Qwoted vs Featured at a Glance
| Category | Qwoted | Featured | Winner |
|---|---|---|---|
| Best for | Founders and PR teams who want journalist requests inside one vetted network | Budget-limited sources who want every request feed in one place, with AI drafting | Depends |
| Starting price | Free (2 pitches/month); Pro $149/month | Free; Lite $39/month or $348/year | Featured |
| Ease of use | Browse a feed, unlock a request with a credit, pitch in the platform | Ask a chat assistant in plain language; HARO also arrives by email | Depends |
| Key capability | Journalist-posted calls for experts with pitch-level tracking | One feed across HARO, Connectively, Substack, X and LinkedIn | Depends |
| Integrations | Email alerts; Moz Domain Authority shown on requests | Slack and email delivery; MCP server for AI agents | Featured |
| Customization | Topic tags and profile matching; Teams adds white labeling | Scheduled workflows by topic and cadence | Depends |
| Support | Help center and live chat; Teams adds premium support | Help by email (support@featured.com); team plans add priority or dedicated support | Tie |
| Requester vetting | Every account reviewed; extra vetting for paid members | HARO pre-approves queries against published criteria; aggregated social requests not verified | Qwoted |
| AI-written pitches | Prohibited | Allowed if reviewed; scored and filterable by journalists | Qwoted |
| Overall for earning journalist mentions | Higher-intent requests, stricter rules | More requests for less money | Qwoted |
Pricing checked October 6, 2026. “Winner” is marked only where the documented difference matters for the primary use case; elsewhere it depends on how you work.
What Is Qwoted?
Qwoted is a network where journalists post “Calls for Experts” and approved PR professionals and experts answer them with pitches sent inside the platform.
Qwoted describes the flow plainly: a reporter posts a call describing the source they need, and “you can browse those posts and pitch yourself or your clients directly to the journalists behind them” (Qwoted, What is Qwoted?). Pitches cost credits. Journalists use it free, and Qwoted matches calls to sources using “AI and natural language processing”, profile topics and past pitching history (How Qwoted Calls for Experts Work).
What Is Featured?
Featured is an AI “co-pilot for PR” that finds media opportunities, drafts responses and runs scheduled workflows, and its company also owns and operates HARO and Connectively.
Featured bought HARO from Cision in an announcement dated April 16, 2025 (PR Newswire); for the background, see what happened to HARO. Featured's own product now sits on top of that: its Journalist Requests feature “brings requests from HARO, Connectively, Substack, X, and LinkedIn into one chat, matches them to your expertise, and drafts the pitch” (Featured, Journalist Requests). The same plans include podcasts, bylines, awards, media monitoring and paid backlinks (Featured features). So “Featured” in this comparison means three routes: the free HARO email, Connectively, and the paid Featured app.
Qwoted vs Featured: Pricing
| Plan | Qwoted | Featured |
|---|---|---|
| Free | Basic: 2 pitches/month, 2-hour response delay | Free: all features, smallest daily AI allowance (“2–3 media opportunities per week”) |
| Entry paid | Pro: $149/month, 35 pitches/month, no delay | Lite: $39/month, or $348/year ($29/month equivalent) |
| Higher tiers | Teams: custom pricing, unlimited pitches | Pro: $99/month or $948/year; Pro+: $299/month or $2,868/year |
| Team plans | Teams (custom); free teams share 5 pitches/month | Team Lite $199, Team Pro $499, Team Pro+ $1,499 a month (or $1,908, $4,788 and $14,388 a year), up to 25 members, on the pricing page's Team & Enterprise tab; Enterprise is custom-priced |
| What the price buys | Pitch credits and features (alerts, Pitch Intelligence, events database) | Daily AI usage only; “All plans include every feature” |
| Free route outside the app | None | HARO email digest, free for sources |
Pricing checked October 2026 (October 6) on qwoted.com/pricing and featured.com/pricing. Qwoted shows Pro only as a monthly price and does not publish Teams pricing. Featured's prices exclude tax. Featured's own FAQ elsewhere gives Pro as “$79/month (Pro, billed annually)”, which matches $948 a year (Featured).
