F5Bot vs Syften: a free alert service or a paid monitor?
updated 18 October 2026 · facts about other products checked 17 October 2026 from their own pages
F5Bot is free and watches Reddit, Hacker News and Lobsters for your keywords. Syften starts at $29.95 a month, covers many more sources and lets you write your own AI filters. If free keyword alerts from those three sites are all you need, start with F5Bot. Move to Syften when you need X, forums, podcasts or the open web, or when AI filtering and an archive matter to you.
Facts come from each vendor's own pages, checked on 17 October 2026.
Side by side
| F5Bot | Syften | |
|---|---|---|
| Sources | Reddit (posts and comments in every subreddit), Hacker News, Lobsters | Public web, Reddit, X, Indie Hackers, Hacker News, GitHub, Product Hunt, Stack Exchange sites, forums, Lobste.rs, Dev.to, YouTube, podcasts, Bluesky, Mastodon and more |
| Price | Free $0. Silver $9.99 a month. Gold $49.99 a month. Enterprise on request | Entry $29.95, Standard $49.95, PRO $119.95 a month. X monitoring +$40 a month, YouTube +$20 |
| Trial | Free plan, no card | 14 days on PRO, no card |
| Keywords and filters | 20 keywords on Silver, 200 on Gold | 3, 20 and 100 filters by plan, plus web filters |
| AI filtering | Gold: describe what you want in natural language | Standard and up: accept rules you write |
| Speed | Monitored every few minutes | Reddit target delay under a minute, X up to 15 minutes |
| Delivery | Email (instant, batched or daily), Slack and Discord via webhooks, RSS, JSON | Email, Slack, RSS, webhooks, developer access, MCP (by plan) |
| Archive | Not listed | 7 days, 30 days, or full, by plan |
| Operating since | 2017 | 2019 |
Where F5Bot is stronger
- Price. There is a real free plan, and Gold at $49.99 costs about the same as Syften Standard.
- Simplicity. You sign up with an email, add keywords and get alerts.
- Focus. It watches three sources every few minutes, and there is nothing else to configure.
- Plain feeds. Gold gives you RSS and JSON for your own tools.
Where Syften is stronger
- Source range. It lists around twenty kinds of source, including X, YouTube, podcasts, newsletters and Slack communities.
- Filter design. Filters are queries with accept rules, and there is an archive search, so you can tune what comes through.
- Onboarding. It researches your company and builds your first filters for you.
- Agency use. You can tag filters per client.
- A buying-intent view. Its page describes finding recommendation requests, competitor alternatives and complaints.
- Trial data. When you sign up it shows mentions from the previous 60 days.
Pick F5Bot if... pick Syften if...
Pick F5Bot if your keywords live on Reddit, Hacker News or Lobsters and you want to spend nothing, or $9.99 for more keywords. Pick Syften if you need X or other communities, want AI filtering with your own rules and can pay $30 to $120 a month. Syften's X monitoring is a paid add-on.
Where HearBuyers fits
Both tools alert you when a word shows up. HearBuyers reads X and Reddit, and it starts from your website rather than a keyword list. It scores each post from 0 to 100 for buying intent, highlights the sentence that shows the need and drafts a reply for a person to approve. See HearBuyers vs F5Bot and HearBuyers vs Syften.
Next step: set up F5Bot for free, keep your alerts for a week, and check whether you needed more sources before you pay for Syften.
Sources, checked 17 October 2026: F5Bot home, Syften home and pricing, Syften buying intent alerts. Product names are trademarks of their owners. HearBuyers is not affiliated with them. Spot something out of date? Write to us and we will fix it.
See who is asking for what you sell
Paste your website. Your first scored matches from X and Reddit arrive within minutes, each with a drafted reply. Free for 14 days, no card.