HARO Alternatives: The Journalist-Request Platforms That Actually Work in 2026

← All guides · 10 min read · Published July 2026

TL;DR:

• HARO's death was temporary. Cision rebranded it to Connectively in 2024, shut it down that December, and Featured.com bought and relaunched the free email version in April 2025.
• The free tier of this channel is real: HARO, Source of Sources, and SourceBottle cost nothing; Qwoted and Featured have free plans with usage limits.
• No journalist-request platform guarantees a link. You compete against every other source that saw the query, and even a published mention may be unlinked or nofollow.
• Speed and specificity win pitches. Qwoted's free plan delays your responses by 2 hours precisely because being early matters.
• Treat pitching as a supplement to a link building program, not a replacement — the hit rate is too unpredictable to plan a campaign around.

What happened to HARO (and Connectively)

A quick history, because half the advice online is out of date. Help a Reporter Out launched in 2008 as Peter Shankman's Facebook group connecting reporters with expert sources, and grew into the default free channel for earned media. Vocus bought it in 2010; Cision absorbed it in 2014. In 2024, Cision rebranded HARO as "Connectively," moved it from email digests to a platform model — and then shut Connectively down permanently in December 2024.

Two successors emerged from the wreckage. Shankman launched Source of Sources, a free email list rebuilt on the original HARO formula. Then in April 2025, Featured.com acquired the HARO brand from Cision and relaunched Help a Reporter Out itself as a free daily email digest. So "HARO alternatives" in 2026 really means two things: alternatives to the relaunched HARO, and the wider set of journalist-request platforms that filled the gap while it was gone.

How we evaluated these platforms

We vet link vendors for a living, and we applied the same lens here that we apply to any source of links:

• Transparent pricing. Is the cost published, or gated behind a sales call? Every platform below has its published pricing quoted as of this writing; where pricing isn't public, we say so.
• What you actually get. These platforms sell access to journalist queries — not links. We note what each model does and doesn't promise.
• Guarantees. None of these platforms guarantees placement, a link, or a dofollow attribute. That's not a criticism — it's the structural nature of earned media — but you should price your time accordingly.
• Verification burden. A mention on a real publication with real traffic is valuable; a mention on a content farm is not. Whatever platform you use, check the quality of the linking site before you count the win.

HARO alternatives compared

HARO (relaunched by Featured)

The original is back, and it's the obvious first stop. Help a Reporter Out returned in April 2025 under Featured.com's ownership as exactly what it was before Cision platformed it: a free email digest, sent up to three times per weekday, containing journalist queries across business, health, tech, finance, and lifestyle beats. The site cites 800,000+ registered sources and 75,000+ journalists and bloggers at the time of writing, and states the relaunch added AI-content detection, masked emails, and lifetime bans for policy violations. Free for both sides, funded by newsletter advertising. The catch is the same as it always was: those 800,000 sources are your competition on every query.

Source of Sources

Source of Sources is Peter Shankman — HARO's original founder — rebuilding his own idea from scratch after Connectively died. It's completely free; Shankman suggests donating to animal welfare organizations instead of paying him. Sources receive up to three daily emails of journalist queries and reply directly to the reporter. The distinguishing feature is enforcement: off-topic or spammy responses get you permanently removed, "no exceptions, no appeals" in the site's own words. That policy is good for you if you pitch honestly — it thins the noise that degraded late-era HARO.

Qwoted

Qwoted, founded in 2017, is the most platform-like of the group: you build an expert profile, browse journalist requests, and pitch inside the product rather than by email. Its published pricing tells you what actually matters on these platforms. The free Basic plan allows 2 pitches per month and delays your responses by 2 hours; Pro at $149/month allows 35 pitches with no delay plus pitch intelligence and an events database; Teams is custom-priced. A platform charging $149/month largely to remove a 2-hour delay is telling you, in pricing form, that speed decides who gets quoted. Qwoted skews toward business, finance, and trade media, and journalists on the platform are verified.

Featured

Featured started as Terkel, a Q&A-style platform matching experts to publisher questions, and now owns and operates HARO itself. The product has evolved into an AI-assisted PR workspace: it monitors journalist requests from HARO, LinkedIn, and other feeds, helps draft pitches, finds podcasts and bylined-article opportunities, and tracks where you're cited — including in AI search engines. Published pricing at the time of writing: a free tier, Lite at $29/month (billed annually at $348), and Pro at $79/month (billed annually at $948). All plans include every feature; the tiers differ only in daily usage credits. If you plan to work multiple query feeds seriously, this is tooling rather than another feed.

