Featured vs Source of Sources in 2026: AI PR co-pilot vs free HARO successor
One is a paid AI chat platform that matches you to journalist requests, podcasts, and AI search visibility. The other is a free email digest run by the person who built HARO in the first place.
Featured
Source of Sources- Featured bundles journalist requests, podcast discovery, speaking opportunities, and GEO visibility into one AI chat interface. Source of Sources delivers raw journalist queries by email with no filtering or matching.
- Source of Sources is completely free with no paid tier at all, while Featured's free plan caps daily AI usage and reserves automated workflows and multi-channel alerts for the $29/mo Lite plan and above.
- Featured includes GEO Visibility tracking, for how a brand appears in AI-generated search responses, on every plan including the free tier. Source of Sources has no AI search visibility feature at all.
- Source of Sources sends up to three unfiltered digests a day covering every topic. Featured's AI chat lets you prompt for your specific niche and only surfaces matching requests, podcasts, and events.
- Neither platform offers a public API. Featured has ruled it out as of mid-2026, and Source of Sources was never built with software integration in mind.
- Source of Sources is run almost as a side project by its founder, who asks beneficiaries to donate to animal charities rather than pay him. Featured is a funded SaaS company with a published pricing page and support team.
Featured and Source of Sources solve the same root problem, getting your name in front of journalists, from opposite ends of the spend spectrum. Featured is a $0-to-$79-per-month AI chat platform that aggregates journalist requests, podcast opportunities, bylined article slots, speaking events, and GEO visibility tracking into one interface with automated workflows running in the background. Source of Sources is Peter Shankman's free rebuild of the HARO he originally founded and later sold to Cision: a plain-text email digest, up to three times a day, with no dashboard, no filtering, and no cost. If you want software that actively matches, drafts, and alerts you, Featured is built for that. If you want the rawest version of the query-to-inbox pipeline with nothing to subscribe to, Source of Sources still does what the original HARO did before it was commercialized.
The tools at a glance
Featured
AI-powered PR co-pilot for journalist requests, podcast pitching, and media opportunity discovery
Featured is an AI-powered PR co-pilot that helps experts, founders, and communications professionals find and respond to media opportunities. The original Featured.com ran as a Q&A marketplace where journalists submitted questions and experts answered for coverage and backlinks; that product has since moved to a separate platform called Connectively. The current Featured.com is a broader AI assistant that aggregates HARO-style journalist requests, podcast booking calls, bylined article slots, speaking events, and awards submissions into a single chat interface.
Featured Chat is the core of the product: you prompt it conversationally, "find podcasts in fashion sustainability" or "find journalist requests for a mental health therapist", and it pulls from a live opportunity database rather than generating generic advice. Automated Workflows let you set up always-on monitoring so the platform alerts you by email, Slack, SMS, or in-app notification instead of requiring daily manual checks. GEO Visibility, which tracks how your brand appears in AI-generated search responses, is included on every tier rather than sold as an enterprise add-on.
The catch is usage. Every action in the chat, every workflow run, and every automated match consumes daily credits, and the free tier's allowance is thin enough to cover only two or three opportunities a week. There is also no journalist contact database for proactive pitching: Featured surfaces inbound requests rather than letting you go find and cold-email a reporter yourself, and there is no API for piping opportunity data into a CRM.
| Feature | Free $0/mo | Lite $29/mo (annual) | Pro $79/mo (annual) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Featured Chat (AI opportunity matching) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Journalist request matching | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Podcast & speaking discovery | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| GEO visibility tracking | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Automated workflows | Limited | Yes | Yes |
| Multi-channel alerts (Slack, SMS) | No | Yes | Yes |
| Daily AI usage | Low | 5x Free | 5x Lite |
Source of Sources
Free daily email digest connecting journalists with expert sources, from the founder of HARO
Source of Sources (SOS) is a free journalist-to-source matching service run by Peter Shankman, who originally founded Help a Reporter Out (HARO) in 2008. HARO became the dominant platform in this space before Cision acquired it and eventually shut down the version Shankman built. SOS is his attempt to recreate what made HARO useful before it was commercialized, minus the platform layer.
The mechanics are deliberately minimal. Journalists submit queries looking for expert sources through a form on the SOS site, Shankman reviews and compiles them, and subscribers get up to three email digests a day listing what each journalist needs and how to respond. There is no login, no dashboard, and no software sitting between you and the journalist: you reply straight from the email and the relationship is yours from first contact.