U.S. dollars per month for individual plans, as listed October 10, 2026; Featured figures are its month-to-month rates, and Qwoted does not say how Pro is billed
Source: qwoted.com/pricing and featured.com/pricing, read October 10, 2026.
Billed annually, Featured Lite is $348, Pro $948 and Pro+ $2,868 a year. Qwoted Basic includes 2 pitches a month and Pro 35; Qwoted Teams is custom-priced and not charted. Featured prices exclude tax.
The comparison that matters: Qwoted charges per pitch opportunity, so cost scales with how often you answer. Featured charges for AI usage, and the HARO feed costs nothing. A founder answering two requests a month pays nothing on either. An individual answering 30 a month pays $149 on Qwoted Pro, while on Featured they could answer through the free HARO email and pay only if it wants the AI matching and drafting.
How Requests Reach You
Qwoted delivers requests inside its own platform and keeps the conversation there, while Featured delivers them by email (HARO), in a live feed (Connectively) and through an AI chat that also scans Substack, X and LinkedIn. Qwoted requires pitches to be submitted in-platform and treats repeated unlocking without pitching as a spam signal (Qwoted help). HARO sends three emails a day, Monday to Friday, and sources reply to an anonymous address (HARO terms).
- Qwoted: calls appear in a matched feed and by email alert. Unlocking one spends a credit, reveals the pitch form, and on paid plans shows the reporter's name. Under a change Qwoted announced in July 2026, free members see the outlet up front and the reporter's name only once the journalist replies (Qwoted, July 10, 2026). Free users submit after a two-hour delay (Qwoted help).
- HARO (Featured): three digests a day at 5:35 a.m., 12:35 p.m. and 5:35 p.m. Eastern (HARO terms, updated December 1, 2025). You reply by email; attachments are stripped.
- Featured app: a chat and scheduled workflows that match requests to your background, sort by deadline and deliver to Slack or email (Featured).
Common mistake: contacting a Qwoted journalist by email after seeing their name. Qwoted says pitching outside the platform “is prohibited and violates our community guidelines” (Qwoted).
Who Posts the Requests
Qwoted says most of its opportunities are created directly by journalists, while Featured's own materials describe many of its requesters as publishers, bloggers and content creators. That difference matters if the goal is a quote in a news story rather than a line in a brand's content-marketing article.
- Qwoted: Calls for Experts “make up the majority of the opportunities” and are “created directly by journalists and reporters” (Qwoted, Types of Opportunities). Qwoted also names editors and podcasters among requesters (Qwoted).
- HARO: a journalist member must be “a journalist, blogger or content creator” (HARO terms). Queries need an outlet with a minimum Domain Authority of 20 or 10,000 monthly visitors; Medium and Substack blogs need 5,000 followers; public social posts need 5,000 followers (HARO submission guidelines).
- Connectively and Featured: Connectively describes itself as connecting experts “with top publishers” to create “ready-to-publish content” (Connectively). Featured's 2025 announcement said it powered articles across “2,500+ media outlets” (PR Newswire), and its terms define the requester role as “Journalist/Publisher”, including anyone with “a publication, blog, newsletter, podcast, or other outlet” (Featured terms).
Neither company publishes a breakdown of requests by requester type, so the share of newsroom journalists on either platform is not established. Check the outlet named on each request before you spend time on it.
Pitch Limits
Qwoted caps pitches by plan: 2 a month free, 35 on Pro, unlimited on Teams. Featured publishes no per-pitch cap; its plans meter AI usage, and HARO email replies carry no stated limit. Qwoted's credits reset monthly on your signup or upgrade date and do not roll over; new individual users get 5 welcome credits that do (Qwoted, How Many Pitches Do I Have Left?).
