F5Bot alternative: when to keep it, and what to use instead

If you've searched for an F5Bot alternative, you probably already use it. F5Bot sends you an email when your keywords show up on Reddit, Hacker News or Lobsters. It's been running since 2017, it's free to start, and for some jobs it's still the best tool around.

But a lot of founders set it up to find customers, and a few weeks later their inbox is full of alerts they never open. This guide covers what F5Bot does today, the three reasons people look elsewhere, and which free or paid option fits each job.

What F5Bot does today

Everything here was read on F5Bot's pricing page and FAQ on November 14, 2026.

• It watches three sites: Reddit, Hacker News and Lobsters, posts and comments.
• It checks for new content every few minutes.
• Free: 5 keywords, up to 20 alerts a day, alerts sent with a delay of up to 2 hours. Marked "personal use only".
• Silver ($12.99/month): 20 keywords, alerts within about 5 minutes. Marked "Personal, non-commercial use".
• Gold ($49.99/month): 200 keywords, instant alerts, RSS and JSON feeds, Slack or Discord. Marked "For professionals and small businesses". This is also the first plan with AI filtering, where you describe what you want in plain words instead of matching exact keywords.

F5Bot has improved a lot. The AI filtering and the subreddit flags (like `only-subreddit=`) cut a lot of noise. So the question isn't "is F5Bot good?". It's "is it the right tool for the job I have?".

When F5Bot is still the right choice

Keep it if your job is watching mentions:

• your product or brand name;
• a competitor's name;
• your website's URL, to see when someone shares it.

These are rare words, so the alerts stay few and useful. F5Bot's own FAQ says it is "designed to alert you about fairly uncommon keywords or phrases". For this, the free plan is often enough.

Three reasons founders look for an alternative

1. Keywords match words, not intent

When you want customers, you don't search for your brand. You search for the problem, like "invoice reminders" or "client onboarding". Those words show up in tutorials, rants, job posts and jokes. Most alerts are not people who need help.

F5Bot's answer is AI filtering, which starts on the Gold plan. If you don't want to pay for that, you'll have to read every alert yourself. Here's what to look for: someone asking for a tool, complaining about how they do it today, or looking to switch. More on that in buying intent signals.

2. The free and Silver plans aren't for business use

This one is easy to miss. The free plan says "personal use only" and Silver says "Personal, non-commercial use". If you're using alerts to find customers for your company, the plan that matches that use is Gold, at $49.99 a month. That's fine if it works for you. Just know it before you build a routine on top of a free account.

3. Three sites is a narrow view

Reddit, Hacker News and Lobsters are big. But your buyers might write somewhere else: LinkedIn, Bluesky, a niche forum, a Skool community, dev.to.

What we see in our own data

FounderPulse searches a different set of places, so we looked at where the people our users saved actually came from. On November 14, 2026, we counted the saved prospects that have a source link in our database: 393 in total.

• LinkedIn: 95
• dev.to: 75
• Indie Hackers: 62
• Bluesky: 34
• Skool: 26
• Hacker News: 3
• Lobsters: 0

To be fair to F5Bot, this count leaves out Reddit, because FounderPulse doesn't read Reddit directly (Reddit asks for a written agreement for commercial use). So these numbers say nothing about how good Reddit is. What they do show is that, for our users, people asking for help were spread across many sites, and Hacker News was a very small part of it. Your niche will look different. The lesson is to check where your buyers write before you pick a tool that only watches three sites.

Free alternatives, by job

You can cover a lot without paying anything. Pick the one that matches the place your buyers use.

• Reddit: use Reddit's own search with your problem words and sort by New. We wrote a full method in how to find customers on Reddit.
• Hacker News: the Algolia search API is public and has a date-sorted endpoint. For example, `https://hn.algolia.com/api/v1/search_by_date?query=invoice%20reminders&tags=story` lists the newest stories with those words. Bookmark one link per keyword.
• Bluesky: search works once you're signed in, and the Latest tab shows new posts first. See how to find leads on Bluesky.
• Niche forums: most forums have a search box with a sort by date. Five minutes a week on the two forums your buyers use beats a hundred alerts from places they don't.

If you used GummySearch for Reddit, which shuts down on December 1, 2026, we compared options in GummySearch alternatives.

A 15-minute setup for this week

1. 1Write down the 3 places where your buyers ask questions. If you don't know, ask two customers where they hang out online.
2. 2Keep F5Bot (free) for your brand name and one competitor. That's what it does best.
3. 3For each of the 3 places, save one search link with your problem words, sorted by date.
4. 4Open those links each morning. Pick the 2 or 3 recent posts where someone clearly has the problem.
5. 5Reply with one useful idea and one question. No link, no pitch. Note who answers.

Where FounderPulse fits

Steps 3 and 4 are the slow part: running the searches and reading through posts to find the few people asking right now. FounderPulse does that part. You describe what you sell, and it searches recent public posts on Bluesky, Mastodon, Hacker News, Discourse forums and the open web, where public LinkedIn and dev.to posts show up. It checks the date of each post, drops ads and job offers, and tells you in one sentence why each person fits. For each one, it drafts a first reply that helps before it mentions you. On the Pro plan, it can run your search each weekday morning, so the list is ready when you open the app.

What it doesn't do: it doesn't read Reddit directly, and it doesn't post or send anything for you. You read the draft, change what you want, and send it yourself. Plans and limits are on the pricing page.

You can try it free without signing up: paste your website and see three people to contact today.