Anewstip vs Source of Sources in 2026: paid journalist database vs free HARO-style email digest
Anewstip is a searchable database of 1 million-plus journalists that costs $200/month once you need to pitch. Source of Sources is a free email digest with no dashboard, no search, and no cost, ever.
Anewstip
Source of Sources- Source of Sources is entirely free with no paid tier at all. Anewstip is free to search at the entry level but requires the $200/month Standard plan to unlock pitching and email or phone access.
- Source of Sources has no search, filtering, or dashboard interface, just up to three daily email digests. Anewstip lets you search 1 million-plus journalists by topic, recent tweets, and articles.
- Source of Sources was built by Peter Shankman, the founder of the original Help a Reporter Out (HARO) service that Cision acquired and later wound down.
- Anewstip's free plan already includes structured search and two media lists. Source of Sources has no equivalent structure at any price, including free.
- Source of Sources enforces a strict no-spam policy and permanently removes off-topic pitchers from its list. Anewstip has no comparable enforcement, since outreach happens directly through its own pitch tool.
- Neither tool offers meaningful API access: Source of Sources has none at all, while Anewstip gates its API to Professional and Partners plans.
Anewstip and Source of Sources sit at opposite ends of what "media database" can mean. Anewstip is a structured search tool: 1 million-plus journalists indexed by recent tweets and articles, with media lists, a built-in pitch tool, and alerts, priced from a real free tier up to $400/month for Professional. Source of Sources is the opposite extreme: a free email digest, run by Peter Shankman (who built the original Help a Reporter Out before Cision acquired and later shut it down), that sends journalist queries up to three times a day with no search, no filtering, and no dashboard of any kind. One is a product you configure and pay to scale. The other is an inbox subscription you either use or you do not.
The tools at a glance
Anewstip
Journalist search and media outreach platform built on Twitter signals and article indexing
Anewstip indexes over 200 million news articles and a billion-plus tweets, letting you search for journalists by topic and see what they have recently written or tweeted about, alongside contact details pulled from a database of 1 million-plus journalists. It is a tool you configure: build media lists, set alerts, and pitch directly from inside the platform.
The free plan gives real search access and two media lists, but no pitching and no email addresses, so it works as a trial of search quality rather than a usable channel on its own. The $200/month Standard plan unlocks 1,000 pitches a month, 20 lists, and full contact access, with a $99/month discount available for solo PR pros who qualify.
Where Anewstip clearly separates itself from a free digest like Source of Sources is structure: you are searching a database by your own criteria and initiating contact on your own timeline, rather than waiting for whatever a journalist happens to submit that day. That control comes at a price once you move past the free tier.
| Feature | Free $0 | Standard $200/mo | Professional $400/mo (annual) | Partners Custom |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Search access | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Pitches per month | 0 | 1,000 | 5,000 | Unlimited |
| Email and phone access | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| API access | No | No | Yes | Yes |
Source of Sources
Free daily email digest connecting journalists with expert sources, from the founder of HARO
Source of Sources is a free journalist-to-source matching service run by Peter Shankman, who originally founded Help a Reporter Out (HARO) in 2008 before it was acquired by Cision and later shut down in its original form. SOS recreates the core HARO model as a side project rather than a scaled product.
The mechanics are deliberately minimal: journalists submit queries through a form on the SOS site, Shankman manually reviews them, and relevant ones go into an email digest sent to subscribers up to three times a day. If a query matches your expertise, you reply directly to the journalist. There is no platform login, no in-app messaging, and no tracking of what happens after you hit reply.
The one piece of structure SOS enforces is a strict no-spam rule: pitch a journalist off-topic and Shankman removes you from the list with no appeal. That keeps quality reasonably high for a free, largely unmoderated system, but it does not replace search, filtering, or analytics, none of which exist on the platform in any form.
| Feature | Free $0 |
|---|---|
| Daily journalist query emails | Yes |
| Search or dashboard interface | No |
| Topic filtering | No |
| API access | No |
Head-to-head feature comparison
| Feature | Anewstip | Source of Sources |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | Free tier, then $200/mo Standard | Free, no paid tier |
| Search or dashboard interface | Yes, full search | No, email digest only |
| Topic/keyword filtering | Yes, by topic and recent activity | No |
| Journalist contact database | Yes, 1M+ journalists | No |
| Built-in pitch tool | Yes, 1,000/mo on Standard | No, direct reply only |
| Alerts / monitoring | Yes, up to 20 alerts on Standard | No |
| API access | Professional and Partners plans only | No |
| Spam / quality enforcement | None specified | Yes, off-topic pitchers are removed |
| Founder background | Media intelligence company | Peter Shankman, founder of the original HARO |
Which should you choose?
Source of SourcesAnewstipAnewstipSource of SourcesAnewstipSource of SourcesThis is not really a head-to-head so much as two different tiers of seriousness. Source of Sources costs nothing and asks for nothing back beyond following its no-spam rule, which makes it a reasonable bet for anyone who wants an occasional shot at coverage without setting anything up. Anewstip is a real tool with search, structure, and a price tag, and even its own free tier, which offers search and two media lists, already does more than SOS does at any price. If your PR effort has any budget or requires consistency, Anewstip is the more capable option; if it does not, SOS costs you nothing to try.
Bottom line
Use Source of Sources if you have no PR budget and want a free, no-setup way to occasionally respond to journalist queries, understanding that there is no search, no filtering, and no way to be proactive. Use Anewstip, starting with its free search tier and moving to the $200/month Standard plan when you need to pitch, if you want to search for journalists by topic and current activity and run outreach on your own schedule rather than waiting for the right query to land in your inbox.
Frequently asked questions
Is Source of Sources worth using if I already pay for Anewstip?
Yes, since Source of Sources costs nothing and requires no setup beyond an email address, it is a reasonable free supplement to a paid Anewstip subscription rather than a replacement for it. The two do not overlap in workflow: Anewstip is proactive search and pitching, SOS is reactive response to whatever queries land in the daily digest.
Is Source of Sources the same thing as HARO?
No, but they share a founder. Peter Shankman created Help a Reporter Out (HARO) in 2008, sold it to Cision, and launched Source of Sources after Cision wound HARO down in its original form. SOS is an independently run, simpler version of the same idea, with no platform or dashboard.
Can I search or filter journalist queries on Source of Sources the way I can on Anewstip?
Source of Sources has no search, filtering, or categorization of any kind; every subscriber gets the same full digest up to three times a day. Anewstip, by contrast, lets you search its 1 million-plus journalist database by topic and see recent tweets and articles, which is a fundamentally more targeted approach.
Does Anewstip's free plan offer more than Source of Sources for no cost?
In terms of structure, yes. Anewstip's free plan includes real search access and two media lists, even though it does not include pitching or email addresses. Source of Sources has no search or list-building feature at any price, so if structured research matters to you, Anewstip's free tier already goes further than SOS ever will.
What happens if I pitch an off-topic journalist through Source of Sources?
Shankman removes off-topic pitchers from the Source of Sources list permanently with no appeals process. This is a deliberate quality control measure that keeps the free digest usable for journalists, and it is stricter than anything Anewstip enforces, since Anewstip leaves pitch quality entirely up to the sender.
Which tool is better for a PR consultant managing multiple small-business clients on a tight budget?
Anewstip is the more capable base tool for a consultant managing multiple clients, since it supports named media lists, contact access, and a pitch tool once you are on the $200/month Standard plan. Source of Sources is worth layering in as a free, zero-effort supplementary channel, but its lack of search or client-level organization makes it unsuitable as the sole tool for a multi-client practice.