Which tools watch Reddit, LinkedIn, X and Hacker News for keywords?
Several do, and they differ on two things: whether LinkedIn is covered, and what happens after a match. Prices and limits below come from each vendor's own page, checked 24 October 2026.
| Tool | Where it looks | Entry price for business use | What happens after a match |
|---|---|---|---|
| F5Bot | Reddit, Hacker News, Lobsters | Gold, $49.99 a month (200 keywords). The free plan is for personal use only. | Email, Slack, Discord or feed alert. Gold adds 2 AI filters. |
| Syften | Reddit, Hacker News, Indie Hackers, forums, GitHub, Stack Exchange and more. X is a $40-a-month add-on on Standard and PRO. No LinkedIn. | Entry, $29.95 a month (3 community filters, 100 results a day) | Alerts by email, Slack, RSS, API or webhook, depending on plan (Slack from Standard, webhooks on PRO). AI filtering starts on Standard, $49.95. |
| Octolens | Reddit, X, LinkedIn, Hacker News, YouTube, GitHub, Bluesky and more | Pro, $159 a month billed annually (10 keywords, 15,000 mentions) | AI relevance score (high, medium or low) for each post, plus sentiment and category tags such as buy-intent |
| hnrss.org | Hacker News only | No price listed | RSS, Atom or JSON feed of new posts or comments matching a search term |
| X Pro | X only | Not stated on the help page | A Search column that shows results for a search term beside your other columns |
| LinkedIn search | LinkedIn only | Built in | Manual: search the Posts tab and re-run recent searches |
Three details from those pages change the choice. F5Bot's free plan allows 5 keywords and delays alerts by up to 2 hours, and its $12.99 Silver plan is for personal, non-commercial use, so a business looking for leads lands on Gold. Syften's FAQ answers the LinkedIn question with a plain no. On LinkedIn itself, the Boolean search help page lets you combine quoted phrases with AND, OR and NOT in capitals, and the main search help page describes a Posts tab and a list of recent searches you can re-run. Neither page describes alerts for post searches.
LinkedIn coverage has long been the gap. In a September 2021 Indie Hackers thread asking for a Reddit, LinkedIn, X and Quora monitor, the person replying for Syften said nobody did LinkedIn at the time. Octolens now lists LinkedIn on every plan.
What does a keyword alert actually give you?
A keyword alert gives you a link to a post that contains your words. It can't tell you whether the author is a buyer, a competitor, a student or a bot. F5Bot's FAQ says the service is designed for fairly uncommon keywords, and a keyword that goes over its daily cap is disabled until you turn it back on. On the free plan that cap is 10 alerts per keyword and 20 alerts a day in total.
Founders have described the same problem for six years:
- 2020. In an Indie Hackers thread about monitoring Reddit, Hacker News and IH, the person who asked tried Syften and wrote that "it sends me alot of results - tough to get thru". Another reply in the same thread described a manual routine: bookmarked searches sorted by recent, opened every morning and evening, about 15 minutes each time.
- 2026. In a September 2026 r/SaaS thread on social listening, one founder said their feed returned mostly low-relevance keyword matches and guessed the keywords needed more work. A reply signed by the founder of Octolens suggested tuning each keyword and filling in the company profile its AI relevance uses. Another commenter said short keywords bring far more posts, most of them noise, and that the classification afterwards is the part that matters.
The pattern across both threads: finding mentions is solved. Sorting them is where the hours go.
Do AI filters fix the noise?
AI filters cut the noise. What they judge is the post. F5Bot's AI filtering documentation explains the setup: you describe what you want in plain language, a keyword match is forwarded to the AI filter, and you only get a notification if the AI confirms the post meets your description. Gold includes 2 AI filters and the first $10 of token usage each month; usage beyond that is billed on top of the plan.
Syften's guide to buying-intent alerts shows the same idea as an accept rule that returns true when the author is evaluating or asking for a B2B software tool, and false otherwise. Octolens says its AI gives each post a high, medium or low relevance score and tags it with sentiment and categories such as buy-intent.