Two details change the arithmetic. On Qwoted, users from the same email domain are grouped automatically, so a free team shares 5 pitches a month, and some posts (welcome posts and “No Pitch Credit Needed” opportunities) are free to answer (Qwoted help; Types of Opportunities). On Featured, usage resets daily and, if you hit the limit, “Active workflows will queue and resume when usage resets” (Featured pricing FAQ). Featured's terms add that outreach “volume may be subject to limits” (Featured terms).
A hard cap is not only a cost. It forces selection, which is what journalists reward: inboxes are already crowded, as how many pitches a journalist gets shows. Across HARO, Connectively and its own app, Featured counted about 33 pitches per request; see how many expert pitches are written by AI for those figures and their limits.
Editorial and Verification Process
Qwoted reviews every account and adds a second vetting layer for paid members; HARO pre-approves journalist queries against published criteria; Featured's terms say it does not verify user content or the third-party requests it aggregates. For a source, that decides how much checking you must do yourself.
- Qwoted: “Every account goes through an individual vetting and approval process” (Qwoted help). Pro and Team members “complete an additional level of vetting beyond our standard review” (Qwoted). Journalists can report a pitch as AI-generated, plagiarized, off-topic or as having “Requested payment”, and Qwoted's team reviews reports (Qwoted help). Qwoted does not publish the criteria a journalist must meet to join.
- HARO: “Pre-approval, as determined by HARO in its sole discretion, is required” (HARO terms). Queries must name the outlet, may not be paywalled, and are reviewed 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Mountain time on weekdays, with a “strict one-strike policy” for violations (HARO guidelines, November 26, 2025). HARO's terms also say it “cannot guarantee the identity of any other users”.
- Featured app: requests from HARO and Connectively appear “the moment they're approved” (Featured). For everything else, Featured's terms say: “We do not author, endorse, verify, or guarantee Content created by Users or Third-Party Content” (Featured terms, effective June 2, 2026). Requests pulled from Substack, X or LinkedIn fall into that category.
How to verify a request yourself: confirm the writer has recent bylines at the named outlet and that the outlet publishes editorially, not as a brand blog. That check matters most for aggregated social posts.
Earned vs Paid Placements and Link Policies
Both platforms deliver earned placements when a journalist picks your pitch, but Featured also sells a paid-placement product in the same app, while Qwoted documents only earned media. Featured's Paid Backlinks feature finds “sites that accept paid placements, sponsored articles, and link insertions on your topic” with typical pricing (Featured, Paid Backlinks).
Qwoted defines earned media as coverage you get because a journalist chose to feature you, “not because you paid for placement” (Qwoted). HARO's query rules ban “pay-to-play opportunities, or solicitations for paid placements” and “guest blogging, link exchanges, or backlink solicitation” (HARO guidelines).
Link policies: neither Qwoted nor Featured documents whether a published quote will carry a link. Qwoted shows Moz Domain Authority on opportunities and says “Higher DA does not guarantee placement or visibility” (Qwoted help). Featured's own Paid Backlinks page acknowledges that “search engines' guidelines treat links bought to manipulate rankings as link spam”, which matches Google's spam policies; Google asks that paid links carry rel="sponsored" (Google). Our explainer on whether a paid placement passes SEO value covers the consequences, and what the FTC requires for paid placement covers disclosure.
AI-Written Pitch Policies
Qwoted prohibits AI-written pitches and can disable accounts that send them; Featured allows AI-assisted pitches, drafts them itself, and leaves the filtering decision to journalists. This is the sharpest policy difference between the two: on Qwoted a pitch that reads as machine-written risks your account, while on HARO it reaches the journalist with a score attached unless they have switched the filter on.
- Qwoted: “Using AI to write your pitches is against Qwoted's Terms & Conditions.” Qwoted warns that “Even light AI use can trigger detection” and advises sticking to basic spellcheck. A flagged pitch is reviewed internally and can lead to “a temporary account disablement”; repeated flags can mean permanent removal (Qwoted help). Journalists get a “Check for AI” button that opens a Pangram report (Qwoted help), and the community guidelines set a three-strike rule (Qwoted guidelines). Note that Qwoted's March 2025 FAQ said using AI “to brainstorm pitch angles or organize your thoughts isn't a problem” (Qwoted blog); the current help article is stricter. The terms of service page we read is dated September 17, 2024 and does not mention AI itself (Qwoted terms).
