# Muck Rack

> Muck Rack is a public relations platform that combines a searchable database of journalists and media outlets, email pitching with open and reply tracking, media monitoring across online, print, broadcast, podcast and social channels, and reporting on earned coverage. Its distinguishing asset is that many journalist profiles are maintained by the journalists themselves through a free portfolio product, which keeps beat and contact data fresher than a purely scraped list. Pricing is quote-only on annual contracts, with no free plan and no public trial for PR teams.

- Category: PR & Media Outreach (https://saastracker.org/categories/pr-media-outreach)
- Website: https://muckrack.com
- 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 plan: No
- Free trial: No
- Founded: 2009, HQ: Miami, Florida (fully distributed workforce), Ownership: Founder-controlled; minority growth investment from Susquehanna Growth Equity (2022)
- Profile last reviewed: 2026-08-23
- Canonical profile: https://saastracker.org/products/muck-rack

## Overview

Most media databases are built the same way: a vendor scrapes bylines, buys contact lists, and pays researchers to phone newsrooms. Muck Rack started from the other end. Launched in 2009 as a free service that let journalists build a public portfolio of their work and link it to their social accounts, it accumulated a large population of reporters who had a personal reason to keep their own profile accurate. The commercial PR platform, launched in 2011, sits on top of that data. The practical effect is that when a reporter changes outlets or beats, the change often reaches Muck Rack because the reporter made it, not because a researcher caught it on the next refresh cycle.

The paid product covers the full earned-media loop. You search the database for journalists by beat, outlet, location, recent coverage, or the topics they actually write about, build and save media lists, pitch them from inside the tool with tracking on opens, clicks and replies, then monitor for the coverage that results across web, print, broadcast, podcasts, newsletters and social. Reporting turns those mentions into share of voice, sentiment, message pull-through and a configurable coverage score that PR teams put in front of executives. An Inbound Media Manager collects journalist requests coming the other way.

Since 2022 the company has moved decisively upmarket and toward AI. A $180 million Series A from Susquehanna Growth Equity ended thirteen years of bootstrapping. The 2024 acquisition of Keyhole added social listening. In July 2025 the company launched Generative Pulse, which measures how often a brand appears in answers from ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude and which journalists and outlets are being cited as sources; in March 2026 that dataset became AI Visibility Badges shown on journalist and outlet records inside the main product, so a PR person can see which reporters actually shape what an LLM says about their market.

The honest caveat for a small business is the commercial model. Muck Rack publishes three plan names (Starter, Standard, Premier) and a detailed feature matrix, but no prices. Everything is a custom annual quote based on seat count and modules, there is no monthly option, no free plan, and no self-serve trial. Reported entry points from resellers and buyer communities cluster around $5,000 per year for a single-seat Starter license, with most teams landing near $10,000 and larger deployments running well beyond that. That is a real purchase decision, not a card swipe, and it puts Muck Rack out of reach for a solo founder doing occasional outreach even though the product itself is one of the easier PR platforms to actually use.

## How it works

1. Search starts in the media database. You query by keyword, beat, outlet, geography, or the content of recent articles, and Muck Rack returns journalist profiles with bylines, social activity, contact details, pitching preferences the journalist has stated, and (on Standard and Premier) an AI Visibility Badge indicating how often that person is cited in LLM answers. Results become saved media lists that the team shares.

2. Pitching happens in-product with your own email connected, so messages send from your address and land in your sent folder. Muck Rack tracks opens, clicks and replies per recipient, flags journalists who have gone quiet, and keeps a history of who on your team pitched whom, which is the mechanism that stops three people from a large agency emailing the same reporter in one week.

3. Monitoring runs continuously against saved searches. Alerts fire by email or Slack when your brand, executives, competitors or topics appear online; print, broadcast, podcast and social coverage arrive through the relevant modules, some of which are paid add-ons rather than base plan features. Podcast monitoring requires Standard or above.

