The best media and PR monitoring tools in 2026, and what each one actually watches

Media monitoring tools fall into three groups, and most comparisons mix them up:

• Media databases such as Meltwater, Cision, Muck Rack, Onclusive and Talkwalker search news, print, broadcast and podcasts for your keywords, across sources you never had to name. They sell through a sales call, with prices on request.
• Mention trackers such as Brand24, Mention and Google Alerts search the web and social networks for keywords, with lighter coverage of print and broadcast and, in Brand24’s case, published prices.
• Page monitors such as Monity watch the specific pages you choose (a regulator’s press page, a competitor’s newsroom, an outlet’s tag page for your company, a review page) and tell you what changed on them.

We make Monity, so weigh our view accordingly. Monity is a page monitor, not a news and broadcast database, and this page says plainly where the others are the better pick. Every price, plan name and coverage number below comes from each vendor’s own pages, checked in October 2026.

The short answer

• You know which pages matter (press releases, newsrooms, review pages, the articles and roundups about you) and want an AI summary in Slack, Teams or email when they change: Monity, from $10/mo billed annually.
• You need news, print, broadcast and podcast coverage across sources you can’t list: Meltwater, Cision or Onclusive, priced on request.
• Your PR team mostly needs online news alerts, with broadcast and print as add-ons: Muck Rack, priced on request.
• Social listening comes first and news comes with it: Talkwalker (custom quote) or Brand24 (from $199 per month billed annually).
• You want a free starting point for keyword alerts by email: Google Alerts.

When Monity is the pick

A media database tells you when someone mentions you. Much of what a comms team has to react to isn’t a mention: a regulator posts a new statement, a competitor quietly edits its press page, an outlet adds a correction to a story about you, a “best tools” roundup drops you, a review page gets a new one-star review. Those happen on pages you can already name, and that’s what Monity watches.

• You say what counts, in plain words. “Tell me when the ministry posts a new press release” or “Notify me when the article is updated or a correction is added”. Monity’s AI reads each change against that rule, so a reshuffled related-stories list stays quiet. See how plain-English rules work.
• Every alert carries the evidence. The new item’s link, the before and after, a screenshot and an AI summary of what changed. On a press-release page or a news section, it names the new statement with its link.
• Alerts go where your team works. Email, Slack, Microsoft Teams, Discord, Telegram, Google Sheets or a webhook, on every plan.
• The price is published and starts free. The free plan has 3 tasks and 100 checks a month. Personal is $10/mo billed annually ($12/mo monthly) for 20 tasks checked hourly. Business starts at $25/mo billed annually ($35/mo monthly) for 30 tasks checked every 15 min, and there’s a 7-day Business trial with no credit card. Meltwater, by comparison, says most of its contracts are annual with a minimum of 12 months.
• Agencies keep clients apart. Each client gets a workspace with its own tasks, history and alerts, and you can invite people as admins, editors or viewers. See Monity for PR agencies.

Where Monity is not the answer: it only watches the pages you add. It doesn’t search the whole web, social networks, print, TV, radio or podcasts for mentions, and it has no white-label option. If you need to find coverage you didn’t know existed, you need one of the databases below, and Monity can run alongside it for the pages that matter most.

Media and PR monitoring tools compared

The tools, one by one

Monity (ours)

Monity checks each page you add on a schedule and alerts you when the change you described happens. Typical media and PR tasks: a regulator’s or ministry’s press-release page, a section of a news site, an outlet’s tag page for your company, an article you were quoted in (to catch edits and corrections), your own press page, review pages and the roundups that rank you. Each alert has the diff, a screenshot and an AI summary. More on the media and publishing setup and brand monitoring.

Price: free for 3 tasks and 100 checks a month (every 3 hr). Personal 1k is $10/mo billed annually or $12/mo monthly, with 20 tasks checked hourly. Business 1k is $25/mo billed annually or $35/mo monthly, with 30 tasks checked every 15 min. Business 10k is $50/mo billed annually or $70/mo monthly, with 100 tasks and 5 seats. Enterprise is priced on request and checks every 1 min. Full details are on the pricing page.

Pick another tool when: you need to discover coverage on sites, broadcasts or social posts you haven’t listed.

Meltwater

Meltwater’s media monitoring covers 200M+ online publications (news, blogs, forums and review sites), broadcast across all 210 US media markets and thousands of TV and radio stations, 400,000+ newspapers, magazines and trade publications, 20,000+ podcasts, and social networks. Its plans are Starter, Pro, Enterprise and Agency, with media intelligence, social listening, AI visibility tracking and media relations as capabilities you choose.

