Press release distribution services compared

Thirteen distributors publish a price you can read without speaking to anyone. Three tier-one wires — Business Wire, GlobeNewswire and Newsfile — publish none, and every figure quoted for them anywhere, including in this article, is reported rather than primary. The table below contains only prices we opened the vendor's own page to read, plus one official PDF. Where a number does not exist, the row says so.

The published rate cards

Two of those rows are worth more than the rest of the table. Business Wire's site sits behind a bot shield, so its pricing page could not be read at all; the figures that circulate for it trace back to a single comparison table whose own author labels them "industry estimates, not gospel". The GlobeNewswire cluster — roughly $350 base, $140 to $175 per extra 100 words — appears near-verbatim across four vendors that all sell competing distribution. That is one unsourced figure repeated four times, not four sources.

The tier name does not tell you what is in the bundle

The most useful sentence any vendor has published about this is EIN Presswire's, in its own FAQ: "To get your news into Yahoo Finance you need to use PR Newswire, GlobeNewswire, or Business Wire." Its own FAQ also gives the per-release range as "$50-$149".

That single sentence reorganises the table. EIN's $66.60-a-release Corporate tier is not a cheap version of a $965 package — it is a different product with a different footprint, and the vendor says so on its own site. Meanwhile the $419.99 PRUnderground tier and the $1,020 PR Newswire circuit can put the same text on overlapping rails, because roughly half this table is reselling the other half. How the reseller layer actually works is the piece that makes the price spread legible.

The four columns nobody puts on a rate card

Word and image metering. This is frequently the larger number. On the 2024 Cision card linked above, a 900-word national release with a logo and one image is $3,730 against a $1,020 headline rate. ACCESS Newswire and Newswire.com both publish unlimited words and images instead, which flips the comparison on any release over about 600 words. Every fee on that card, line by line.

What the outlet count is counting. IssueWire's claimed count rises from 225+ to 700+ between a $21 tier and a $65 one. RedPress moves from 400+ to 1,300+ for a roughly 60% price rise. Counts tripling for small price increases is what counting near-identical local affiliate republications looks like — what "500+ outlets" is measuring.

What you get back afterwards. Every vendor in the table sends something. Almost none of them state whether the rows in it were opened by anyone. This is the column that separates otherwise identical quotes, and no vendor publishes it, so you have to ask.

What happens on rejection. 24-7PressRelease states in writing that refunds will not be issued when a compliance review fails. Most vendors say nothing either way.

The two tier-one wires that will not quote you

Business Wire and GlobeNewswire both require a sales conversation, and the comparison between them is not really about price. Only one of the two publishes anything you can check — and GlobeNewswire's footer now reads "© 2026 Digital Media Innovations, LLC" after two ownership changes in two years, so any figure quoted for it older than that should be re-confirmed rather than trusted.

Newsfile is the one quote-only vendor whose silence is arguably justified. It is exchange-backed, reaches Refinitiv, FactSet, Factiva and Bloomberg terminals, and acts as an EDGAR and SEDAR filing agent. No $199 product substitutes for that, and a vendor claiming otherwise is describing something else.

Where we sit in this table

We are a reseller: we buy distribution from wire partners and mark it up, which is the ordinary structure of this market. Our packages are $599 and $899. Against the published offers above that include Yahoo Finance, $899 sits around the 60th to 65th percentile — above Brandpush Ultimate at $795, below Newswire.com Feature at $965 and ACCESS US Premium at $1,205. On price alone, PRUnderground at $419.99 is a real option, and we have now named it twice.

What we sell into the fourth column. Every placement bought by name is opened and checked, and each row is labelled by who confirmed it — our own request, a person, or the network's pickup file with no independent confirmation. Link status is read off the live page rather than copied from a rate card. Rows record what was true when we checked, and say so. The sample report shows the format; our catalogue lists what each named outlet actually does with your link, including the three where our earlier assumptions were wrong.

How to use this table in six months

Prices in this market move without announcement, and two of the vendors above changed ownership inside two years. Every figure here was read off the vendor's own page or an official PDF on 29 August 2026. Re-open the pricing page before you rely on a number, and treat any comparison article — including this one — as a dated snapshot rather than a current quote. If you want the reasoning behind the spread rather than the grid, what a press release costs and why works through it.