- Featured: Experts must give truthful responses “including when AI-assisted, which you must review for accuracy and ownership before submitting” (Featured terms), and its acceptable use policy requires human review before AI-generated PR content is sent to a journalist (Featured AUP). Featured runs Pangram detection on every HARO and Connectively pitch and shows journalists the score; the AI filter is off by default (Featured, August 13, 2026). Featured's release describes its response as making AI authorship visible “rather than to prohibit it” (Featured, August 8, 2026). A Stacker piece produced by Pangram says HARO does not ban accounts solely for AI pitches (Stacker, September 29, 2026).
Featured's own data says journalists selected about one in ten AI-flagged pitches against about one in three human ones (Stacker). Those are vendor figures; our analysis of AI-written expert pitches sets out what they can and cannot show. Write the pitch yourself on either platform.
Where Qwoted Wins
- Requester intent: most opportunities are posted directly by journalists, inside a network where every account is reviewed.
- Rules that protect the channel: a clear AI ban, in-platform pitching only, and reporting tools for journalists.
- Feedback: read receipts and Pitch Intelligence show how many pitches an opportunity has had and how many were read (Qwoted help); paid plans show it before you pitch (Qwoted help). Qwoted also emails everyone who pitched when it finds the published story (Qwoted help).
- No paid-placement product in the same workflow, so earned and paid work cannot blur.
Where Featured Wins
- Price: HARO is free, and the paid app starts at $39 a month against Qwoted Pro's $149.
- Reach: one feed covering HARO's three daily editions, Connectively, Substack, X and LinkedIn. Featured says HARO sent more than 100 million emails to sources in the past year (Featured), a vendor figure.
- No pitch cap: usage is metered, not pitches, so a team answering many requests is not rationed.
- Breadth: podcasts, bylines, awards, speaking slots and monitoring sit in the same plan.
Who Should Choose Qwoted?
Choose Qwoted if: you want quotes in journalist-written stories, can write every pitch yourself, and prefer a few well-matched requests to a large feed.
Avoid Qwoted if: you need to answer many requests a month on a small budget, or your team relies on AI drafting.
Best for: founders and in-house PR teams pursuing earned journalist coverage.
Starting price: free (2 pitches a month); Pro $149 a month.
Primary strength: journalist-posted requests in a vetted network with an AI-pitch ban.
Main limitation: tight free-plan limits and a large jump to the first paid tier.
Verdict: the better primary platform for earning journalist mentions.
Who Should Choose Featured?
Choose Featured if: you want the widest set of source requests for little or no money, want HARO in your inbox, or run PR for several clients and need matching and scheduling.
Avoid Featured if: you only want newsroom journalists and cannot spend time checking each requester, or your organization forbids AI-drafted outreach.
Best for: cost-conscious founders, agencies and teams that answer requests at volume.
Starting price: free; Lite $39 a month or $348 a year.
Primary strength: reach across HARO, Connectively and social requests, with AI matching.
Main limitation: mixed requesters, unverified aggregated requests, and a paid-backlinks product in the same app.
Verdict: the better value and reach play; use HARO's free email even if you choose Qwoted.
How to Choose Between Qwoted and Featured
| If you need... | Choose |
|---|---|
| Requests posted directly by journalists, with vetted accounts | Qwoted |
| The most requests for no money | Featured (HARO email) |
| More than 2 pitches a month for under $50 | Featured Lite |
| A platform that bans AI-written pitches | Qwoted |
| AI matching and drafting across several request sources | Featured |
| To see competition on a request before pitching | Qwoted Pro or Teams |
| Earned coverage kept strictly apart from paid placement | Qwoted |
| Podcasts, bylines and awards in the same subscription | Featured |
Many teams use both: Qwoted's free plan for its two monthly pitches and HARO's free digest for volume. Track results the same way on each; see how to measure whether placement worked.