Price: on request. Every plan says Contact Sales, there’s no self-serve free trial, and most contracts are annual with a minimum of 12 months.

Pick it when: you need one platform for news, print, broadcast and podcasts worldwide, with reporting for leadership.

Cision

CisionOne monitors hundreds of thousands of news sources, top social platforms, leading print publications, 3000+ TV and radio stations, 60,000+ podcasts and over 10,000 premium paywalled titles. Alerts arrive in the CisionOne app for iOS and Android, in Slack or Teams, or as reports by email, and an AI score flags coverage that could be harmful.

Price: on request, through a form.

Pick it when: broadcast, podcast and paywalled coverage matters as much as online news.

Muck Rack

Muck Rack has three plans: Starter, Standard and Premier. All three include online article search with alerts by email and Slack. Podcast monitoring is on Premier, and broadcast (TV and radio clips), print and social listening are add-ons.

Price: on request. Muck Rack says pricing depends on your team, including the number of users, and offers a demo.

Pick it when: your team mainly needs online news alerts in Slack and can add broadcast or print later.

Onclusive

Onclusive Monitor says it processes 28M+ earned media items a day from 60,000 print titles, 3M websites and 12,000+ broadcast sources. You choose between a managed service, where its team runs the searches and sends daily press reviews, and a self-service platform with unlimited queries, 12 months of searchable history, email digests and one-click PowerPoint reports.

Price: not published; you book a demo.

Pick it when: you want someone else to run the monitoring, or you need licensed print coverage.

Talkwalker

Talkwalker tracks 30 social networks and 150+ million news sites, forums, newsletters and blogs across 239 countries and regions, and finds logos and brand mentions in images, video and podcasts. Its plans are Core, Analyze and Business, all with unlimited users.

Price: a custom quote for each plan.

Pick it when: social listening and audience analysis come first and news coverage is part of the same job.

Brand24

Brand24 searches news, blogs, social networks (including Reddit, LinkedIn, YouTube and TikTok), reviews, newsletters and podcasts for your keywords, and adds AI sentiment analysis on every plan.

Price, per month billed annually: Individual $199 (3 keywords, 2K mentions a month, 1 user, updates every 12h), Team $299 (7 keywords, 10k mentions, unlimited users, updates every hour), Pro $399, Business $599, and Enterprise from $1499. There’s a 14-day free trial.

Pick it when: you want keyword mentions across web and social with a published price and a trial.

Mention

Mention crawls news sites, blogs, forums and review websites as well as social networks, and its Company plan lists 75+ review sites, Boolean search, sentiment analysis, share of voice and team collaboration. Historical data and API access are paid add-ons on that plan.

Price: not published; the pricing page offers a demo, and there’s a free trial.

Pick it when: you want web, social and review-site mentions in one tool.

Google Alerts

Google Alerts emails you when new results for a topic show up in Google Search. You can set how often you hear, which types of sites to include, the region and how many results to show. It isn’t built for social networks, broadcast or print, and it only finds what Google Search indexes.

Price: Google shows no price for it.

Pick it when: you want to start with a few keyword alerts by email before paying for anything.

Using a media database and Monity together

Many teams don’t need to choose. A media database finds coverage you didn’t expect, and Monity watches the short list of pages where things you must react to first appear:

• Regulators and government press offices: “Tell me when the ministry posts a new press release”.
• An outlet’s coverage of your company: “Tell me when the outlet’s tag page for our company has a new article”.
• Corrections and edits: “Notify me when the article is updated or a correction is added”, with the before and after.
• Competitors’ newsrooms and changelogs: a new release, a new spokesperson, a removed statement.
• Reputation pages: a new one-star review, or your product added to or removed from a “best tools” roundup.

How to choose

1. Write down where the coverage you care about appears. If you can list the pages, a page monitor may be all you need. If you can’t, you need a media database.
2. Decide which media types matter: online news only, or print, TV, radio and podcasts too. That rules most tools in or out.
3. Ask for a price early. Most databases are sold on annual contracts after a demo, while Brand24 and Monity publish their prices.
4. Test with real pages and real keywords for a week, and count the alerts you’d actually act on.

Two free tools help when you need to show what changed: our text diff for comparing two versions of a statement, and the PDF diff for press releases and reports published as PDFs.

Further reading

• The best website change monitoring tools in 2026, by use case
• Brand and PR monitoring with Monity
• Monity for PR agencies