4. Reporting converts mentions into a narrative for stakeholders. Coverage reports, dashboards, sentiment analysis, share of voice and a customizable PR Hit Score summarize a campaign; Premier adds custom dashboards, auto-tagging of themes and spokespeople, interactive presentations and Google Analytics integration so coverage can be tied to referral traffic.

5. Generative Pulse runs alongside as the AI-era layer: a defined prompt set is queried repeatedly across major LLMs, and the platform reports where your brand appears, how that changes over time, which competitors dominate, and which journalists and publications are being used as the underlying sources, which turns GEO into a media relations target list rather than a content-marketing guess.

## 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.

## Not the right fit for

- Solo founders and very small businesses doing occasional outreach; there is no free plan, no monthly billing, and no self-serve trial, so the minimum commitment is an annual contract.
- Teams that want to try before buying without talking to sales; every path to the product runs through a demo and a custom quote.
- Link-building and SEO outreach at scale, where a blogger-oriented outreach tool with per-seat monthly pricing fits the workflow and budget far better.
- Organizations whose coverage is mostly non-English or in smaller international markets, where users consistently report thinner database and monitoring coverage than in the US and UK.
- Buyers who need deep social listening as the primary use case; the Keyhole-derived listening is a competent add-on, not a replacement for a dedicated listening platform.

## Features

### Media database

The journalist and outlet data the rest of the platform is built on.

- **Journalist-maintained profiles**: A large share of records originate from the free Muck Rack for Journalists portfolio, so beat changes and outlet moves are often entered by the reporter rather than discovered later by a researcher.
- **Search by recent coverage**: Query the article corpus rather than a static beat tag, which surfaces the three reporters who covered your exact topic last month instead of everyone filed under Technology.
- **Outlet records**: Publication profiles with staff rosters, audience data, editorial focus and the outlet's own AI visibility standing, used for building target lists top down.
- **Stated pitching preferences**: Many journalists publish what they want and do not want to be pitched, including embargo and exclusive policies, directly on their profile.
- **AI Visibility Badges**: Tiered badges, launched March 2026 and derived from more than 15 million Generative Pulse citations, mark which journalists and outlets are most often cited in LLM answers. Standard and Premier only.
- **AI journalist recommendations**: Given a pitch or topic, the platform proposes reporters likely to cover it based on their recent output. Standard and Premier only.
- **Media lists**: Shared, filterable lists that stay live as underlying profiles change, so a list built for last quarter's launch does not silently rot.
- **Export limits by tier**: Starter allows limited media list exports; full export is a Standard and Premier feature, which matters if you intend to work lists outside the tool.

### Pitching and inbound

Sending, tracking, and receiving journalist requests.

- **Email integration**: Connect Gmail or Outlook so pitches send from your real address with your signature and threading, rather than from a vendor relay that reporters filter.
- **Open, click and reply tracking**: Per-recipient engagement on every pitch, including which links were clicked, so follow-up targets the people who actually read it.
- **Team pitch history**: A shared record of who contacted which journalist and when, the safeguard against multiple colleagues pitching the same reporter in the same week.
- **Personalization at list level**: Merge fields and per-recipient edits before send, with the tool discouraging identical blasts that damage sender reputation with newsrooms.
- **Inbound Media Manager**: Collects and routes incoming journalist queries and source requests so they are triaged rather than lost in an inbox. Premier only.
- **Press release distribution**: Drafting, formatting, wire distribution and pickup tracking, sold as a separate add-on module rather than included in a base plan.

### Monitoring

Catching the coverage, across more channels than most PR tools reach.

- **Online article monitoring**: Continuous search of news and web content with saved searches for brand, executives, competitors and topics, available on every tier.
- **Email and Slack alerts**: Real-time or digest alerts routed to a channel, which is how most teams actually consume monitoring rather than by logging in.
- **Podcast monitoring**: Transcribed podcast coverage searchable like text, a genuinely differentiated channel given how much B2B commentary now happens in audio. Standard and Premier only.
- **Print and broadcast monitoring**: Full print article text plus TV and radio clips, sold as an add-on module rather than included in the base subscription.
- **Social listening**: Brand, competitor, hashtag and influencer tracking across Instagram, X, TikTok, YouTube and Facebook, built from the 2024 Keyhole acquisition and priced as an add-on.
- **Media Intelligence services**: A human layer: analysts curate coverage, write executive digests and produce briefings, sold as a service module for teams that want the summary rather than the feed.