Final Verdict: Qwoted or Featured?
For a founder or PR team answering source requests to earn media mentions, Qwoted is the better choice, because its documented rules (journalist-created calls, account review, a ban on AI-written pitches, in-platform pitching) all point at quotes in journalist-written stories. Featured is the better choice when budget and volume decide it: HARO costs nothing, the app is a quarter of Qwoted Pro's price, and it collects more requests. The decision depends on three things: how many requests you will answer each month, whether you can write every pitch yourself, and how much time you can spend checking who is behind each request.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Featured the same company as HARO?
Yes. Featured announced on April 16, 2025 that it had acquired Help A Reporter Out from Cision. HARO's terms name Terkel, Inc. as the operator, the same company named in Featured's terms. Featured also operates Connectively, and its Journalist Requests feature pulls requests from HARO, Connectively, Substack, X and LinkedIn into one feed.
Can I answer HARO queries without paying for Featured?
Yes. Featured says HARO remains free for journalists and sources. Sources who sign up receive three HARO emails a day, Monday to Friday, and reply to the anonymous address in each query. A paid Featured plan adds AI matching, drafting and scheduled workflows on top, not access to HARO itself.
How many pitches do I get on Qwoted's free plan?
Two a month for an individual, plus five one-time welcome credits for new individual users, which roll over until used. Free team accounts share five pitches a month across everyone on the same email domain. Unused monthly pitches do not roll over. Some opportunities, such as welcome posts, need no pitch credit.
Can I use ChatGPT to write a Qwoted pitch?
No. Qwoted's help center says using AI to write pitches is against its terms, and its community guidelines say not to submit commentary generated by AI tools or LLMs. Qwoted warns that even AI used for rewording or clean-up can trigger detection, and a flagged pitch can lead to temporary account disablement after internal review.
Does Featured allow AI-written pitches?
Featured permits AI-assisted pitches but requires you to review them for accuracy before submitting. It runs AI detection on every pitch through HARO and Connectively, shows journalists the score, and gives them a filter to exclude fully AI-generated pitches. Featured says 35 percent of journalists in a pool of more than 2,500 on HARO switched that filter on.
Will I get a backlink if a journalist quotes me?
Neither platform promises one, and neither documents a link policy for published stories. HARO's query guidelines prohibit backlink solicitation and link exchanges in queries. Whether a quote carries a link is the publisher's decision; Google's spam policies treat links bought or exchanged for ranking purposes as link spam.
What is Source of Sources?
Source of Sources is a free email list run by Peter Shankman, who founded HARO. Its site says sources get queries up to three times a day and reply directly to the journalist, and that anyone who pitches off-topic is removed. It is not part of Qwoted or Featured, and we did not compare it in depth here.
Does a Qwoted PRO badge help my pitch get picked?
No, according to Qwoted. The Basic or PRO badge is visible only to other source-side users; reporters never see it, and Qwoted says it has no effect on how pitches are ranked, matched or selected. What a paid plan changes is pitch volume, the two-hour delay and pre-pitch competition data.
Are journalists on these platforms verified?
Qwoted says every account goes through review and that Pro and Team members get extra vetting; it does not publish journalist eligibility criteria. HARO publishes criteria, including an outlet with Domain Authority of at least 20 or 10,000 monthly visitors, and requires pre-approval. Featured's terms say it does not verify user content or third-party requests it aggregates.
How We Compared Qwoted and Featured
Criteria: how requests reach sources, who posts them, pitch limits, prices, vetting, earned versus paid placement, link policies and AI-pitch rules. Dates: all pages were read on October 6, 2026; prices can change. Sources: each company's pricing pages, help center, terms, acceptable use policy, guidelines and press releases, plus HARO's terms and query guidelines, Connectively's homepage, the 2025 acquisition announcement and a Stacker piece produced by Pangram. HARO pages were read in a browser because they rate-limit automated requests. Featured's monthly prices were read from the pricing page's monthly view; team-plan prices from its Team & Enterprise tab.
