Disclosure first: I make Loudship. Every fact about F5Bot here comes from f5bot.com and its FAQ, checked on October 23, 2026.
What F5Bot gets right
F5Bot has done one thing since 2017: it watches Reddit, Hacker News and Lobsters for your keywords and emails you when they appear. On Reddit it covers posts and comments in every subreddit, it checks every few minutes, and the free plan costs nothing. Flags make it precise: whole for whole-word matches, only-subreddit to stay inside a community, no-comments or no-posts to keep one kind of result. For a product name, which you want to hear about every single time, it is close to perfect.
The alert is where the work starts
A match tells you a word appeared. Then the work is yours: open the thread, read the post, decide whether the author is actually asking for something, check whether someone already answered it, look at the subreddit's rules on self-promotion, and write a reply that does not read like an ad. For a product name, that is a minute per alert. For a category word like "reddit monitoring" or "invoicing app", it is most of the morning, because most matches are people using the word, not people looking for a tool.
One night of a sample radar shows the ratio. Out of 637 threads read on Reddit, Hacker News and Bluesky, 74 were on topic for the product and 3 came from someone asking for what it does. A keyword alert sends every match and leaves the sorting to you. Loudship does the sorting overnight and sends the 3, each with a draft written from your product's facts.
| Criterion | F5Bot | Loudship |
|---|---|---|
| Sources | Reddit (posts and comments in every subreddit), Hacker News, Lobsters | Reddit, Hacker News, Bluesky |
| How a thread is picked | Your keywords and flags; on Gold, an AI filter from a plain-language description | Read in full and scored: is the author asking for something like your product? |
| When it arrives | Checked every few minutes; instantly on paid plans, after a delay on Free; or as a daily digest | Once a morning, by email |
| How many | Every match, up to daily caps per keyword | Up to five a day per product |
| What you get | The match, an excerpt and a link | The thread, why it was kept, a draft reply and what to check before posting |
| Learns from you | No: you tune keywords and flags | Yes: what you send and skip shapes the next mornings |
| Delivery | Email; Slack and Discord webhooks, RSS and JSON feeds on Gold | Email and the web app |
| Price | Free; Silver $12.99 a month (non-commercial); Gold $49.99 a month | $29 a month after a free first digest |
Which F5Bot plan a founder needs
The free plan sends alerts after a delay and offers basic flags; free accounts cannot watch very common words. Silver, at $12.99 a month, adds 20 keywords, advanced flags and the full post text, and F5Bot describes it as a plan for individuals and non-commercial use. Gold, at $49.99 a month, is the one it describes for professionals and small businesses, with 200 keywords, AI filtering, Slack and Discord webhooks, and feeds. If you are watching Reddit to find customers, read the plans with that line in mind.
Loudship Solo is $29 a month for one product, and the first digest is free without a card. The difference in price is smaller than the difference in what arrives: a list of matches to sort, or a short list of threads to answer.
Keep F5Bot for your brand name
The two tools do not compete for every job, and running both is a reasonable setup:
- F5Bot, free, on your product's name with the
wholeflag. You hear about every mention within minutes, including complaints and bug reports you should answer fast. - Loudship on the conversations where nobody knows your name yet: someone asking for a tool like yours, comparing two of your competitors, or describing the problem you solve. Those threads rarely contain a keyword you could have guessed.
- Google Alerts for the rest of the web, blogs and press, which neither reads. It has its own blind spots on Reddit, covered in Google Alerts for Reddit.
Whatever finds the thread, the reply is the part that keeps or loses the account. Why automated Reddit replies get banned explains where the safe line is.