### Reporting and AI visibility

Turning mentions into something an executive or client will accept as proof.

- **Coverage reports**: Templated reports of earned placements with volume, reach and prominence, available in different packs depending on tier.
- **Sentiment analysis**: NLP sentiment on Starter and Standard; Premier upgrades to an AI-powered model, a rare case where the tier difference is the underlying method rather than a quota.
- **Customizable PR Hit Score**: Weight the factors your organization actually cares about (outlet tier, message inclusion, spokesperson quote) into a single score. Premier only.
- **Custom dashboards**: Starter and Standard get template dashboards; building your own layout is a Premier feature, as are interactive presentations for client readouts.
- **Auto-tagging of themes and spokespeople**: Automatic classification of coverage by message and by which executive was quoted, removing the manual tagging that eats agency hours. Premier only.
- **Google Analytics integration**: Ties earned placements to referral sessions so coverage can be argued in traffic terms, not just impressions. Premier only.
- **Generative Pulse**: Tracks how often and how favorably your brand appears in ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude answers, which competitors dominate those answers, and which journalists and outlets are cited as sources. Premier tier or separate module.
- **Curation Engine**: Automated assembly of coverage into internal newsletters and executive digests on a schedule. Premier only.
- **Muck Rack API**: Programmatic access to database and coverage data for teams pushing results into a warehouse or internal dashboard, restricted to Premier customers and priced as an add-on.

## Use cases

- **Head of comms at a 60-person B2B software company**: Two funding announcements and a product launch a year, plus a standing need to show the board that PR spend produces something measurable. Outcome: Media lists built from reporters who covered comparable launches in the last 90 days, pitches sent and tracked from her own Gmail, and a quarterly coverage report with share of voice against three named competitors that replaces the previous slide of screenshots.
- **Account director at a ten-person PR agency**: Six clients across different verticals, with a recurring risk that two account managers pitch the same technology reporter in the same week and burn the relationship. Outcome: Shared pitch history makes prior contact visible before sending, client-specific dashboards go out without manual assembly, and the reporting pack becomes part of the retainer justification at renewal.
- **Communications lead at a regional healthcare group**: Coverage arrives mostly through local TV and print, which web-only monitoring tools miss entirely, and the CEO wants a Monday morning briefing. Outcome: Broadcast and print add-ons capture the segments and clippings, the Curation Engine assembles them into a scheduled digest, and the executive team stops learning about local coverage from patients.
- **Brand marketer worried about how AI describes the category**: Buyers increasingly ask ChatGPT which vendors to shortlist, and the company has no idea whether it appears or which sources the model is reading. Outcome: Generative Pulse quantifies the brand's citation share across major models and names the publications feeding those answers, which converts an abstract GEO worry into a specific list of journalists to pitch.

## Pricing

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.

- **Starter**: Custom quote per year (reported from roughly $5,000). Online article search, saved searches, email and Slack alerts; Full people and outlet search, media lists, pitching with email integration; NLP sentiment, template dashboards, limited media list exports; Self-led onboarding and pooled customer success. Aimed at individuals and very small teams. No podcast monitoring, no AI journalist recommendations, no AI Visibility Badges.
- **Standard**: Custom quote per year (reported roughly $10,000 to $15,000). Everything in Starter plus podcast monitoring; AI Visibility Badges and AI journalist recommendations; Full media list exports and a larger coverage report pack; Instructor-led onboarding and a named customer success manager. The tier Muck Rack marks as most popular, and the practical floor for a team that pitches regularly.
- **Premier**: Custom quote per year (reported $25,000 and up). Inbound Media Manager and the Curation Engine; AI-powered sentiment, auto-tagging of themes and spokespeople, custom dashboards; Customizable PR Hit Score, interactive presentations, Google Analytics integration; Generative Pulse and API access eligibility. Most of the analytics features a reporting-heavy agency wants are gated here, which is the main reason quotes escalate.

