There is no single best PR firm, and any list that ranks them 1 to 20 is selling something. The five largest agencies in the world bill roughly $4.2 billion between them and almost none of that work resembles what a company under $100M revenue needs. The useful question is narrower: who has placed the kind of story you want, in the publications you want, for a company at your stage — and can they show you the last twenty pitches they sent and what came back. This page covers the big firms, the specialists, and the method.
First, the honest framing
Most "best PR firms" lists are directories with paid placement, or agencies ranking themselves. We are an agency and we appear on this page, so treat our inclusion the same way you should treat everyone else's — as a claim to check.
What follows is organised by what you might actually need, not by size.
The largest firms in the world
These are the global networks. The reference point most of the industry uses is PRovoke Media's Global Top 250, ranked by fee income. Worth knowing how it is built: figures are largely submitted by the agencies themselves, with estimates where a firm does not disclose. It is the best league table available, not an audited one.
| Firm | Owner | Known for |
|---|---|---|
| Edelman | Independent | The largest independent PR firm. Became the first agency to pass $1bn in fee income in 2022; 2024 fee income was about $986m after a roughly 5% decline |
| Burson | WPP | Formed in 2024 by merging BCW and Hill & Knowlton; now among the largest firms globally |
| Weber Shandwick | Interpublic | Consumer and corporate reputation at scale |
| FleishmanHillard | Omnicom | Corporate, public affairs, heavily regulated sectors |
| Real Chemistry | Independent | A top-five firm by fee income and the largest focused on health, biotech and life sciences |
| Ketchum | Omnicom | Consumer brands and food |
The top five together billed roughly $4.2 billion in fees on 2024 figures.
When a global network is the right answer: you are a public company, you operate in more than five markets, you have a regulatory or litigation exposure that needs specialist counsel, or you need one firm that can run communications in nine languages at once. That is a real need and the networks are genuinely good at it.
When it is usually the wrong answer: you are under roughly $100M in revenue. At that size you are a small account inside a large agency, and the questions worth asking before you sign are whether the people in the pitch meeting are the people who will do the work, how many other accounts your day-to-day contact carries, and what share of the fee covers infrastructure you will never use. Some networks answer those well. Ask rather than assume — and ask a specialist the same questions.
The specialist tier
Below the networks sit firms built around one sector or one job. This is where most technology, healthcare and financial companies should be looking.
The trade-off is straightforward. A specialist knows the twenty reporters who matter in your category and has probably worked with them this quarter. A generalist has to learn your category on your retainer. Against that, a specialist has fewer people, less geographic reach, and sometimes a conflict problem if they already represent a competitor.
Ask directly whether they work with anyone who competes with you. A firm that will not answer that question clearly is answering it.
How to actually evaluate one
This is the part the ranking lists skip, and it is the only part that predicts whether the engagement works.
Ask for the sends, not the case studies. A case study is a story about a win. What you want is the raw record.
"Ask for the last 20 pitches they sent in your category and what came back. Not case studies, not a logo wall. The actual sends. If they can't produce that, they aren't measuring, and you'll find out in month four."
Justin Mauldin, Founder, Salient PR
Ask who does the work. Get the name of the person who will write your pitches and send them. Then ask how many other accounts that person carries. Six is a lot.
Ask what they will not do. A firm with a point of view will tell you which tactics they think are a waste of money. A firm that says yes to everything has no method.
Ask for the failure. "Tell me about a programme that did not work and what you concluded." Anyone who has run programmes for a decade has several. An agency that cannot produce one is either new or not being straight with you.
What good actually looks like, in numbers
Most companies have never seen the underlying numbers of a media programme, which makes agency claims hard to judge. Here is ours, so you have a reference point.
Our outreach to journalists between December 2025 and August 2026:
| Measure | Result |
|---|---|
| Delivered | 99.0% |
| Recorded opens | 51.4% (an estimated 7 in 10 actually read, adjusting for tracking-pixel blocking) |
| Positive replies | 63% |
| Bounces | 1.0% |
| Unsubscribes | 0 |
A reply rate between 8% and 11% is a healthy programme in most B2B categories. If an agency quotes you 30%, they are counting auto-replies or measuring something else. If they cannot quote you anything, they are not measuring.