A yes or no on the post answers one question: is this about my problem? A seller still has three more:
- Could this person buy? Their role, company size and company type.
- How urgent is it? A request for a tool today, or a complaint from last spring.
- Who goes first? Ten accepted matches still need an order.
Syften is open about where its job ends. Its FAQ says that when you search past conversations, "you or your AI agent must interpret the results". Its buying-intent page presents the person's own words, rather than a score attached to an account, as the point of the product. That suits a founder who reads every match. It doesn't suit someone with 80 matches and one free hour.
What does intent scoring add?
Intent scoring judges the person behind the post and ranks them, with a reason you can check. A useful score looks at four things:
- Fit: does the author match the roles, industries and company sizes you sell to?
- Intent: are they asking for a tool, comparing options or naming a competitor they want to leave, or just venting?
- Recency: hours old, days old or months old?
- Likelihood to reply: are they active and reachable on the channel you'd use?
Here is how three posts that all match the keyword "invoice reminders" come out. The posts are invented for illustration.
| Post (illustrative) | Score | One-line reason |
|---|---|---|
| Operations lead at a 40-person agency, 3 hours ago: asks for an alternative to their invoicing tool after a price rise | Hot | Fits the buyer profile, asking for an alternative, posted today |
| Head of finance at a 200-person software company, 3 weeks ago: compares two tools in a comment | Warm | Strong fit and comparing tools, but three weeks old |
| Freelance designer, 2 days ago: says chasing late invoices is miserable | Cold | Venting only, and freelancers are outside the buyer profile |
All three pass a keyword alert, and an AI filter might accept all three. Only the score tells you to answer the first one today. Our guide to hot, warm and cold leads has more signal examples for each bucket.
How much time does triaging alerts take?
Plan on about 30 minutes a day for every 60 matches. That is our arithmetic, assuming 30 seconds to open a match, read it and check the author's profile.
| Matches a day | Minutes a day at 30 seconds each | Hours in a 5-day week | Open to switching at one founder's 3 to 5 in 20 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 20 | 10 | 0.8 | 3 to 5 |
| 60 | 30 | 2.5 | 9 to 15 |
| 100 | 50 | 4.2 | 15 to 25 |
| 200 | 100 | 8.3 | 30 to 50 |
The last column uses a ratio from one founder's October 2026 Indie Hackers post about finding the right people: of about 20 recent complaint threads, the author judged only 3 to 5 open to switching, and called it their own judgement on a small sample. The 100 and 200 rows match Syften's daily caps for community results on its Entry and Standard plans.
Replying costs more than reading. At 5 minutes for a good reply, 15 replies is another 75 minutes. With one hour a day you want the best 10 people at the top of the list, and putting them there is the job a score does.
Which setup fits a small team?
Pick by where your buyers talk and whether you want alerts or a ranked list of people. Monthly costs are from the vendor pages, checked 24 October 2026; the add-on and annual totals are our arithmetic.
| Your situation | Start with | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Buyers talk on Hacker News; you want to see every mention | An hnrss.org search feed in your RSS reader | No price listed |
| Reddit and Hacker News, monitored for your business | F5Bot Gold | $49.99 a month |
| Reddit, forums and X, with AI filtering | Syften Standard plus the X add-on | $49.95 + $40 = $89.95 a month |
| LinkedIn and X mentions in one feed, scored per mention | Octolens Pro | $159 a month billed annually, $1,908 a year |
| People on LinkedIn and X found, scored and contacted | An AI SDR that scores people | Plan prices in the app |
Siela's AI SDR covers the last row. It tracks the keywords and competitors you name on LinkedIn and X, so people who post about or engage with them become leads. Each lead is scored hot, warm or cold with a one-line reason covering fit, intent, recency and likelihood to reply, and with Hot leads selected it only contacts leads scored hot. Choose Find leads only and it saves leads to the CRM and sends nothing. It can also find people on X by what their bio says.
How to set up alerts that catch buyers
Set up three narrow filters, triage once or twice a day, and reply while threads are fresh. Syften's buying-intent guide makes the same point about filters: one giant intent query gets noisy and can't be routed.