Add-ons:

- Print and broadcast monitoring (Add-on, quoted): Full print article text plus TV and radio clips; the usual reason a local or consumer brand needs more than the base plan.
- Social listening (Add-on, quoted): Derived from the Keyhole acquisition; covers Instagram, X, TikTok, YouTube and Facebook.
- Press release distribution (Add-on, quoted): Drafting, distribution and pickup tracking; not bundled into any base tier.
- Media Intelligence services (Add-on, quoted): Human analysts producing curated coverage summaries and executive briefings.
- Generative Pulse (Add-on or Premier feature, quoted): LLM visibility tracking across ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude with source attribution.
- Muck Rack API (Add-on, quoted): Programmatic data access, available to Premier customers only.

Billing notes:

- Annual contracts only as of August 2026; there is no month-to-month plan and no published self-serve checkout.
- The published plan comparison lists features but no prices, so the only way to learn your number is a sales demo, which also means quotes vary by company size and negotiating leverage rather than following a rate card.
- Multi-year commitments are commonly reported to earn discounts in the 10 to 20 percent range, which is the main lever a small buyer has.
- Seat count is an explicit pricing factor the company names, so agencies adding account staff should model growth into the first contract rather than renegotiating mid-term.
- Several of the capabilities buyers assume are included (print and broadcast, social listening, press release distribution, Generative Pulse) are add-on modules, and this is the most frequent source of gap between the demo impression and the final quote.
- There is no free plan and no public trial for PR teams. The free product is Muck Rack for Journalists, a portfolio tool for reporters, and it does not give a PR buyer access to the database.

Value assessment: 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.

## 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.
- Generative Pulse and AI Visibility Badges are a substantive answer to how AI answers are reshaping earned media, not a relabeled sentiment feature.
- Consistently rated easier to learn and faster to use than the legacy enterprise PR suites it competes against.
- Free journalist portfolio product gives the company a structural data advantage competitors cannot easily replicate.

## 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.
- International and non-English coverage is repeatedly reported as thinner than US and UK coverage, both in the database and in monitoring.
- Journalist contact data still goes stale in a contracting news industry; profiles for reporters who left journalism or were laid off can persist longer than they should.
- Users report slow load times on large searches and heavy reporting views.
- Social listening is newer than the rest of the platform and is not equivalent to a dedicated listening tool for volume-heavy consumer brands.

## Comparisons

- **Muck Rack vs Prowly**: The clearest small-business alternative. Prowly publishes per-month pricing and offers a free trial, so a five-person team can buy it without a procurement cycle, and it includes a press-release-page builder and a media database aimed at the same job. Muck Rack wins on database depth, journalist self-maintenance, podcast and broadcast reach, and the AI visibility work. If budget is the binding constraint, Prowly; if the database quality decides the outcome of your program, Muck Rack.
- **Muck Rack vs Prezly**: Different center of gravity. Prezly is strongest as a newsroom and story-hosting platform with contact management and transparent pricing, built for communicating with an audience you already have. Muck Rack is strongest at finding journalists you do not know and proving what the coverage was worth. Teams that own a strong owned-media channel and a modest pitching load often prefer Prezly; teams whose whole problem is cold media relations need Muck Rack's database.
- **Muck Rack vs Agility PR Solutions**: The closest like-for-like among mid-market PR suites: database, distribution, monitoring and reporting, also quote-only. Agility competes hard on price and on bundled monitoring, and often quotes lower for a comparable seat count. Muck Rack's advantages are interface quality, the journalist-maintained data layer, and being several years ahead on AI visibility measurement. Get both quotes; the delta is frequently large enough to matter more than the feature gap.
- **Muck Rack vs 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.
- **Muck Rack vs Semrush**: Overlapping only at the edges, and worth understanding because Semrush owns Prowly. Semrush covers SEO, content, brand monitoring and its own AI visibility tracking at published per-month prices, so a marketing team already paying for it can approximate part of Muck Rack's monitoring and GEO reporting without a new contract. What Semrush does not have is a journalist database or a pitching workflow, which is the half of Muck Rack that cannot be substituted.
- **Muck Rack vs SparkToro**: A cheap complement rather than a rival. SparkToro tells you which publications, podcasts and social accounts your target audience actually pays attention to, for a fraction of a Muck Rack seat. It has no journalist contacts, no pitching and no coverage reporting. The sensible pattern is SparkToro to decide where to aim and Muck Rack to reach the people who work there; small teams that cannot afford Muck Rack often use SparkToro plus manual outreach as the stopgap.

