PR software this week: Oct. 5 to 19, 2026

No. 1 · Oct. 20, 2026

Thanks for signing up for updates on the AI for PR map. When I first shared it, I had found a little over 80 companies with AI features targeted at PR and comms users. After getting a bunch of feedback from you all and from folks who commented on the LinkedIn post, I found a lot of companies I didn’t even know about: 63 new ones that we’ve added to the list. You can see the full list here: https://www.newsprint.com/research/ai-for-pr/

I plan on continuing to update this every week, finding new companies and new launches, and adding the features these companies ship. I’m also looking for ideas on what else I should be tracking and sharing.

In keeping with our ethos at Newsprint, I’d like to find ways to make this more tailored to each reader. In the next couple of weeks I’ll send out a short survey to better understand what tools you’re using and what you’re hoping to stay on top of.

I also broadened the focus of the original analysis. It was specific to “AI features,” which made it a bit too narrow for looking at what different companies were launching. Now it includes any major feature launch. What counts as major is a bit subjective, but generally it’s a company’s first launch of a kind of feature (its first press release writer, say, or its first media monitoring), its first version of one built on newer technology (keyword rules, then machine learning, then generative AI), or a whole new product line. Small updates to something a company already ships don’t count.

Here’s what’s new in the last two weeks:

• Medialyst opened a free journalist finder anyone can use (Oct 14), a few days after giving Journalist Lookup to every paid plan.
• Roxhill added a Journalist Assistant and Prezly opened up Build Audience to everyone (both Oct 5).
• Meltwater’s October update lets you tailor each pitch in a bulk send.
• Featured launched a free newsjacking tool that checks the news every 15 minutes and sends you stories with a suggested angle (Oct 14).
• Press Ranger now suggests press releases to publish for each question you track in AI answers, and drafts them in one click (Oct 7).
• Profound lets you mark a campaign on its AI visibility chart (Oct 9), and its AI Marketer can now build agents from a plain request (Oct 16).
• AirOps shows when each page started getting cited in AI answers and how fast that fades (Oct 5), and added Google AI Mode ads to its ad library (Oct 12).
• Knowatoa now lists every AI answer that describes a client negatively (Oct 19).
• NetBase Quid’s Ask Q can answer questions across several datasets at once (Oct 15).
• Not open yet: Honeyjar has an early access waitlist, and per TechCrunch got 10,000 signups the first day. MediaClaw is in an invite-only beta.

One takeaway from all of this: PR software does appear to be busier than it’s ever been. The companies on the map have shipped 168 major features so far this year, up from 96 in all of 2025, and at least 42 of the 143 launched since 2023. The trajectory only appears to be going up. We’ll see if that changes.

None of this analysis includes:

• the internal software agencies and comms teams are building for themselves
• the skills folks are developing for their agents
• the ways teams are using general tools like Claude and ChatGPT for PR tasks that used to require a dedicated software suite

What’s especially interesting is that folks now have more alternatives to the major software tools than ever, and yet the number of software offerings has only gone up. We’ll see if that’s a general trend or something temporary as the industry adapts to what AI allows for.