F5Bot vs TrueScrape for brand mention alerts
F5Bot does one job and does it well: it watches Reddit, Hacker News and Lobsters for your keywords and emails you, for free, as soon as something matches. If those three sites are where your brand gets discussed, there is not much to improve on, and the free plan is the right answer. Its limits are the edges of that job. It sees nothing outside those three sites, Slack and Discord delivery start at $49.99 a month, and the alert is an email rather than something your code can act on below that tier. The real question is whether your mentions live on those three sites or are spread wider.
F5Bot figures read from their own pages on 2026-11-01. Pricing moves. Check before you rely on it.
What does F5Bot do better?
It is free, and the free plan is genuinely useful
Keyword alerts for Reddit, Hacker News and Lobsters by email cost nothing, for up to 5 keywords on the free plan. We give 1,000 credits once on signup and charge for every check after that. For a side project or a founder watching one name on Reddit, free beats cheap.
Alerts arrive as fast as the post does
F5Bot offers instant alerts, batched alerts or a daily digest at a time you choose. Our shortest interval is one hour and the default is six, so on the sites F5Bot covers it will tell you about a thread before we have checked for it.
Lobsters, which we do not watch at all
Lobsters is a small but influential link aggregator for developers, and a mention there can matter more than its size suggests. Our monitors do not check it, so if your audience reads Lobsters, F5Bot covers a source we cannot.
Filters, including an AI filter on Gold
Paid plans add filtering flags, and Gold lets you describe in plain language what you are looking for and have each new discussion evaluated against it. Our monitors match the term as a whole word in the title or text and nothing more: no exclusions, no subreddit filter, no relevance scoring.
How do F5Bot and TrueScrape compare, side by side?
4 of 9 rows go to F5Bot.
| Axis | TrueScrape | F5Bot | Better |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price to start | 1,000 credits once on signup, then packs from $25 for 20,000 credits ($1.25 per 1,000). No monthly plan. | Free forever. Silver is $12.99 a month and Gold $49.99 a month. | F5Bot |
| Sources watched | Seven: Reddit, Hacker News, Bluesky, YouTube, Threads, plus Instagram and TikTok hashtags. | Three: Reddit, Hacker News and Lobsters. | Us |
| How fast an alert arrives | Every 6 hours by default, every hour at the fastest. | Instantly, batched, or as a daily digest at times you choose. | F5Bot |
| Filtering noise | Whole-word match on the term, ignoring case. No exclusions and no relevance scoring. | Basic flags free, advanced flags on Silver, AI filtering in plain language on Gold. | F5Bot |
| Keyword limits | None of their kind: each term is a monitor, and each platform checked costs 1 credit per check. | 5 keywords free, 20 on Silver, 200 on Gold, 300 on Platinum. | Depends |
| Getting alerts into your tools | Signed webhooks on every account, a REST API, MCP tools for agents, and a dashboard feed with unread counts. | Email on every plan; Slack, Discord, RSS and JSON feeds on Gold; API and webhooks from Platinum ($214.99 a month). | Us |
| Setup | Free checker with no account; "Watch this term" creates a monitor. Or one POST /v1/monitors with the term. | Sign up with an email address and type in keywords. | Depends |
| What a quiet week costs | A check is charged when the platform answers, even if nothing mentions you. Failed checks cost nothing; nothing is charged per mention. | Nothing beyond the flat plan, or nothing at all on Free. | F5Bot |
| History | Mentions are kept for 90 days. | Not stated on their plans page; alerts arrive as emails you keep. | Depends |
Choose F5Bot if
- Your brand is discussed on Reddit, Hacker News or Lobsters and nowhere else that matters to you.
- You want alerts for free, by email, and are happy reading them yourself.
- You need to hear about a thread within minutes, not within the hour.
- You want exclusion rules or an AI filter to cut noise from a common word.
Choose TrueScrape if
- Your mentions also turn up on Bluesky, YouTube, Threads, or under an Instagram or TikTok hashtag.
- You want to try it before signing up: the free checker at /tools/brand-mentions shows mentions for a name in seconds with no account, and "Watch this term" turns it into a monitor.
- You want mentions in code: one POST /v1/monitors with a term and an optional webhook_url, signed webhooks carrying new posts only, and the same API key and credits as every other endpoint.
- You want an agent to watch for you: the MCP server has create_monitor and get_monitor_mentions.
- You would rather pay per check than per month, with no plan and no seats.
Questions people actually ask
- Is F5Bot free?
- Yes. The free plan sends email alerts for keywords on Reddit, Hacker News and Lobsters, for up to 5 keywords. Silver ($12.99 a month) adds 20 keywords with advanced filters and full post text; Gold ($49.99 a month) adds 200 keywords, AI filtering, RSS and JSON feeds, and Slack and Discord. Figures read from f5bot.com/tiers on 2026-11-01.
- What does it cost to watch the same thing with a pay-per-check monitor?
- Watching one term on Reddit and Hacker News every 6 hours is 8 credits a day, about 240 a month; all seven platforms is about 840 a month. At $1.25 per 1,000 credits that is roughly $0.30 or $1.05 a month, but the smallest pack is $25 for 20,000 credits, which never expire. F5Bot on those two sites is free.
- Can F5Bot send alerts to a webhook or Slack?
- Gold ($49.99 a month) routes alerts to Slack and Discord through webhooks and adds RSS and JSON feeds. Below Gold, alerts are email. A general API and webhooks start at Platinum, $214.99 a month. Our monitors send signed webhooks on any account, carrying only posts not seen before, and the same mentions are readable through the API, the MCP tools or the dashboard feed.
- What is the honest case against us here?
- On Reddit and Hacker News, F5Bot is free, faster and better at filtering than we are, and it covers Lobsters, which we do not. We only earn our place if your mentions are spread across platforms F5Bot does not watch, or if you want them in code rather than in an inbox.
How do you see who mentions your brand right now?
The free brand mention checker shows recent mentions with no account. Brand mention monitoring covers what a watched term costs, and how to track brand mentions without a subscription compares the paid tools.
Sources: F5Bot plans and features · Mention monitors docs · Our pricing
The free grant is 1,000 credits and needs no card. It is sized to answer whether the data is good enough, which is the only question worth resolving before you commit.