## Implementation

- 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.
- 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.
- Onboarding: Self-led on Starter with help center and training materials. Standard and Premier get instructor-led onboarding and a named customer success manager, which is one of the more meaningful differences between the tiers for a team without prior PR tooling experience.
- Migration: Existing media lists import from spreadsheets and generally map cleanly to Muck Rack profiles, though contacts that no longer match a live journalist record need manual reconciliation. Historical coverage from a previous monitoring vendor does not transfer, so run an overlap period if year-over-year reporting continuity matters, and export anything you need from the outgoing tool before the contract ends.

## Platform, API & security

- Platforms: Web application, Gmail and Outlook integration, Slack alerts, Mobile web
- API: Muck Rack API for programmatic access to media database and coverage data, available to Premier customers as a paid add-on. Slack and email integrations cover routine alerting without engineering work.
- Compliance: GDPR, CCPA, SOC 2 Type II
- Data residency: US-based processing; contact data handling for journalists is governed by the company's published privacy policy and journalist opt-out process.
- SSO: Single sign-on available on higher tiers and for larger deployments.
- Security notes: Journalists can claim, correct or request removal of their own profile, which is both a data-quality mechanism and the company's answer to privacy questions about a contact database. Pitch sending uses your connected mailbox rather than a shared relay, so sender reputation stays with your domain.

## Support

- Channels: Live chat on all tiers with tier-dependent response times, Named customer success manager on Standard and Premier, Email support, Help center and training library
- Documentation: A substantial help center plus a training library, supplemented by widely read original research including the annual State of Journalism report, which functions as category education and as a lead magnet.
- Community: Strong standing among working journalists because of the free portfolio product, plus an active practitioner following around the company's research and its Generative Pulse events.

## Company

- Founded: 2009
- Founders: Greg Galant, Lee Semel
- Headquarters: Miami, Florida (fully distributed workforce)
- Ownership: Founder-controlled; minority growth investment from Susquehanna Growth Equity (2022)
- Employees: Several hundred (over 200 reported at the 2022 Series A; est. 2026)
- Funding: Bootstrapped and profitable for over a decade, then a $180 million Series A led by Susquehanna Growth Equity in September 2022, structured as a minority investment leaving the founders in control.

Funding history:

- Series A (2022): $180M. Led by Susquehanna Growth Equity; one of the largest single investments in PR technology and the company's first outside capital.

Timeline:

- 2009: Launches as a free service for journalists to build public portfolios and connect their work to social accounts; more than 10,000 journalists request profiles in the first year.
- 2011: Commercial SaaS platform launched for PR teams and agencies on top of the journalist profile data.
- 2021: Becomes a fully distributed company; monitoring and reporting depth expand to compete with the legacy PR suites.
- 2022: Raises a $180 million Series A from Susquehanna Growth Equity after thirteen bootstrapped years, with founders retaining control.
- 2024: Acquires Keyhole, its first acquisition, adding social listening across Instagram, X, TikTok, YouTube and Facebook.
- 2025: Launches Generative Pulse in July, measuring brand visibility inside ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude answers and identifying the journalists and outlets those answers cite.
- 2026: Launches AI Visibility Badges in March, surfacing LLM citation influence on journalist and outlet records inside the core pitching workflow.

