Press release submission sites are websites that publish your company news on a public page with a date stamp. Most free ones now mark every outbound link nofollow, so they pass no ranking credit. Use them for a dated public record, a brand mention and occasional syndication, not for link building.
This list holds 49 sites that were opened and checked by hand on 13 October 2026. Every one loaded, showed real releases from this year, and still had a working submission or signup route. Names that were parked, abandoned or stuck on content from 2015 were dropped instead of listed with a warning.
What are press release submission sites?
A press release is a short news story about your business, written in the third person. You announce a launch, a hire, a funding round, an award or a new location. A press release submission site takes that story and publishes it on its own domain.
Some sites are free wires. You open an account, paste your release, and it goes live after a quick review. Others are paid newswires like PR Newswire and Business Wire. Those push your release to real newsrooms, financial terminals and journalist inboxes. The gap between the two is large, and the price shows it.
Quick answer: Press release submission sites publish your company news on a public, dated page. Free wires give you a brand mention. Paid newswires give you distribution to journalists and syndication partners.
49 press release submission sites that are live right now
The table below holds 49 sites. The plan for this post was 50 names, and it lands at 49. That is not a budget problem. It is what is left after checking. Press release directories die faster than almost any other kind of site. Of the 175 domains screened for this post, 88 were killed before a single page was opened, because they had near zero organic traffic. Another 14 failed when their page was actually loaded.
Each name carries a label. Free means you can publish a basic release without paying. Freemium means the account is free, or your first release is free, and real distribution costs money. Paid means there is no free route, but people search for the site anyway, so it belongs here. The last column is the real submission or signup page, not the homepage.
Domain Rating is a 0 to 100 score from Domain Rating by Ahrefs, pulled on 13 October 2026. A higher number means the domain carries more link authority. It is not a Google score and it is not the same as Moz Domain Authority.
All links checked on 13 October 2026.
How to submit to press release submission sites step by step
- Find a real news angle. A new product, a new office, a hire, an award, a partnership or a data report all count. A sales offer does not. Editors on the free wires still reject plain adverts, and the paid wires reject them faster.
- Write the release in news style. Headline, city and date line, then the news in the first paragraph. Write about your company in the third person. Keep it between 300 and 500 words.
- Add one quote. One named person, one job title, one sentence of opinion. A release with no quote reads like a product page.
- Write the boilerplate once. The boilerplate is the short “about us” block at the end. Two or three sentences, your website address, and your contact details. Reuse the same block on every site so your brand details stay consistent.
- Keep links plain and few. One or two links, pointing at your homepage or the page the news is about. Use your brand name or the plain URL as the anchor text, not a keyword phrase.
- Open an account and submit. Use the exact URLs in the table above. Most free wires want email confirmation before your first release.
- Wait for review. The free wires usually publish within 24 to 72 hours. The paid wires are faster but ask for more detail about your company first.
- Save the live URL. Keep a spreadsheet of the published page, the site, the date and the cost. That record is the actual asset you bought.
What makes a press release get picked up
Pick up means a real publication reprints or reports your news. That is rare, and it almost never happens from a free wire. It happens when the news matters to a specific reporter’s beat and arrives in a form they can use quickly.
- A number nobody else has. Original survey data, usage figures or price data gives a reporter a reason to write. Opinion does not.
- A named human. Reporters need someone to quote and someone to call. Give a full name, a title and a direct email.
- A local hook. Regional papers and trade sites care about jobs, openings and closures in their own patch. National wires do not.
- Images that are ready to print. High resolution, correctly captioned, free to use. A release with no usable image gets skipped.
- Timing that matches the news cycle. Tuesday to Thursday morning in the target country beats Friday evening.
Quick answer: A press release gets picked up when it carries original data, a named contact and a print ready image. Free press release submission sites give you a published page, but direct outreach to a named reporter is what produces real coverage.
Mistakes that get your press release rejected
- Keyword stuffed anchor text. Linking the phrase “best accounting software in Mumbai” is the single clearest spam signal. Many wires now strip those links or reject the release.
- Writing in the first person. “We are excited to announce” is a blog post, not a release. Editors on the paid wires bounce it.
- No news at all. A discount, a festival greeting or a reworded service page is not news.
- Too many links. Five or six links in a 400 word release reads as a link drop. Two is plenty.
- Spinning one release across 40 sites. Duplicate text across dozens of domains is worthless for search and gets accounts banned.
- Fake contact details. Paid wires verify your company and your phone number before the first send. A mismatch stops the release.
