By Matija Konjić

For more than a decade, Help a Reporter Out was the default way to earn media coverage and editorial backlinks without a PR agency on retainer. You answered a journalist’s question, you got quoted, and you picked up a link from a publication you could never have pitched cold. Then it disappeared. If you have been wondering where HARO went and what actually works now, this guide is your map.

Here is the short version. HARO shut down, a new owner brought the brand back, and in the process the whole category split into several strong platforms. The brand being back does not mean you should rely on it alone. The people earning consistent links from journalist requests in 2026 work a small stack of tools. This guide explains what happened, which platforms are worth your time, what they cost, and how to pitch so a reply becomes a live link.

What happened to HARO, and why it is back

HARO was acquired by Cision years ago and, in 2024, rebranded as Connectively. That rebrand did not last. Cision shut Connectively down on December 9, 2024, to focus on its other products. Overnight, one of the most popular free link building channels on the internet went dark, and thousands of founders, marketers, and PR teams lost a reliable source of coverage.

The gap did not stay empty for long. In April 2025, Featured.com acquired the HARO brand from Cision and relaunched it as a free, email based service that delivers journalist requests to your inbox up to three times a day. So the classic HARO workflow of scanning a digest and replying to relevant queries does exist again.

Here is the part that matters for your strategy. The revived HARO is now just one option among several, and for many users it is not the best one. While the brand was gone, other platforms filled the gap, and several are now cleaner, faster, or better targeted than HARO ever was. So the real question in 2026 is not whether HARO is back, but which mix of platforms will actually earn you coverage. The rest of this guide is that shortlist.

The best HARO alternatives in 2026

These are the platforms producing real editorial coverage and links this year. Each one has a different model, a different audience of journalists, and a different sweet spot, which is exactly why the best users combine two or three rather than betting on one.

1. Source of Sources (SOS)

Source of Sources is the closest thing to the original HARO spirit, and for good reason. It was launched by Peter Shankman, the person who created HARO in the first place, right after Connectively closed. It is completely free, runs as a simple email newsletter, and sends up to three daily digests of journalist requests. When you see a query you can answer well, you reply directly to the source.

Shankman has said the service was never meant to make money. Rather than charge, he asks satisfied users to donate to an animal rescue. He also bans people who send off topic or spammy pitches, which keeps quality high without a paywall. For anyone who wants the classic HARO experience with less noise, this is the first platform to sign up for.

2. Qwoted

Qwoted is the most polished direct alternative and a favorite among PR professionals. It has a smaller user base than HARO ever had, which means less competition per query, and it tends to attract a high concentration of requests from major, high authority publications. That combination makes it a strong source of the kind of editorial links that move the needle.

The free plan is genuinely usable for testing the waters, giving you a couple of pitches a month with a short delay on new requests. If you decide to make source outreach a core channel, the Pro plan at roughly 149 dollars per month removes the delay, gives you unlimited pitches, real time alerts, and a daily opportunities email. Verified journalists use Qwoted for free.

3. Featured

Featured, formerly known as Terkel, uses a curated question and answer model rather than a raw feed. Journalists and editors post questions, experts submit answers, and the best responses get published, often with a link back to the contributor. The curation filters out a lot of the spam that plagued late stage HARO, and the turnaround is fast.

There is a free tier that lets you answer a limited number of questions, and a Business plan at around 100 dollars per month that adds domain authority filtering so you can prioritize the highest value opportunities. Because Featured also owns the revived HARO newsletter, using it gives you exposure to two channels from one account.

4. Help a B2B Writer (MentionMatch)

If you sell to businesses, this is the most efficient platform on the list. Originally created by Elise Dopson and later acquired by Superpath, Help a B2B Writer also operates under the name MentionMatch. It is free, email driven, and curated to B2B topics only, so almost every request is relevant if you work in software, marketing, finance, or professional services. Users regularly land quotes in high authority destinations like industry blogs and software publications.

Because the topics are narrow and the audience is smaller, your hit rate per pitch tends to be much higher than on a general platform. For B2B and SaaS brands, it pairs perfectly with a focused SaaS link building program.

5. #JournoRequest on X and Bluesky

Not every opportunity lives on a dedicated platform. Working journalists post source requests directly on social media using the #journorequest hashtag, and this stream is fast, free, and completely unfiltered. Historically it lived on X, but in 2026 a growing share of journalists, particularly in the UK, have migrated to Bluesky, so you now need to watch both.

The upside is speed. You can respond within minutes, often before a formal platform even sends its digest. The downside is that you have to monitor it, which is why tools that aggregate #journorequest posts across X and Bluesky and alert you by topic have become popular. If you want the fastest response window available, this is where it is.

Honorable mentions

A few more platforms are worth knowing depending on your market. SourceBottle is well established in Australia and the UK. ResponseSource is a paid, higher end service popular with UK PR teams. And a new category of aggregators, such as Sourcee and Newshook, pull requests from many sources into one feed so you do not have to check five inboxes. Test one or two of these once your core stack is running.

How to choose: build a stack, not a single tool

The most common mistake in 2026 is treating these as competitors and picking just one. They are not competitors so much as different fishing spots. A practical starting stack for most brands looks like this: Source of Sources for free volume, Qwoted or Featured for higher authority targets, and the #journorequest feed for speed. If you are B2B, add Help a B2B Writer and you will rarely run short of relevant requests.

Start with the free options, run them for a few weeks, and track which platforms actually produce replies and published links for your niche. Independent analyses, including a widely cited BuzzStream study of journalist request platforms, show that response rates and link rates vary a lot by platform and topic, so let your own data decide where you spend money and time.

How to write pitches that actually win links

The platform gets you the opportunity. Your pitch wins the link. Journalists are drowning in generic, self promotional replies, so the ones that stand out share a few habits.

• Answer fast. Many stories are filled within hours. A strong reply in the first hour beats a perfect reply the next day.
• Lead with the quote. Give the journalist something they can paste straight into the article. Two or three tight, quotable sentences beat three paragraphs of setup.
• Prove you are credible. One line on why you are qualified, with a real title and company, is enough. Skip the sales pitch.
• Be specific and original. Data, a concrete example, or a contrarian but defensible take gets picked far more often than a bland summary.
• Make the link easy. Include the exact URL you want cited and a natural way to reference it, so the writer does not have to hunt for it. Keep the anchor natural rather than stuffed, which is the same principle covered in our anchor text guide.

Do this consistently and source outreach becomes one of the most reliable ways to earn the kind of relevant, in content citations that search engines value. It is a core tactic within any serious digital PR outreach program.

Where source-driven links fit in your wider strategy

Journalist requests are powerful, but they are one channel, not a whole strategy. The strongest backlink profiles blend several sources: earned source links from platforms like these, relationship driven placements, and quality editorial coverage secured through outreach and digital PR. Each method reaches sites the others cannot, and together they build the natural, varied profile described in our guide to off-page SEO.

Source outreach also has real limits. It is time intensive, results are unpredictable month to month, and scaling it requires either serious internal effort or a partner who does it daily. That is where a managed program helps. If you would rather have experts running your source outreach and pairing it with wider coverage, our digital PR services are built to do exactly that, and you can see how the different link types stack up in our overview of the types of backlinks that matter.

Want journalist outreach handled for you, alongside the wider coverage that builds a durable backlink profile? Talk to our team about a program built around your goals.