Agility PR Solutions
Media intelligence that drives PR success
Pricing on request
Category
The best News software
News & Media software and applications
- Tools listed
- 43
All 43 news tools
Every listing shows its published starting price on the same footing, so a shortlist does not take ten tabs.
What news software costs
Counted from the published pricing of the 43 listings on this page. A tool counts as free only where it publishes a $0 plan, an open-source licence or a starting price of zero.
- Cheapest paid plan
- $3The Old Reader
- Median entry price
- $29across 27 priced
- Dearest entry price
- $15,000Meltwater
- Publish a $0 plan
- 27of 43
Paid news plans in this set start anywhere from $3 a month for The Old Reader to $15,000 for Meltwater. The median entry price across the 27 tools that publish one is $29, half of them start below that figure and half above it.
Entry price is not the ceiling. The dearest published tier anywhere in this category is Meltwater's at $25,000 a month, 1.7× the highest entry price on the page. Read the top of each ladder as well as the bottom, because that is where you land after two years of growth.
27 of 43 publish a $0 plan, and 11 of those charge nothing at all. 11 tools have no free tier of any kind.
11 of 43 keep at least one tier unpriced and sold by quote, which in practice means the number you end up paying at the top end is not on this page or on theirs.
How these vendors bill
The billing model each of the 43 news listings publishes, counted. Two tools at the same headline price are not the same purchase if one of them charges per seat.
- freemium
- 10
- subscription
- 10
- free
- 7
- quote
- 6
- usage-based
- 4
- one-time
- 1
Separately, 11 of 43 publish at least one tier with no price attached. Those are sold by quote, so the top of the ladder is negotiable, and unknowable, until you talk to sales.
What comes as standard, and what you pay extra for
Every capability named in a published pricing tier by any of the 42 news tools here that break their plans down, counted once per vendor. This measures what vendors choose to advertise as a selling point, not everything the software does, an absence below is silence, not a missing feature.
Named most often
- Priority support , 7 of 42
- Advanced analytics , 6 of 42
- API access , 4 of 42
- Local news , 4 of 42
- Basic analytics , 3 of 42
Named by fewer
- Enhanced analytics , 3 of 42
- Media database , 3 of 42
- Media monitoring , 3 of 42
- National distribution , 3 of 42
- Online posting , 3 of 42
Named by exactly one vendor: Ad Network, Breaking alerts, Email newsletter, Limited templates, Poll surveys, Trending content tracking. Those are differentiators rather than table stakes.
What “News” covers in practice
The subject tags that recur across these 43 listings, with the number of tools carrying each. A category label is a filing decision; this is the closer read of what is actually filed under it.
- Free8
- Enterprise7
- press release7
- publishing7
- newsletter6
- rss reader6
- distribution5
- news app5
- pr software5
- content curation4
- media monitoring4
- affordable3
Carried by a single tool: ai news, content, fast, information, media, news comparison, privacy, storytelling. If one of those is the reason you are here, the category page is the wrong lens, go straight to that product.
How to choose between them
Four things the numbers above should change about your shortlist.
Start with the free tiers if there are enough of them
27 of 43 news tools here publish a $0 plan, which is enough to run a real trial without a purchase order. A free tier is worth more than a free trial when you are evaluating: a trial expires on the vendor's schedule, a free plan expires when you outgrow it. The thing to check before you commit is which of the capabilities below sit above the free line, starting with priority support, the single most frequently named capability in this category's published tiers.
Read the spread before you read the features
$3 to $15,000 is a $14,997 spread on entry price alone, and a spread that wide is never about polish, it is about who the vendor built for. Tools at the bottom of this ladder are priced for one person or a small team; tools near $15,000 are priced for a department with a procurement process. Decide which of those you are before you compare capability, or you will shortlist four tools that were never competing for the same buyer.
Check which tier you actually land on
19 of 43 tools here publish three or more tiers, and the median vendor in this category ships 2 of them. The advertised price is the first rung, and the things teams tend to need, priority support, advanced analytics, api access, are named in higher plans far more often than in entry ones. Price your shortlist at the tier that contains what you need, not at the tier on the pricing page's left edge.
The billing model matters more than the headline number
This category splits across 6 billing models: freemium on 10 listings, subscription on 10, and 4 other arrangements across the rest. A per-user price and a flat subscription at the same headline figure are not the same purchase, the first one grows with headcount and the second does not. Multiply by your real team size before you compare two numbers side by side.
Compare news tools directly
Every pairing below is a full comparison: the same checklist applied to both, so a gap in one is a gap in the other.
- Agility PR Solutions vs Apple News
- Apple News vs Arc Publishing
- Arc Publishing vs Artifact
- Artifact vs Beehiiv
- Beehiiv vs Brightspot
- Brightspot vs Business Wire
- Business Wire vs Buttondown
- Buttondown vs Chartbeat
Go straight to the numbers
- Agility PR Solutionspricingalternatives
- Apple Newspricingalternatives
- Arc Publishingpricingalternatives
- Artifactpricingalternatives
- Beehiivpricingalternatives
- Brightspotpricingalternatives
Questions people ask about news software
Answered from the listings on this page, and nowhere else.
- How much does news software cost?
- Across the 43 news tools listed here, paid plans start between $3 and $15,000 a month, with a median entry price of $29. The most expensive single tier published in the category is $25,000 a month (Meltwater). 27 of 43 also publish a $0 plan.
- What is the cheapest news software?
- 11 of the 43 tools listed here cost nothing at all. Among the ones that charge, The Old Reader has the lowest published entry price at $3 a month. Cheapest and best value are different questions: check which tier the capability you need actually appears in before you compare starting prices.
- Is there free news software?
- Yes, 27 of 43 tools in this category publish a plan priced at $0. 11 of them are free outright, with no paid tier above. A tool is only counted as free here when it publishes a $0 plan, an open-source licence, or a starting price of zero, a free trial does not count.
- What features should news software have?
- Judging by what vendors put in their own published pricing tiers, the most frequently named capabilities in this category are priority support (7 of 42 tools that publish plan detail), advanced analytics (6) and api access (4). Treat those as the category baseline. Anything named by only one vendor, such as ad network or breaking alerts, is a differentiator rather than a standard, so it is worth deciding whether you need it before it narrows your shortlist to one.
- How is news software usually billed?
- freemium (10), subscription (10), free (7), quote (6), plus 2 less common arrangements, counted across the 43 listings on this page. The distinction that costs money is per-seat versus flat: a per-user plan at the same headline price scales with your headcount and a flat subscription does not. 11 of 43 tools also keep at least one tier unpriced and sold by quote.
- What does news software actually cover?
- The 43 tools on this page do not describe themselves the same way. The subject tags they carry most often are free (8), enterprise (7), press release (7), publishing (7), newsletter (6). That spread is the honest answer to what the category means in practice: it is not one product shape, and two tools filed under news may overlap on very little.
- How many pricing tiers do news tools offer?
- 42 of 43 tools here publish a plan breakdown, and the median one has 2 tiers. 19 of 43 publish three or more. More tiers is not generosity, it usually means the capability you are buying for sits two rungs above the advertised price, so price your shortlist at the tier that contains it.
- How many news tools are listed on Softwr?
- 43 approved news listings appear on this page, including Agility PR Solutions, Apple News, Arc Publishing, Artifact. Each links to a full breakdown with its pricing tiers and plan detail, and the category can be filtered by price and sorted by rating above. You can also read the shortlist view at /best/news, which ranks the same set by published rating.
Keep this
Email me these 43 picks
The shortlist for “News”, plus a note if any of their prices change.