What keeps SOS usable at zero cost is a strict no-spam rule: pitch a journalist off-topic and Shankman removes you from the list with no appeals. That enforcement is also the platform's ceiling. There is no topic filtering, no search, no analytics on what you have sent or received, and no way to know in advance how much query volume matches your niche in a given week.
| Feature | Free $0 |
|---|---|
| Daily journalist query emails | Yes |
| Direct journalist contact | Yes |
| Dashboard or search interface | No |
| Topic filtering | No |
| Analytics or tracking | No |
| API access | No |
Head-to-head feature comparison
| Feature | Featured | Source of Sources |
|---|---|---|
| Business model | Self-serve AI chat platform | Free email digest run by founder Peter Shankman |
| Free tier | Yes (Free plan, capped daily usage) | Yes (entire service is free) |
| Journalist query / request alerts | Yes (AI-matched via Featured Chat) | Yes (raw queries, up to 3x/day via email) |
| Podcast & event opportunity discovery | Yes | No |
| AI-generated search (GEO) visibility tracking | Yes (included on every plan) | No |
| Automated opportunity workflows | Yes (Limited on Free, full on Lite and Pro) | No (fixed digest format, no configuration) |
| Competitor visibility tracking | Yes | No |
| Platform dashboard or app | Yes (Featured Chat web app) | No (email only, no login) |
| Topic / niche filtering | Yes (prompt-based) | No |
| API access | No | No |
| Multi-channel alerts (Slack, SMS) | No on Free, Yes on Lite and Pro | No (email only) |
| Starting price | $0/mo | $0 |
Considering AI Peekaboo alongside Featured and Source of Sources?
Featured's GEO Visibility tracking is a genuine feature included on every plan, but it has no API and no white-label delivery, so agencies cannot pipe that data anywhere or resell it under their own brand. Source of Sources has no AI search visibility feature at all. AI Peekaboo tracks AI Overviews, ChatGPT, and other engines with a read and write API on every plan from $50 per month, plus white-label reports, the layer both of these PR tools are missing if AI answer-engine visibility is the actual goal.
Read the AI Peekaboo review →Which should you choose?
FeaturedSource of SourcesFeaturedSource of SourcesFeaturedFeaturedSource of SourcesThese are not really competitors so much as two different eras of the same idea. Source of Sources is the HARO model with the platform stripped back out, kept alive by one person and a strict no-spam rule. Featured took the same journalist-request core and wrapped it in AI matching, podcast and speaking discovery, and GEO visibility, then charged for the parts that require ongoing infrastructure. If your PR need is occasional and your budget is zero, SOS costs you nothing but your own time filtering the digest. If you need consistent, matched opportunities across more than one channel, Featured's free tier already does more than SOS ever will, and the $29 Lite plan is a low bar to clear once volume matters.
Bottom line
Sign up for Source of Sources today, it is free and takes thirty seconds, and use it as a supplementary feed regardless of what else you run. But if earned media is a real priority rather than an occasional bonus, Featured's free tier gives you AI-matched requests, podcasts, and GEO tracking that SOS simply does not have, and the $29/mo Lite plan is worth it the moment you are checking opportunities more than once a week.
Frequently asked questions
Is Source of Sources basically the same thing as HARO?
Source of Sources is a spiritual successor to HARO, not the same product. Peter Shankman founded Help a Reporter Out (HARO) in 2008, sold it to Cision, and launched Source of Sources after Cision wound the original down. It uses the same query-digest mechanic but runs as an independent, unmonetized side project.
Does Featured have a free plan that is actually usable?
Yes, Featured's Free plan includes the full feature set, journalist matching, podcast discovery, and GEO visibility tracking, with a low daily AI usage allowance rather than locked features. It suits someone checking in on two or three opportunities a week; heavier users will hit the cap and need Lite at $29/mo.
Which tool gives better GEO or AI search visibility tracking?
Featured is the only one of the two with any GEO visibility feature. It tracks how your brand and expertise appear in AI-generated search responses across platforms, on all three pricing tiers. Source of Sources has no equivalent capability; it is purely an email query digest.
Can I filter Source of Sources queries by industry or topic?
No, Source of Sources has no filtering, search, or categorization of any kind. Every subscriber receives the identical full digest up to three times a day, so relevance depends entirely on how much of your inbox time you are willing to spend scanning it.
Is Featured worth paying for if Source of Sources is free?
It depends on how much matching and automation you actually need. Source of Sources costs nothing but gives you zero filtering and zero tooling beyond an email inbox. Featured's paid tiers add AI-driven matching, automated workflows with Slack and SMS alerts, and GEO visibility tracking that no free query list offers, which is worth $29/mo once you are actively running a PR or backlink outreach program rather than opportunistically checking email.
Do either of these tools include a journalist contact database for cold pitching?
Neither does. Both platforms work on inbound requests: journalists post what they need and you respond, rather than you searching a database and cold-emailing reporters. If proactive outbound pitching is what you need, look at a dedicated journalist database like Muck Rack or Anewstip instead.