Syften vs TrueScrape for community mention monitoring
Syften is built for breadth across communities: Reddit, Hacker News, GitHub, Product Hunt, Stack Exchange, forums, Slack communities, newsletters, podcasts, Bluesky, Mastodon and the open web, with X and YouTube as add-ons. For a developer tool or a B2B product whose users talk in those places, few monitors cover as much for the money. The trade-offs sit in the plan table: filters are capped per plan, results per day are capped, Slack starts at Standard, and webhooks and MCP only come with the $119.95 PRO plan. TikTok, Instagram and Threads are not in the sources they list. So the choice turns on where your audience talks, and on whether you need mentions in code before you need PRO.
Syften figures read from their own pages on 2026-10-31. Pricing moves. Check before you rely on it.
What does Syften do better?
Far more of the community web
Forums, GitHub, Product Hunt, Indie Hackers, the Stack Exchange family, Dev.to, Lobsters, Slack communities, newsletters, podcasts, Mastodon and the public web are all on their list. We watch seven platforms. If your users talk in a forum or a GitHub issue, Syften sees it and we do not.
X is available, for $40 a month more
On Standard and PRO you can add X monitoring for $40 a month, with a delay they state as at most 15 minutes. We do not monitor X at all, at any price, and for many brands X is where the conversation happens first.
Reddit within about a minute
Syften says it aims for at most a one-minute delay on Reddit. Our fastest interval is one hour and the default is six, so on Reddit they will usually surface a thread long before our next check runs.
Filters and an archive you can search
Their filters, AI filtering from Standard up, and archive search (7 days on Entry, 30 on Standard, full history on PRO) let you shape and look back over results. We match a whole word and keep mentions for 90 days, with no archive search and no relevance filter.
How do Syften and TrueScrape compare, side by side?
4 of 9 rows go to Syften.
| Axis | TrueScrape | Syften | Better |
|---|---|---|---|
| Breadth of sources | Seven: Reddit, Hacker News, Bluesky, YouTube, Threads, plus Instagram and TikTok hashtags. | Reddit, HN, GitHub, Product Hunt, Stack Exchange, forums, Slack communities, newsletters, podcasts, Bluesky, Mastodon, the web; YouTube and X as add-ons. | Syften |
| X (Twitter) | Not monitored. | +$40 a month on Standard or PRO. | Syften |
| TikTok, Instagram and Threads | All three. Instagram and TikTok are read through the term’s hashtag, since neither has a logged-out search. | Not among the sources their pricing page lists. | Us |
| Speed | Every 6 hours by default, every hour at the fastest. | At most about a minute on Reddit and 15 minutes on X; other sources not stated. | Syften |
| Price | No plan. 1 credit per platform per check: one term on all seven every 6 hours is about 840 credits a month, around $1.05 at $1.25 per 1,000. | Entry $29.95, Standard $49.95, PRO $119.95 a month; 14-day trial, no card. | Depends |
| Webhooks and MCP | Signed webhooks and MCP tools on every account. | PRO only ($119.95 a month). Slack from Standard. | Us |
| API | REST routes to create monitors and read the feed, on the same API key as every other endpoint. | API on every plan; archive search through the API on PRO. | Depends |
| Filtering and caps | Whole-word match only. No cap on results per check beyond what the platform returns. | Filters capped at 3, 20 or 100 per plan, results capped per day; AI filtering from Standard. | Depends |
| History | Mentions kept for 90 days. No archive search. | Archive search over 7 days, 30 days or full history, by plan. | Syften |
Choose Syften if
- Your audience talks in forums, GitHub, Stack Exchange, Slack communities, newsletters or podcasts.
- You need X, and paying $40 a month on top for it is fine.
- Minutes matter on Reddit, and an hourly check is too slow.
- You want filters, AI filtering and an archive to search back through.
Choose TrueScrape if
- Your brand shows up on TikTok, Instagram or Threads, which are not among the sources Syften lists.
- You want webhooks without moving to a $119.95 plan: every account gets signed webhooks carrying new posts only.
- You want to look first: the free checker at /tools/brand-mentions shows mentions with no account, and "Watch this term" turns it into a monitor with an unread feed.
- You are wiring this into a product or an agent: one POST /v1/monitors, the same API key and credits as every other endpoint, and MCP tools create_monitor and get_monitor_mentions.
- You would rather pay per check than hold a monthly plan.
Questions people actually ask
- How much does Syften cost?
- Entry is $29.95 a month (3 community filters, 100 community results a day), Standard $49.95 (20 filters, Slack, AI filtering) and PRO $119.95 (100 filters, webhooks, MCP, full archive). X adds $40 a month and YouTube $20 on Standard and PRO. Each plan has a 14-day trial with no card. Read from syften.com/pricing on 2026-10-31.
- Does Syften have webhooks?
- Yes, on PRO only, at $119.95 a month; Standard has Slack but no webhooks, and Entry has neither. Our monitors send signed webhooks on any account, carrying only posts not seen before, so a check that finds nothing new sends nothing.
- Does Syften monitor TikTok or Instagram?
- Neither appears in the list of sources on their pricing page, nor does Threads. Our monitors read the term’s Instagram and TikTok hashtags and search Threads. A hashtag read is the posts the platform shows for that tag, not every post using it, so it is narrower than a full search.
- What is the honest case against us here?
- Syften sees far more of the web than we do, including X, forums, GitHub and podcasts, and it is much faster on Reddit. It filters better and lets you search history. We are the better fit only when TikTok, Instagram or Threads matter, or when you need webhooks without paying for PRO.
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: Syften pricing · 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.