The other number worth knowing before you sign anything:
"We ran the same playbook for a pre-revenue startup nobody had heard of and a company approaching $100M ARR. Reply rates came out three points apart. Size doesn't buy you the reply and neither does a famous founder. That's not what agencies tell you in the pitch meeting."
Justin Mauldin, Founder, Salient PR
Retainer or project work
Retainers almost always beat project work for anything ongoing, because the value compounds through relationships the agency maintains between your news cycles. Project work makes sense when you have exactly one thing to announce and no plans for a second.
How Salient engages
We ask for a six-month commitment to start, because the first two months are relationship building and judging the work before then tells you nothing. After that there is a 30-day exit, no questions asked, either side. If it is not working we would both rather know.
The mistake that causes most failed engagements
It is almost never the writing.
"Most of what people call a PR failure is a targeting failure. The pitch went to someone who stopped covering that beat 18 months ago. That's not bad luck, that's nobody checking."
Justin Mauldin, Founder, Salient PR
Ask how the media list gets maintained and how often. The honest answer involves continuous work, because reporters move outlets and change beats constantly.
"We keep 1,750 reporters in the database and the maintenance never stops. People move outlets, change beats, leave the industry. A list that hasn't been touched in six months is mostly wrong."
Kristin Kaplan, Operations, Salient PR
How long before it works
Roughly: month one is research, messaging and list building with little visible output. Months two and three produce the first placements. Month six is the first fair point to judge the programme. Month twelve is when compounding shows up — reporters who know the company, inbound requests, analysts including you by default.
Any agency promising coverage in week two is either sitting on a relationship they are about to spend, or telling you what you want to hear.
Firms by city
Where you are matters less than it used to — most of this work happens over email — but local knowledge helps for regional business press and local broadcast.
We have checked each of these markets firm by firm — confirming the office actually exists, that it does earned media rather than advertising, and that it is still trading. Firms that failed those checks are listed as excluded, with the reason.
Does AI search change the choice?
It changes what you should ask for. AI assistants assemble answers from published sources. Coverage in credible publications is what feeds that layer.
The practical question for an agency is whether they can get you cited in the places the models read, not whether they have an "AI strategy". Most of the answer is the same work it has always been.
"AI writes a fine first draft and a terrible pitch. The part that matters is knowing that this specific reporter wrote about this specific thing six weeks ago. No model knows that about your beat unless someone fed it."
Justin Mauldin, Founder, Salient PR
Where we fit
Salient PR is an Austin-based B2B technology agency. We work in AI and infrastructure, developer tools, SaaS, cybersecurity and fintech, and past and present campaigns include Tenstorrent, BuildOps, Sauce Labs, Browserbase and Campaign Monitor. We are a small team, which is the right shape for some companies and the wrong shape for others — if you need simultaneous campaigns in nine countries, hire a network.
The short version
- There is no best firm, only the best fit for your stage, sector and appetite.
- The global networks are genuinely good at global, regulated and public-company work, and usually a poor fit under $100M revenue.
- Ask for the last twenty pitches and what came back. Nothing else predicts as well.
- A reply rate of 8–11% is healthy. Zero measurement is the red flag, not a modest number.
- Expect six months before it is fair to judge a real specialist programme.
- Company size and a famous founder move the results far less than agencies imply.
Salient PR runs earned media programmes for technology companies. Outreach figures come from our own database covering December 2025 to August 2026, and we appear in the list above.
Sources
- Salient PR outreach database, Dec 2025 – Aug 2026
- PRovoke Media Global Top 250 agency ranking, for fee income and firm scale
- Fee income and ownership figures reflect publicly reported industry data, reviewed August 2026
If you are working through a shortlist — Salient PR is a technology PR agency working with technology companies. See how we work or start a conversation.
Related reading
About Salient PR
Salient is a B2B tech PR agency. We help startups become the story — landing tier-one coverage, building executive visibility, and turning attention into pipeline.
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The largest PR firms, the specialists, and the honest method for choosing between them — including the numbers to ask for.