- Unverified claims. “The number one platform in Asia” needs a source. Without one, editorial review removes it or kills the release.
High Domain Rating free press release sites, and what the big lists get wrong
Search for high Domain Rating press release sites and you will find lists of 100 or 200 names. Those lists are copied from each other and almost never rechecked. The numbers in this post come from a single check run, and they are blunt.
Of 175 press release domains screened, 88 had so little organic traffic that they were not worth opening. Names that still sit near the top of those popular lists were among the worst. Free-Press-Release.com, i-Newswire, TheOpenPress, OnlinePRNews, Amazines, UKPRwire and WebNewsWire all showed zero organic traffic. PR-Inside loaded, but its newest article was from 2015. SBWire loaded with content that stopped in 2017. PRSync and PressReleasePoint blocked automated checking, so neither went in the table.
Here is the part that matters more than the Domain Rating number. A high Domain Rating on a press release site tells you the domain has many backlinks. It does not tell you that your link will pass any value. Almost every free wire now applies nofollow to outbound links, because they were abused for years. So a site can show Domain Rating 80 and still hand you a link that counts for nothing in search.
If what you actually want is ranking strength, press release submission sites are the wrong tool. Earned links from real sites are the right tool, and that means pitching people. Our page on how to find competitor backlinks shows how to see which sites already link to your rivals, which is a far better starting list than any wire. If you would rather hand that work over, our backlink outreach services page explains how we run it.
Do press release submission sites still work in 2026?
They work for three specific jobs, and they fail at a fourth.
They work as a dated public record. A published release proves your company said a thing on a given date. That is useful for funding rounds, certifications, legal notices and company milestones.
They work as a brand mention. Your company name, your website address and your location appear together on a crawlable page. That feeds brand search and helps the entity picture around your business, even with a nofollow link.
They work for occasional syndication. A release on a paid newswire sometimes gets reprinted on a partner finance or trade site. The free wires rarely manage this.
They fail as a link building tactic. Google is direct about it. Its spam policies for Google web search name links with optimised anchor text in press releases distributed on other sites as an example of link spam, and they treat paying for a ranking link as spam unless it is marked nofollow or sponsored. Press release links are not a grey area. They are named in the policy.
Quick answer: Press release submission sites still work in 2026 for a dated public record, a brand mention and occasional syndication. They do not work for rankings, because free wires apply nofollow and Google treats paid press release links as link spam.
Treat a release the way you treat a directory submission site listing. It is a cheap, repeatable brand footprint, not a ranking lever. If you only want the no cost options, our shorter list of free press release sites covers those on their own.
Frequently asked questions
what is press release submission
Press release submission is the act of sending your company news to a website that publishes it as a news page. You write the release, open an account on a wire, paste the text, add contact details, and submit. The site reviews it and publishes it on its own domain, usually within 24 to 72 hours.
do press release links count for seo
Almost never. Most free press release submission sites apply nofollow to every outbound link, so no ranking credit passes. Google’s spam policies name optimised anchor text in syndicated press releases as link spam. The value you get is a brand mention and a dated page, not link strength.
where can i publish a press release free
PRLog, OpenPR, Firmenpresse, INAR Presseportal and lifePR all publish a basic release at no cost. Scoop in New Zealand, Bizcommunity in South Africa and PressPortal in South Africa take free submissions too. IssueWire gives you your first release free, then charges. OpenPR limits you to one free release every 30 days.
are press release sites safe for a new website
Yes, with limits. A handful of releases on real, live wires will not hurt you, because the links are nofollow and pass nothing either way. The risk comes from paying a cheap seller for 100 press release links with keyword anchors. That pattern is exactly what Google’s link spam policy describes.
how much does a press release cost
Free on PRLog and OpenPR. Around 5 to 50 dollars on budget wires like PRUrgent and 24-7 Press Release. Around 75 to 200 dollars on mid tier wires like PR Underground, EIN Presswire and MarketersMEDIA. Several hundred to several thousand on PR Newswire, Business Wire and eReleases, where price depends on word count and region.
will a journalist actually read my press release
On a free wire, usually not. Free wires publish your page and feed it to aggregators, but reporters rarely browse them. Paid newswires do reach journalist inboxes and financial terminals. Even then, a direct and personal pitch to one named reporter on their beat beats a mass wire send.
how often should i publish a press release
Only when you have real news. For most small businesses that means four to eight releases a year. A monthly release with nothing to say trains editors to ignore you and creates duplicate pages that help nobody. Quality of the news decides the result, not frequency.
