F5Bot monitors Reddit, Hacker News, and Lobsters for keywords, checking submissions and comments for new content every few minutes. It emails alerts when matches appear. Filters can narrow results by subreddit, exclude terms, require other terms alongside a keyword, or target titles, bodies, URLs, or usernames. Select plans add AI filtering that uses a natural-language description instead of exact keywords. Depending on the plan, alerts can go to Slack or Discord through webhooks, or arrive as RSS and JSON feeds. API-enabled plans support programmatic alert management and webhook callbacks. Eligible plans can disable email, group alerts after a delay, or schedule daily digests at up to three chosen times. The maker lists brand monitoring, competitor intelligence, lead generation, and content or PR tracking as use cases. The free personal plan allows five keywords, while paid plans raise keyword and alert limits and add features.
Who it is for
It suits people tracking discussions, brands, competitors, leads, or public relations across the three supported communities. Teams needing integrations or API access need eligible paid plans.
What is good
- Monitors three discussion networks
- Filters by subreddit and content fields
- Email, Slack, Discord, RSS, JSON
- AI filtering on select plans
- Free personal-use tier
What to know first
- No regular expressions or wildcards
- Free plan has daily limits
- Very popular brands may be difficult
- Alerts are not guaranteed without delay
Verdict
F5Bot provides configurable monitoring for Reddit, Hacker News, and Lobsters, from a limited free tier to plans with integrations and API access. Its coverage and delivery caveats matter for high-volume monitoring.
F5Bot plans and pricing
All plansCompared on social media listening software
- Free plan
- Yes
- Social network coverage
- Reddit, Hacker News, Lobsters
- Web monitoring
- Yes
- Tracked query limit
- 20 queries
- News monitoring
- No
- Alert channels
- Email, Slack, Discord, RSS, JSON, webhooks
