to earn quotes in real publications, plus small PR agencies that need a source-request channel and a shared reporting view without an enterprise media database contract.
Side by side
13 attributes| Attribute | Muck Rack | Qwoted |
|---|---|---|
| Category | PR | PR |
| Starting price | 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 | Free (Basic, 2 pitches per month); Pro listed at $149 per month (free plan available) |
| Pricing model | 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. | Per-account subscription for sources and PR professionals, metered by monthly pitch credits. Journalists use the platform free. The free Basic plan keeps your profile searchable but caps you at two pitches a month and delays new requests by two hours; Pro removes the delay and adds the research features; Teams is quoted for multi-seat accounts. |
| Free plan | No | Basic: 2 pitch credits per month, 2 hour delay on new opportunities, profile stays in the journalist-searchable database, real-time alerts and daily opportunity email included |
| Free trial | No | No standard time-limited trial; the free Basic plan is the trial |
| Best for | 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. | Founders, consultants, and subject matter experts in business, finance, technology, and health who want to earn quotes in real publications, plus small PR agencies that need a source-request channel and a shared reporting view without an enterprise media database contract. |
| Setup time | 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. | Under an hour to a working account. The profile, biography, headshot, and expertise tags are the only setup, and there is nothing to install or integrate. Getting the tags right matters more than getting them fast. |
| Learning curve | 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. | Low mechanically, real in practice. The skill is writing a pitch a journalist can paste: lead with the quotable line, keep it to a few short paragraphs, include credentials and a photo, and hit send within the first hour. Sources who treat the credit as scarce outperform those who spend all thirty five. |
| Platforms | Web application, Gmail and Outlook integration, Slack alerts, Mobile web | Web application, Email alerts and daily digest, Mobile web |
| Compliance | GDPR, CCPA, SOC 2 Type II | GDPR, CCPA |
| Founded | 2009 | 2018 |
| Headquarters | Miami, Florida (fully distributed workforce) | New York, New York, United States |
| Ownership | Founder-controlled; minority growth investment from Susquehanna Growth Equity (2022) | Majority owned by Vested (financial communications agency), with a strategic investment from Prosek Ventures, the venture arm of Prosek Partners |
Strengths and limitations
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.
Qwoted
Strengths
- The strongest remaining source-request marketplace after Connectively shut down in December 2024, with real journalists from national business and finance outlets posting requests.
- Discoverability is free: profiles stay searchable by reporters on every plan, so the inbound half of the product costs nothing.
- Unusually strong in business, finance, and fintech beats, a direct consequence of being built by financial communications firms.
- Pitch intelligence gives a measurable open and reply rate, which almost nothing else in earned media does at this price.
Limitations
- Purely reactive: there is no way to pitch a publication that has not posted a request, so campaign timing is not yours to control.
- The free plan's two hour delay is decisive on competitive requests, which regularly close before a Basic user can respond.
- Thirty five Pro credits a month is a real ceiling for anyone managing several clients or spokespeople, and pushes agencies toward a quoted Teams contract.
- Backlinks are unreliable; major outlets nofollow or omit source links, so buying this as an SEO tool sets the wrong expectation.
Pricing compared
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.
Qwoted
Per-account subscription for sources and PR professionals, metered by monthly pitch credits. Journalists use the platform free. The free Basic plan keeps your profile searchable but caps you at two pitches a month and delays new requests by two hours; Pro removes the delay and adds the research features; Teams is quoted for multi-seat accounts.
- Basic$0
- Pro$149
- TeamsCustom
The free plan is the most interesting thing about the pricing, because discoverability is not gated behind it: a well-built free profile can earn coverage without a single pitch credit being spent. Pro at $149 list is expensive against two plausible comparisons, a $99 a month competitor with a similar model and simply spending the time on direct outreach, and the honest test is whether thirty five credits a month convert into more than one placement you would otherwise have missed. For agencies the Teams tier is easier to justify because reporting is the billable artifact. For a solo expert, start free, tag the profile properly, and upgrade only when the two-credit cap is visibly costing you opportunities.
Editorial verdict on each
Muck 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 profileQwoted
Qwoted is the sensible default in a category that lost its default when Connectively closed. The two-sided mechanics work, the request supply in business and finance beats is real, and pitch intelligence gives you an honest number for a channel that usually runs on anecdote. The best argument for it is the free plan, which keeps your profile searchable by journalists without charging you anything, so inbound placements can happen before you ever swipe a card. The arguments against it are worth taking seriously: $149 list for thirty five credits is steep next to cheaper rivals, the platform is entirely reactive so you cannot run a campaign on your own schedule, backlinks are not something you should count on, and Teams pricing is quote-only. Build a properly tagged free profile first, measure how often relevant requests appear in your actual beat, and upgrade only when the two-credit cap is demonstrably the thing standing between you and coverage.
Read the full Qwoted profileMuck Rack profile last reviewed 2026-08-23; Qwoted last reviewed 2026-08-23. Pricing is compiled from public sources and can change without notice. See our methodology.