Write three separate filters
One for recommendation requests ("can anyone recommend" plus your category), one for alternatives ("alternative to" plus each competitor), one for the problem in your buyer's own words.
Exclude what you can predict
F5Bot's FAQ shows flags to limit an alert to chosen subreddits or skip others. Exclude job posts, giveaways and your own team's names.
Add AI filtering only where keywords fail
Use it on broad terms. Keep exact competitor names as plain keyword alerts so nothing is filtered out.
Triage with three questions
Could this person buy? Are they asking or venting? How old is the post? Write a one-line reason next to each one you keep.
Reply while it is fresh
In the r/SaaS thread above, one commenter said they only reply to threads under two hours old with zero to three comments, because late replies get buried.
Log every reply
Date, link, reason and outcome in a sheet or CRM, so you never pitch the same person twice.
For Reddit's own rules on self-promotion, read our guide to finding people on Reddit who ask for a tool like yours. For replies on LinkedIn, our LinkedIn comment templates give you openings that add something before they pitch.
Frequently asked questions
Is F5Bot free for business use?
No. F5Bot's tiers page says the free plan is for personal use only, and the $12.99 Silver plan is for personal, non-commercial use. For monitoring on behalf of a business, a client or something you sell, F5Bot points you to Gold at $49.99 a month, which adds 200 keywords, instant alerts, feeds, Slack and Discord, and AI filtering (checked 24 October 2026).
Does Syften monitor LinkedIn?
No. Syften's FAQ answers that question with a plain no, checked 24 October 2026. It covers Reddit, Hacker News, Indie Hackers, forums, GitHub, Stack Exchange, Bluesky, Mastodon and the public web, and offers X monitoring as a $40-a-month add-on on its Standard and PRO plans.
Which social listening tool covers LinkedIn posts?
Octolens lists LinkedIn on every plan, alongside Reddit, X, Hacker News, YouTube and GitHub. Its Pro plan costs $159 a month billed annually for 10 keywords and 15,000 mentions, checked 24 October 2026. LinkedIn's own search lets you find posts with Boolean operators, but its search help pages describe no alerts for post searches.
What is the difference between social listening and intent scoring?
Social listening finds posts that contain your keywords and, with an AI filter, drops the ones that don't match your description. Intent scoring judges the person who wrote the post: whether they fit your buyer profile, how strong and how recent their signal is, and how likely they are to reply. The output is a ranked list with a reason for each person.
How many keyword matches can one person triage a day?
At about 30 seconds per match, 60 matches take 30 minutes a day, or 2.5 hours over a five-day week, by our arithmetic. Replies take longer: five minutes each for 15 replies adds 75 minutes. Past roughly 100 matches a day, you need a score or a stricter filter to decide who gets your time.
Sources
- F5Bot: Account tiers (checked 24 Oct 2026)
- F5Bot: AI Filtering documentation (checked 24 Oct 2026)
- F5Bot: Frequently asked questions (checked 24 Oct 2026)
- Syften: pricing and FAQ (checked 24 Oct 2026)
- Syften: Buying intent alerts for B2B SaaS (checked 24 Oct 2026)
- Octolens: Pricing (checked 24 Oct 2026)
- hnrss.org: Hacker News RSS (checked 24 Oct 2026)
- X Help Center: How to use X Pro (checked 24 Oct 2026)
- LinkedIn Help: Use Boolean search on LinkedIn (checked 24 Oct 2026)
- LinkedIn Help: Search on LinkedIn (checked 24 Oct 2026)
- Indie Hackers: Ask IH: need to monitor Reddit, Hacker News, IH for certain keywords (posted 1 Sep 2020)
- Indie Hackers: Anyone have a reddit, linkedin, twitter, quora keyword monitor tool? (posted 28 Sep 2021)
- Indie Hackers: I don't need more traffic. I need to find the right people. (posted 20 Oct 2026)
- r/SaaS: Social listening helped solved my marketing for an unexpected reason (posted 25 Sep 2026)
- Siela: AI SDR (checked 24 Oct 2026)