If you came here because HARO stopped working the way it used to, you are not imagining it. Help a Reporter Out (HARO) was shut down by Cision in December 2024, sold to Featured.com in April 2025, and relaunched as a free email digest soon after. The paid platform version, Connectively, came back in 2026. So HARO is technically alive again.
The problem is the same one that pushed people to look for alternatives in the first place. The free digest is noisy, the good queries get buried, and you still have to read every email and pitch fast to get quoted. A single tool rarely covers every beat you care about.
This guide ranks the 8 best HARO alternatives for 2026. Every pick below is a real, working service. We include honest pricing where the company publishes it, flag the tools that only sell by quote, and note who each one actually fits.
The best HARO alternatives at a glance
- Qwoted is the best overall for quality, with vetted requests and a strong free tier.
- Featured is the best for curated expert questions, and it now owns HARO itself.
- Source of Sources is the best free replica of classic HARO, built by HARO's original founder.
- Help a B2B Writer is the best free option for B2B and SaaS experts.
- PRBot.ai is the best done-for-you option if you would rather not pitch at all.
- SourceBottle is the best fit for Australia, New Zealand, and the UK.
- PressPlugs is the best UK-focused pick for small businesses and freelancers.
- #JournoRequest is the best free way to catch requests in real time on X.
1. Qwoted
Qwoted is a source-and-journalist marketplace built around verification. Reporters post live requests, and experts or PR pros pitch against them. Because both sides are vetted, the signal-to-noise ratio is higher than a raw HARO inbox, which is the main reason it tops most 2026 roundups.
There is a free tier for sources with a limited number of pitches per month. The paid Pro plan is $149 per month billed monthly, or $99 per month billed annually. Teams and agencies get a custom quote.
Best for: experts and PR teams who want fewer, higher-quality requests and are willing to pay for them.
2. Featured
Featured (formerly Terkel) runs a curated question-and-answer platform. Editors publish prompts, experts submit answers, and the best responses get quoted in published articles. It is less of a live-inbox scramble and more of a considered submission process. Featured also acquired the HARO brand in 2025 and now operates the revived free HARO newsletter alongside its own product.
You can start for free. Paid tiers add AI-assisted features and are metered by usage, so check the current plans before you commit.
Best for: experts who prefer curated prompts over a firehose, and anyone who wants access to HARO and a modern platform in one place.
3. Source of Sources
Source of Sources (SoS) is the closest thing to the original HARO experience, and that is not a coincidence. Peter Shankman, who founded HARO in 2008, built SoS after the Connectively shutdown. It is a simple, email-based service on the honor system: journalists send requests, subscribers reply, and people who abuse it get removed.
It is completely free. Shankman suggests a charity donation instead of a subscription.
Best for: anyone who misses the plain, no-login HARO workflow and wants it back for free.
4. Help a B2B Writer
Help a B2B Writer, now operating as MentionMatch, is a source-request marketplace focused entirely on B2B niches like SaaS, marketing, finance, and HR. Because it is narrow by design, the requests you see are far more likely to be relevant if you work in those areas. It is run by the team behind Superpath.
It is free for both writers and sources.
Best for: B2B and SaaS experts who are tired of filtering consumer-lifestyle requests out of a general feed.
5. PRBot.ai
The tools above still require you to do the work: read the requests, write the pitch, and send it before the deadline. PRBot.ai is the option for people who would rather not. It scans journalist requests for you, drafts a pitch matched to each opportunity, and its pitches are reviewed by PR experts before they go out. The focus is earning press mentions and high-authority backlinks, not just handing you a feed.
Because it is done-for-you, PRBot is priced as a service rather than a self-serve inbox, and it is backed by a money-back guarantee. Most customers see their first backlink within the first week.
Best for: founders and marketers who want coverage and backlinks without pitching journalists themselves. It is the honest opposite of a free request board: less control, far less time.
6. SourceBottle
SourceBottle is a source-matching service that started in Australia in 2009 and expanded into the UK and US. It sends twice-daily "call out" emails with open requests, and journalists use it free.
Sources can use a free alerts plan. A paid tier adds an expert profile and filtered alerts.
Best for: experts and small businesses in Australia and New Zealand, and anyone wanting extra UK reach.
7. PressPlugs
PressPlugs is a UK-focused journalist-request platform founded in 2017. It connects UK reporters with small businesses, freelancers, and agencies, and it is free for journalists to use. Paid access for responders runs around £29 per user per month with a free trial and no lock-in, though pricing can change, so confirm the current rate.
Best for: UK small businesses and PR freelancers who want national and regional UK coverage.
8. #JournoRequest
Not every alternative is a paid platform. Journalists have posted source requests under the #JournoRequest hashtag on X (Twitter) since 2008, and a few small tools aggregate and monitor it. It is fragmented and manual, but it is free and genuinely real time, which the email digests are not.
Best for: PR pros who want a lightweight, live signal to watch alongside a more structured tool.
How to choose a HARO alternative
There is no single winner, because these tools solve slightly different problems.
- Want the highest-quality requests? Start with Qwoted, and add Featured for curated prompts.
- Want the classic free HARO feel? Use Source of Sources, and layer in #JournoRequest for real-time catches.
- Work in B2B or SaaS? Help a B2B Writer will be more relevant than any general feed.
- Based in the UK, Australia, or New Zealand? PressPlugs and SourceBottle fit regional coverage better than US-centric tools.
- Don't want to pitch at all? PRBot.ai does the monitoring, drafting, and sending for you, with expert review before anything is sent.
The best setup for most people is two or three of these running together: one quality-first platform, one free digest, and a real-time feed. If your goal is backlinks and coverage rather than the process itself, a done-for-you service like PRBot.ai can replace all three.
Want to see what coverage is realistic for your site? Get a free analysis of your backlink potential.