Syften alternative: from keyword alerts to scored buyers and drafts

Syften has been running since 2019. A filter in Syften is a search query for mentions you want to track. Onboarding is automated: after you sign up, it researches your company, competitors and product names and creates your first filters. You can refine them with its search syntax and add AI filtering that rejects spam, duplicates, auto-promos and weak matches. For harder cases you can write an AI accept rule, a short instruction such as "true when the author is evaluating a B2B tool".

Sources include Reddit, Hacker News, Indie Hackers, Product Hunt, GitHub, Stack Exchange, forums, Lobste.rs, Dev.to, Slack communities, newsletters, podcasts, Bluesky, Mastodon and the public web. X and YouTube are paid add-ons. Its FAQ aims for at most a one-minute delay on Reddit and 15 minutes on X. Alerts go out by email, Slack, RSS, webhooks or MCP, and archive search covers past mentions.

Syften also has a page on buying-intent alerts. It suggests separate filters for recommendation requests, competitor alternatives, complaints and problem descriptions, and says it shows you what someone said rather than attaching a score to an account.

Plans on 17 October 2026, billed monthly:

• Entry, $29.95: 3 community filters, 100 results a day, 1 web filter, 7-day archive.
• Standard, $49.95: 20 filters, 200 results a day, Slack, AI filtering, 30-day archive.
• PRO, $119.95: 100 filters, 500 results a day, full archive, webhooks and MCP.

On Standard and PRO, X monitoring adds $40 a month and YouTube $20 a month. The 14-day trial needs no card and shows mentions from the last 60 days.

Syften suits founders and teams who want broad coverage and fast alerts and don't mind writing and tuning their own filters. It covers developer communities HearBuyers doesn't read, like Hacker News, GitHub and Lobste.rs. Support teams and agencies use it too, with tagged filters keeping client work apart. If speed on Reddit matters most, its one-minute target is hard to match.

• A judgment, not only a match. An alert tells you a phrase appeared. A score tells you how close the person is to buying, so you can set a bar.
• The sentence, highlighted. Seeing the line where someone states the need saves you opening every link.
• Less filter writing. If maintaining queries eats your time, look for a tool that works out the phrases from what you sell.
• Help with the reply. Answering well is the slow part. Editing a drafted reply takes less time than writing one.
• A team queue. Shared stages stop two people answering the same post.

HearBuyers fits if most of your buyers ask on X and Reddit and you'd rather review a scored shortlist than tune filters. You paste your company website, and it infers your product summary, buyer roles, problems in the buyer's words, search phrases, competitors and subreddits, all of which you can edit. It reads public X posts and replies and Reddit posts and comments, starting with the last seven days and then on a schedule.

Every post gets a 0 to 100 buying-intent score, with the exact sentence highlighted and a one-line reason. Matches at or above your threshold (70 by default) get a drafted public reply, a DM draft on X, and an email draft only when a public email exists. A person edits, approves, copies and posts it. Nothing goes out on its own. Matches go to Slack, a daily email digest and a team inbox with stages.

It doesn't fit if you need Hacker News, GitHub, forums or the wider web, alerts within a minute, RSS or webhooks. HearBuyers is free for 14 days with no card, then from $19 a month.

If your filters already catch the right people and you reply quickly, Syften gives you wide coverage at a fair published price. Stay if your buyers are spread across developer communities. Consider switching if X and Reddit bring most of your leads and sorting alerts takes longer than replying.

1. Export or copy your Syften filters, especially the buying-intent ones.
2. Sign up for HearBuyers and paste your company website.
3. Compare its suggested search phrases with your filters and add what's missing.
4. Add the competitor names you tracked and the subreddits you care about.
5. Set your threshold and connect the Slack channel your Syften alerts used.

For more detail, read the HearBuyers vs Syften comparison, our Syften review, or Octolens vs Syften.