Limitations: we did not create accounts, pitch on either platform or test response rates. Neither company publishes request volumes, requester mix or placement rates, and the AI-pitch figures come from Featured and Pangram, which sell the products involved. We did not find a published journalist eligibility standard for Qwoted or a pricing page for Connectively.
Sources and Methodology
Every factual claim above links to one of the pages below, all read on October 6, 2026. Vendor-labelled items are company announcements or sponsored analysis rather than documentation. Methodology and limitations are set out in How We Compared Qwoted and Featured.
- official Qwoted, Pricing. Read October 6, 2026.
- official Qwoted Help Center, How Many Pitches Do I Have Left?. Read October 6, 2026.
- official Qwoted Help Center, Is Qwoted free to use?. Read October 6, 2026.
- official Qwoted Help Center, Can I Use AI to Craft My Pitch?. Read October 6, 2026.
- official Qwoted Help Center, Checking Pitches for AI. Read October 6, 2026.
- official Qwoted Help Center, Flagging Irrelevant Pitches. Read October 6, 2026.
- official Qwoted Help Center, Types of Opportunities. Read October 6, 2026.
- official Qwoted Help Center, How Qwoted Calls for Experts Work. Read October 6, 2026.
- official Qwoted Help Center, What is Qwoted? An Intro for PRs and Experts. Read October 6, 2026.
- official Qwoted Help Center, In-Platform Pitching: Why Qwoted Requires It. Read October 6, 2026.
- official Qwoted Help Center, Understanding Pitch Intelligence. Read October 6, 2026.
- official Qwoted Help Center, What are the Basic and PRO Badges?. Read October 6, 2026.
- official Qwoted Help Center, How do I know if I was featured?. Read October 6, 2026.
- official Qwoted Help Center, Understanding Domain Authority (DA) in Qwoted. Read October 6, 2026.
- official Qwoted, Qwoted Community Guidelines. Read October 6, 2026.
- official Qwoted, A New Way We're Protecting Journalist Trust on Qwoted, July 10, 2026. Read October 6, 2026.
- official Qwoted, Qwoted FAQs: How to Make the Most of Your Account, March 7, 2025. Read October 6, 2026.
- official Qwoted, Terms of Service (last revised September 17, 2024). Read October 6, 2026.
- official Featured, Plans & Pricing (annual and monthly views). Read October 6, 2026.
- official Featured, Features. Read October 6, 2026.
- official Featured, Journalist Requests. Read October 6, 2026.
- official Featured, Paid Backlinks. Read October 6, 2026.
- official Featured, Terms of Service (effective June 2, 2026). Read October 6, 2026.
- official Featured, Acceptable Use Policy (effective June 2, 2026). Read October 6, 2026.
- vendor Featured press release, AI Has Made Media Pitching Noisier and Less Effective, August 8, 2026. Read October 6, 2026.
- vendor Featured press release, One in Three Journalists Now Filter Out AI-Written Pitches, August 13, 2026. Read October 6, 2026.
- official Help a Reporter Out, Terms of Service (updated December 1, 2025). Read October 6, 2026.
- official Help a Reporter Out, HARO Submission Guidelines & Requirements, November 26, 2025. Read October 6, 2026.
- official Help a Reporter Out, Sources. Read October 6, 2026.
- official Connectively, Homepage. Read October 6, 2026.
- vendor Featured.com via PR Newswire, Featured.com Acquires Help A Reporter Out (HARO) from Cision, April 16, 2025. Read October 6, 2026.
- vendor Stacker (produced by Pangram Labs), How journalists feel about citing AI-generated PR, according to data, September 29, 2026. Read October 6, 2026.
- official Google Search Central, Spam policies for Google web search. Read October 6, 2026.
- official Google Search Central, Qualify your outbound links to Google. Read October 6, 2026.
- official Source of Sources, Homepage. Read October 6, 2026.