Onclusive vs Cision Pricing and What Contracts Include

Short answer: Neither Onclusive nor Cision publishes a price. Onclusive has no pricing page at all and every product ends in "Book a Demo". Cision's pricing URL is a three-step form that asks nine questions before anyone quotes. The only real number in this comparison is Cision's: Vendr's record of 107 signed contracts puts the median at $12,625 a year, with a range from $3,150 to $30,368. Onclusive has no public contract data. Both sell monitoring, a media database and analytics on annual quotes, so the cheaper one is whichever lets you leave out the modules you do not use.

Onclusive's homepage, media monitoring and social listening pages and Cision's request-pricing page were read in October 2026. Cision contract figures are from Vendr's Cision buyer guide (updated February 2026). Onclusive's ownership history is from the 2022 announcements by its owner and by Digimind. Nothing in this article is an estimate.

Onclusive vs Cision pricing at a glance

If you came here for a side-by-side price list, that table is the honest version of one. Everything else in this article is about how to get two comparable quotes out of vendors who both prefer you not to compare.

How much does Onclusive cost?

Onclusive does not say. There is no pricing page, the product pages for media monitoring and social listening offer "Arrange a Demo" and "Book a Demo", and the FAQ on the monitoring page points you to a demo to evaluate the product. No tier names, seat counts or mention caps appear anywhere on the site.

There is also no reliable outside figure. Vendr, which publishes medians from real signed contracts for most vendors in this market, has no Onclusive guide, and the directory pages that rank for "onclusive pricing" show "Contact Us". So any number you read for Onclusive is a guess. The fair way to frame it for a budget request is that Onclusive sells the same shape of product as Cision and Meltwater, to the same buyers, on annual quotes, and that the scope of what you take drives the bill far more than the brand does.

What Onclusive does publish is the size of what you would be paying for. Its media monitoring page claims 28 million earned media items a day across 60,000 print titles, 3 million websites and more than 12,000 broadcast sources, plus 11 million hours of broadcast captured a year. Its homepage gives slightly different round numbers (3M+ online sources, 70K+ print outlets, 6K+ broadcast channels, 25+ social platforms), so ask which figure applies to the package you are quoted.

How much does Cision cost?

Cision does not publish a price either, but it has far more public data behind it. Vendr's Cision guide, built from 107 purchases and last updated in February 2026, shows a median contract of $12,625 a year. The low end of the recorded range is $3,150 and the high end is $30,368. Buyers in that sample negotiated an average of about 26 percent off, which is one of the highest discount rates among PR and monitoring vendors.

Two practical readings follow. A small comms team buying monitoring and a media database should be able to land well under the median if it negotiates. A team adding wire distribution, professional services or Brandwatch should expect the upper half of the range or beyond. Our full breakdown of Cision pricing walks through the product map and what pushes a quote up.

Who owns Onclusive and who owns Cision

Both companies are owned by private equity, and both are roll-ups. That matters when you negotiate, because a vendor that owns several brands will try to sell you more than one of them.

Onclusive was put together by Symphony Technology Group in January 2022, when STG combined Kantar's former reputation intelligence business with PRgloo and the original Onclusive into one standalone company. Onclusive then bought the French social listening company Digimind in July 2022 and the US broadcast monitoring company Critical Mention the same year. So an Onclusive quote can include listening that started life as Digimind and TV and radio coverage that started as Critical Mention. If broadcast is your main need, read our page on Critical Mention pricing before you take a bundle.

Cision has been owned by Platinum Equity since a take-private in January 2020. Cision bought Brandwatch in 2021, and its own pricing form now asks you to consent to contact from "Cision and its affiliated brands, including Brandwatch, CisionOne, and PR Newswire". If your shortlist has Cision and Brandwatch on it to create price tension, you are talking to one owner through two doors.

What each contract includes

The biggest structural difference is distribution. If you send press releases on a wire every month, Cision with PR Newswire is the natural single vendor, and comparing it to Onclusive on monitoring alone will understate what you get. If you never use a wire, you are paying for nothing there, and Onclusive's broadcast depth may matter more.

Which is better for media monitoring, Onclusive or Cision?

For print and broadcast, Onclusive has the stronger published footprint, especially in Europe, and owning Critical Mention gives it a dedicated US TV and radio product. For a US team that wants monitoring, journalist outreach and wire distribution under one contract, Cision is the more complete single purchase. For deep social listening, both send you to a separate product. Onclusive sells Social Listening on its own, and Cision's research-grade listening is Brandwatch, which Vendr puts at a $50,000 median a year.

The practical test is to give both vendors the same three searches, your brand, your top competitor and one past news story you know well, and ask each to show what it found, how fast, and from which sources. That tells you more than either feature list.

How to get a fair quote from either vendor

• Ask for the quote itemized by product, by seat and by source type (online, print, broadcast, social). Bundled quotes hide the module you would drop.
• Name the other vendor. Both know they compete with each other and with Meltwater and Muck Rack. Cision buyers in Vendr's sample got about 26 percent off; you should not accept the first number from either.
• Check the renewal terms before you sign. Annual contracts in this category often renew automatically unless you give notice within a set window, and the renewal price is where a first-year discount quietly disappears. Put the notice date somewhere a person will see it, or use a tool that never lets a vendor renewal date slip past unnoticed.
• Ask about migration. Both companies are built from acquisitions. Ask in writing whether your product, login or data history will change during the term.

If you want a wider view of the field before you take either call, our list of Cision competitors sorts the alternatives by which part of Cision each one replaces.

When you need neither Onclusive nor Cision

A lot of teams that sit through these demos are really buying one thing: an alert when news sites, Reddit, forums or podcasts mention the company, with a read on whether the mention is good or bad. That job does not need a five-figure contract, a media database or a wire.

EyeOut does that part on a published price. It collects Google News, Reddit, Mastodon, Hacker News, Lemmy and Apple Podcasts every 30 minutes, scores each mention for sentiment and theme, tracks share of voice against named competitors from Growth, and fires a crisis radar alert when a keyword's volume or tone breaks from its own baseline. Plans are $39, $94, $249 and $499 a month billed yearly, or monthly if you prefer, with seats included. It does not monitor print or broadcast, has no journalist database and does not distribute releases, so if those are the job, Onclusive or Cision is the right shortlist. See EyeOut pricing for what each plan includes.

Frequently asked questions

Is Onclusive cheaper than Cision?

There is no public data to say so. Cision's median contract is $12,625 a year across 107 recorded purchases, but Onclusive has no published price and no Vendr guide. In practice the difference comes from scope: a monitoring-only Onclusive quote can undercut a Cision bundle with PR Newswire, and the reverse is true for broadcast-heavy packages.

Does Onclusive have a free trial?

No. Onclusive's product pages offer demos only, and its monitoring FAQ points buyers to a demo to evaluate the platform. Ask for a demo run on your own brand terms rather than a prepared one, so you can judge coverage on the stories that matter to you.

Does Cision have a free trial?

No. Cision's pricing page is a lead form with nine questions over three steps, and the site has no self-serve signup. You get a quote after a sales call.

Is Critical Mention part of Onclusive?

Yes. Onclusive acquired Critical Mention in 2022, and Critical Mention's site now presents it as an Onclusive company. It remains the broadcast specialist in the group, so US teams that mainly need TV and radio can be quoted for it directly.

Is Brandwatch part of Cision?

Yes. Cision completed its acquisition of Brandwatch in 2021, and Cision's own consent text lists Brandwatch among its affiliated brands. Our map of who owns the social listening tools covers the rest of the market, and if you are pricing enterprise research platforms as well, see NetBase Quid pricing.