## Integrations

Gmail, Outlook, Slack, Google Analytics, Microsoft Teams, Salesforce, Zapier, Keyhole social listening, Muck Rack API, Webhooks

## FAQ

### How much does Muck Rack cost?

Muck Rack does not publish prices. It has three plans (Starter, Standard and Premier), all quoted annually based on seat count and which add-on modules you take. Reported figures from buyers and resellers put a single-seat Starter license around $5,000 per year, most teams near $10,000 to $15,000, and larger Premier deployments at $25,000 and up. There is no monthly option.

### Is there a free version or free trial of Muck Rack?

Not for PR teams. The free product is Muck Rack for Journalists, a portfolio and profile tool for reporters, which does not give access to the media database, pitching or monitoring. Buyers evaluate the paid platform through a sales demo, not a self-serve trial.

### What is Muck Rack used for?

Finding and researching journalists, building media lists, pitching them with tracking on opens and replies, monitoring the coverage that results across online, print, broadcast, podcast and social channels, and reporting on that coverage with sentiment, share of voice and a configurable coverage score.

### Is the Muck Rack media database accurate?

It is generally regarded as one of the better ones, because many journalist profiles are created and maintained by the journalists themselves rather than only scraped. It is not perfect: users report outdated entries for reporters who have changed roles or left the industry, and coverage outside the US and UK is thinner. Verify a contact's recent bylines before pitching regardless of the source.

### Muck Rack vs Cision: which is better?

Muck Rack is consistently rated easier to use, with fresher journalist data and a cleaner interface, and it tends to be the choice of teams replacing a legacy contract. Cision has broader monitoring breadth, deeper international coverage and a wider wire and services business. Both are quote-only annual contracts, so the decision often comes down to which quote and which database performs better on your specific beat during the demo.

### Does Muck Rack include press release distribution?

Only as a paid add-on module. It is not part of any base tier. If wire distribution is the main thing you need, price a dedicated distribution service alongside the Muck Rack quote, because you may be buying two things you could buy separately for less.

### What is Generative Pulse?

Muck Rack's AI visibility product, launched in July 2025. It queries a defined prompt set across major language models including ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude, then reports how often your brand and competitors appear in the answers, how that changes over time, and which journalists and publications the models are citing as sources. Those citation counts also power the AI Visibility Badges added to journalist profiles in March 2026.

### Can a small business afford Muck Rack?

Usually not comfortably. The realistic entry point is an annual contract in the five-figure range with no trial and no monthly billing, which suits a funded communications function rather than a small business doing occasional outreach. Small teams typically use a lower-cost alternative with published pricing, or work inbound source-request marketplaces, until pitching becomes a weekly activity.

### Does Muck Rack monitor podcasts and broadcast?

Podcast monitoring is included on Standard and Premier but not Starter. Print and broadcast monitoring, meaning full article text and TV and radio clips, are a separate paid add-on module on any tier.

### Who owns Muck Rack?

It remains founder-controlled. Greg Galant and Lee Semel founded it in 2009 and retained majority control through the September 2022 Series A, in which Susquehanna Growth Equity invested $180 million as a minority stake. The company has not been acquired; it made its own first acquisition, of Keyhole, in 2024.

### Can journalists remove themselves from Muck Rack?

Yes. Journalists can claim and edit their profile, correct beat and contact details, state their pitching preferences, or request removal. That self-service loop is both the privacy mechanism and the reason the underlying data stays fresher than a purely scraped database.

### Does Muck Rack work for SEO link building?

Poorly, relative to its cost. It is built for journalists at news outlets, not bloggers and niche site owners, and its pricing assumes a communications budget. Dedicated outreach tools with per-month pricing and prospecting built around backlink data are a far better fit for link acquisition.

## Editorial verdict

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.

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Source: SaaSTracker (https://saastracker.org), an independent editorial project. This profile is compiled from public information, carries no peer reviews or paid placement, and was last reviewed 2026-08-23. Awards are judged on published criteria: https://saastracker.org/methodology