It's easy to find Meltwater's website and learn about the software's many products. But it's harder to find the answer to one simple question: How much does Meltwater cost?
This article provides information on Meltwater pricing and introduces some media database alternatives.
Table of Contents
What is Meltwater?
Meltwater is a media monitoring and social listening platform. PR teams, marketing teams, and communications professionals use it to track brand mentions, monitor news coverage, analyze trends and keep an eye on their competitors.
The platform has an impressive array of features. People use it for broadcast, online and print monitoring, reputation management, tracking customer engagement on social media platforms, crisis management and more.
Meltwater users can follow and get in touch with journalists across many media types—print, online, broadcast media and the world's top 24,000 podcasts. If you're especially podcast-focused, you might pay extra to add-on the podcast monitoring feature.
How much does Meltwater cost?
Meltwater pricing has three tiers: the 'Essentials' plan, 'Suite' and an 'Enterprise' plan. The platform uses tailored pricing, with quotes customized to your goals and the modules you choose to use. To discover the true costs, you must speak to one of Meltwater's consultants.
We've done some digging and come up with some estimates and online forums that give us some clues as to what you might pay on various Meltwater pricing plans.
Reddit is often seen as the go-to platform for users to get advice and promote their opinions, so it's a good place to ask for clues on Meltwater pricing. And from the reports we've seen it seems like people have paid very different amounts.
Of course, we can't confirm any of these reports, and the account types and usage will vary too. Some may be solo accounts, simply used as a media database. Others belong to large teams with a comprehensive media monitoring package.
We’ve created a table, ordered from low to high, to show you the range of Meltwater pricing we found. This could give you some idea of what you might expect to pay.
| Cost per year | Features included | Number of seats |
|---|---|---|
| $6,900 | Uses it for media monitoring | 1 |
| $13,000 | Unknown | Unknown |
| $16,000 | Reporting/insights | Unknown |
| $33,000 | Unknown | 20 |
| $45,000 |
|
5 |
Best Meltwater alternatives for PR
Muck Rack
Muck Rack is a PR and media management platform. It includes tools for PR & Comms teams (e.g., PR software, media database, press releases, social media listening, AI, etc.) and free tools for journalists (portfolios and a Job Board).
Like Meltwater, Muck Rack doesn’t show pricing information, but offers a demonstration call to determine the customized cost. Users can create a free account, which gives them access to the search tools and the website’s Help and Resources section, but must contact the company to use any other tools.
Best for:
Journalists who want to manage their online brand and companies needing access to a comprehensive media database.
Prowly
Prowly is an AI-powered platform with tools for creating and maintaining a media list and contact details. Like Muck Rack and Meltwater, Prowly offers a media database and media monitoring services. It also has a pitching tool, a Press Release creator, PR reporting, online newsrooms and audience insights provided by Semrush.
Prowly doesn't have a free option, but each tier offers a free 7-day trial. As I write this, the Basic Annual plan starts at $258/month (pay $3096/year) and the Pro Annual is $416/month ($4992/year).
Best for:
PR agencies and individuals looking to organize and track PR and media contacts.
Prezly
Prezly offers software for company PR teams and a separate service for PR agencies. You can create and distribute press releases and media email campaigns on the Prezly website. It also has online newsroom and media monitoring, a CRM and a Press Kit Creator.
Prezly has three annual pricing tiers, each billed annually. They include Essential ($100/month, $1200/year), Standard ($150/month, $1800/year) and Enterprise (custom price).
Best for:
Those seeking an affordable alternative for press release distribution and maintaining media contacts.
Rephonic
Rephonic is a podcast database covering 4m+ shows, including approximately 500,000 currently active podcasts. Compare that to Meltwater's coverage of 20,000 US and 4000 in the rest of the world.
Rephonic's software helps both individuals and agencies to find and pitch their best-fit podcasts for guest spots or sponsorship.
As one user explains, Rephonic is very user-friendly. Another says, "Rephonic is designed around the natural workflow of anyone who pitches podcasts. [It] offers a single, centralised view of my entire podcasting booking workflow - which saves a lot of time, energy and distraction."
Best for:
PR professionals who want in-depth, up-to-date podcast data and contacts for 3m+ shows.
Rephonic is the most complete podcast media database
Use Rephonic's search tool to find podcasts according to their topic, title or publisher, then click a link to open all the info Rephonic has sourced on that podcast. Each podcast's data is sorted into sections.
For example, do you want to:
- Assess whether the podcast's listeners fit your target audience? Open the Audience tab to see listener profiles and audience demographics.
- Learn about other guests on the show? Open the People tab and scroll down to view each guest's name, episode link and discussion topics, or type a specific name in the search bar.
- See if competitors have sponsored the podcast? Open the Sponsors tab and search the company name and get a link to the ad and episode.
- Only contact podcasts with highly engaged audiences? Go to the Feedback tab to see ratings and reviews on Apple Podcasts and other apps and an AI overview of themes covered in the reviews.
- Get the best contact details to pitch a podcast? Open the blue Contacts button, top right corner of every page or tab.
- Monitor all podcasts for keywords, brand mentions or names? Set up an alert. Rephonic will check episode transcripts, titles and show notes to find matches and send you a daily or weekly email (your choice).
Want more info? This YouTube tutorial walks you through all the ways to use Rephonic.
Rephonic pricing
Rephonic offers a seven-day free trial and has three paid options, with two free months on an annual plan:
- Light ($99/month or $990/year)
- Standard ($149/month or $1490/year)
- Business ($299/month or $2990/year)
- API access ($299/month.)
Do you need top information and actionable insights about the right podcasts to fit your PR needs?
Get the best podcast info today
How to Get Podcast Transcripts & Search for Keywords
Learn how to get podcast transcripts with Rephonic and get a competitive advantage. Search transcripts for keywords and make better, more accurate decisions.
How to Spy on a Competitor’s Podcast Guesting Strategy
In this article, we break down why piecing together their competitor’s podcast guesting strategy matters and how to use Rephonic to get a clear view of what’s happening behind the scenes.