MentionMatch (formerly Help a B2B Writer)

Help a B2B Writer was the niche favorite: a free list where B2B and SaaS writers requested expert quotes, with far less competition per query than HARO. At the time of writing, helpab2bwriter.com redirects to MentionMatch, which carries the same model forward — experts pick expertise areas (marketing, SaaS, sales, SEO, ecommerce, AI and tech, and similar B2B niches) and receive email notifications when a matching writer request comes in. The site describes itself as launching soon and cites 9,000+ B2B sources; pricing is not published at the time of writing. If you sell to businesses, a niche list like this is usually a better time investment than a general feed, because your expertise actually matches the queries.

SourceBottle

SourceBottle has been running since 2009 and is the established option for Australia and New Zealand, with call-outs from outlets like the Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, and ABC Australia. It's free to join for both sources and journalists: you create an expert profile, receive query alerts, and respond to "Call Outs." A paid upgrade adds a human-driven media pitching service, though pricing for it isn't published on the site. For most US or UK campaigns it's a secondary channel, but if APAC coverage matters to your brand, it's the specialist.

Honorable mention: #JournoRequest and #PRrequest on X

Journalists still post source requests directly on X under the #JournoRequest and #PRrequest hashtags. It's free, real-time, and completely unfiltered — no vetting, no categorization, and you'll scroll past a lot of noise. Worth a saved search if you're already active on the platform; not worth building a workflow around.

The response-rate reality

Here's what the platforms won't put on their pricing pages. Every query you see was also seen by thousands of other sources — HARO alone claims 800,000+ registered sources against 75,000+ journalists. The relaunched HARO advertises AI-content detection and lifetime bans, and Source of Sources enforces permanent removal for off-topic pitches, because both platforms are fighting the same structural problem: the flood of low-effort, AI-generated pitching that follows any free channel. You are competing inside that flood.

And winning a pitch isn't winning a link. The journalist decides whether to quote you, whether to name your company, whether to link, and whether that link is dofollow. Unlinked brand mentions are a common outcome. There is no anchor text control, no target URL control, and no timeline — a quote given today might publish in six weeks or never. When a link does land, it can be excellent: real editorial placement on a real publication. But you should evaluate it like any other link, on traffic and authority metrics, not on the thrill of the byline.

Journalist pitching vs. guest posting: where the effort goes

Both channels cost you hours; they distribute risk differently. Journalist-request pitching has near-zero cash cost but unpredictable output: you can send twenty well-crafted responses in a month and land nothing, then land a national publication the next week. It builds brand authority and occasionally delivers links you couldn't buy at any price. It's the same dynamic that powers digital PR link building, scaled down to one query at a time.

Guest posting is the inverse: predictable output at a known cost. You choose the site, verify its traffic before committing, control the anchor and target page, and know the timeline. That predictability is why paid placements have a market price at all — we've broken down the numbers in our guide to what backlinks cost.

The honest playbook uses both. Spend an hour or two a week on the two or three feeds that match your expertise, treat every placement as a bonus, and build the dependable core of your link profile through channels where you control quality and pace — whether that's guest posts, niche edits, or a managed link building service.

FAQ

Is HARO still free after the relaunch? Yes. The relaunched HARO at helpareporter.com is free for both sources and journalists, funded by newsletter advertising. Registered sources receive up to three email digests per weekday. The platform states it now uses AI-content detection and masked emails, with lifetime bans for policy violations.

What's the difference between HARO and Source of Sources? Both are free email digests of journalist queries, sent up to three times a day. HARO is owned by Featured.com and is far larger (800,000+ sources at the time of writing). Source of Sources is run independently by HARO's original founder, Peter Shankman, with an aggressive removal policy for off-topic or spammy pitches — smaller list, stricter standards.

Do HARO alternatives guarantee backlinks? No — none of them. Qwoted, Featured, HARO, Source of Sources, MentionMatch, and SourceBottle all sell access to journalist queries, not placements. The journalist decides whether to use your quote, whether to link, and whether the link is dofollow. That's the defining trade-off of earned media versus paid placements.

What happened to Help a B2B Writer? At the time of writing, helpab2bwriter.com redirects to MentionMatch, which continues the same model: free-to-join email requests from B2B writers seeking expert quotes, across niches like SaaS, marketing, sales, and ecommerce. MentionMatch's pricing is not published while the site is in its relaunch phase.

Are links from HARO-style platforms worth the effort? Sometimes exceptionally so — a genuine editorial link from a major publication is among the hardest links to replicate. But hit rates are unpredictable, mentions are often unlinked, and the time cost per landed link is high. Vet any placement you earn the same way you'd vet one you paid for, and treat the channel as a supplement to a plannable link building program.

---

Journalist pitching is worth your hours — but it can't be scheduled, scoped, or guaranteed. If you want the other half of your link profile built on placements you approve before paying a cent, with traffic-verified sites and a 6-month replacement guarantee, see how our pricing works or talk to us about a plan.