Quick picks: what are you doing?
- You only need to know when your brand name appears, and 5 keywords is enough: stay on F5Bot. Free is hard to beat.
- You need more places than Reddit, Hacker News and Lobsters: Syften, from $29.95 a month, covers GitHub, Stack Overflow, podcasts and more, with X (+$40 a month) and YouTube (+$20) as paid add-ons on Standard and up.
- You want a daily list of leads instead of a stream of alerts: RedShip, $29 a month for 10 keywords and 3 competitors.
- You want a draft reply to edit before you post: Redreach, $19 a month for 100 AI-guided reply suggestions.
- You want one dashboard across social, news and reviews: Octolens, $159 a month billed annually, or Brand24, from $199 a month billed annually.
- You want to pay as little as possible for a few subreddits: RedditMentions, €4.49 a month.
- You don't want to do the replying at all: CommunityMentions posts daily for you, $1,000 a month. Compare it with F5Bot first.
F5Bot alternatives compared
Each row gives the same fields, taken from that vendor's own pricing page on November 10, 2026. CommunityMentions is ours.
| Service | What it does | Who posts the reply | Price as published | Platforms it names | Best for | Where it beats us |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| F5Bot | Keyword alerts by email, Slack or feed | You | Free; $12.99, $49.99 or $214.99 a month; Diamond from $500 | Reddit, Hacker News, Lobsters | Brand-name alerts at no cost | Free plan; Hacker News and Lobsters coverage |
| CommunityMentions (ours) | Finds threads and posts comments for you, with a daily Slack report | We do, from established accounts | $1,000/mo after a $1 setup charge | Reddit, YouTube, Medium, LinkedIn, X | Brands that want the posting done | This is us |
| Syften | Keyword alerts with AI filtering on Standard and up | You | $29.95, $49.95 or $119.95 a month; X +$40, YouTube +$20 | Reddit, Hacker News, Indie Hackers, Stack Exchange, GitHub, podcasts, forums, the web | Tracking many communities at once | Coverage across developer communities, with an API |
| RedShip | Daily lead lists, competitor tracking, an AI reply generator | You | $29 or $49 a month; $12 for a 7-day pass | Founders who want leads ranked for them | A $12 pass to test it | |
| Redreach | Reddit lead finding, AI-guided reply suggestions, automated DMs | You post the replies; it can send DMs automatically | $19, $39 or $79 a month; $12 for a 3-day pass | The lowest monthly price in this list for AI-drafted replies | Price | |
| Subreddit Signals | Buyer-intent classification and a comment builder per subreddit | You | $29 or $59 a month; 14-day trial, card required | One product in up to 10 subreddits | You keep your own voice on every comment | |
| Octolens | Social listening with AI relevance filtering, API and MCP on every plan | You | $159 or $499 a month billed annually; Enterprise custom | Reddit, X, LinkedIn, YouTube, TikTok, GitHub, Hacker News, reviews | Developer tools tracking many platforms | Monitoring breadth and a full API |
| Brand24 | Media monitoring and sentiment analysis | You | $249 to $699 a month, or $199 to $599 billed annually; Enterprise from $1,499 | Social networks, news, blogs, Reddit, reviews, podcasts | PR and brand teams with reporting needs | Sentiment and reach reporting |
| Awario | Social listening by topic | You | $49, $149 or $399 a month, or $29, $89 or $249 billed annually | Reddit, X, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Vimeo, news | Unlimited keywords inside a topic | Boolean search and exports |
| ReplyGuy | Finds mentions and replies automatically from credits | Its software | $49, $99, $199 or $499 a month | Not named on its pricing page | Teams that want cheap automated replies | Far lower monthly price |
| RedditMentions | Daily email of keyword matches in subreddits you pick | You | €4.49 or €9.49 a month; 7-day trial | A few subreddits on a tiny budget | Price |
What 5, 20 and 100 keywords cost on each
Sticker prices hide the point where a plan runs out, so here is each tool at three sizes, using the cheapest plan that holds that many keywords on November 10, 2026. Syften calls them filters. Octolens figures add its per-keyword overage ($10 each on Pro, $5 on Scale) and are billed annually; Brand24 figures are monthly prices. CommunityMentions has no keyword limit because you don't manage keywords.
| Tool | 5 keywords | 20 keywords | 100 keywords |
|---|---|---|---|
| F5Bot | Free | $12.99 personal use; $49.99 for a business | $49.99 |
| Syften | $49.95 | $49.95 | $119.95 |
| RedShip | $29 | $49 | Not listed |
| Redreach | $19 | $19 | Not listed (top plan holds 60) |
| Octolens | $159 | $259 | $799 |
| Brand24 | $349 | $699 | From $1,499 |
| CommunityMentions (ours) | $1,000 | $1,000 | $1,000 |
Why a keyword match isn't a lead
Alerts tell you a word appeared, and most appearances aren't worth a reply. In 84 finished samples from our site form between September 17 and November 4, 2026, the median run found 528 conversations and kept 35 as relevant, roughly 1 in 15 (the ratio of two medians). Those runs search by topic and use our own scoring, so read it as a rough guide to how much filtering sits between a match and a reply. This is why the paid tools above compete on AI filtering. F5Bot added its own on Gold and Platinum, with the first $10 a month of token use included.
Moving from F5Bot: what to check first
- Count your keywords. At 5 or fewer, the free plan may be all you need, and a paid tool has to earn its price some other way.
- Check who you monitor for. F5Bot's Silver plan is for personal, non-commercial use, and its page sends business users to Gold at $49.99 a month.
- Check alert speed. Free alerts can lag up to 2 hours and Silver up to 5 minutes. Gold and Platinum are instant or scheduled.
- Decide who will reply. Apart from ReplyGuy and CommunityMentions, the tools here leave posting the reply to you (Redreach can also send automated DMs), so the alert only pays if someone has the hours.
- If you came from GummySearch, it closed on November 30, 2025, according to its own home page.
Where F5Bot still wins
- It has a free plan with no card. We found only trials or short passes on the other pricing pages in this list.
- It covers Hacker News and Lobsters alongside Reddit, which most of the Reddit-only tools here skip.
- It has run since 2017 and says it sends over 430,000 alerts a day.
- Gold gives 200 keywords for $49.99 a month, more keywords per dollar than any plan here that sells by keyword count (vendors count keywords differently, so check each page).
Which one fits
Keep F5Bot if alerts are the whole job. Move to Syften or Octolens if you need more platforms, and to RedShip, Redreach or Subreddit Signals if you want help deciding what to answer. If the reason you're looking is that nobody has time to reply, a better alert won't change that. CommunityMentions posts for you for $1,000 a month, and the free sample shows the comments first.
How we compared
Every price comes from the vendor's own pricing page, read November 10, 2026. Plan limits are as those pages list them. We did not buy a subscription to each tool. The sample figures come from CommunityMentions' own run logs. If a vendor's page says something different now, its page wins.
Sources
- F5Bot account tiers, F5Bot home and F5Bot about, read November 10, 2026.
- Syften, RedShip, Redreach, Subreddit Signals, Octolens, Brand24, Awario, ReplyGuy and RedditMentions, read November 10, 2026.
- GummySearch home page, closure notice, read November 10, 2026.
- CommunityMentions run logs: 84 finished samples from the site form, September 17 to November 4, 2026.
- Our price and terms: pricing section and company facts, read November 10, 2026.