F5Bot alternative with intent scoring, not email
F5Bot is free and emails you every keyword hit. This page covers why people outgrow it, what to keep, and what an alternative that scores intent looks like.
By Max Gillespie, founder of Oetzi
| Oetzi | F5Bot | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | $49/mo | Free |
| What that includes | 100 credits included, 10 free to try with no card, 50 bonus credits with the first payment | Free keyword email alerts for Reddit, Hacker News, and Lobsters |
| Platforms listened on | X, Reddit, LinkedIn, Threads, Bluesky, Hacker News, Substack Notes | Reddit, Hacker News, Lobsters |
| AI engines tracked | ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Grok, Google AI | Not published |
| Drafts in your voice | Replies, posts, and short video drafted in your voice from the conversation itself | Not published |
| Who approves before it posts | You tap approve on every reply, post, and video. Autopilot exists and is off by default. | Not published |
| Your own agent can use it | MCP server, REST API, CLI, and a SKILL.md with scoped keys | Not published |
Competitor facts are what their own pages said on September 16, 2026. “Not published” means we could not find it stated. Oetzi's numbers come from the same constants the pricing page reads. F5Bot pricing
People look for an F5Bot alternative when the free emails stop getting read. F5Bot does exactly what it says: you give it keywords, it watches Reddit, Hacker News, and Lobsters, and it emails you each hit. The alternative most people want keeps that coverage and adds judgment about which hits deserve a reply.
Why people leave F5Bot
Nothing is wrong with F5Bot for what it is. It is free, and it is the most searched-for alternative keyword in the category, which tells you how many people started there. The reasons to leave are structural rather than bugs.
- Every hit arrives as an email. There is no inbox, no Slack, no way to sort by anything but time.
- Keywords match text, not people. "Project management tool" fires for a student and a buyer in the same way. We wrote about that failure in why keyword alerts fail you.
- Nothing is scored. You decide what matters by reading all of it, and most people stop reading within a month.
- There is no next step. Once you find a thread worth answering, you write the reply from scratch.
The vendor does not publish a roadmap for any of this, so treat the tool as finished. That is fine. The question is whether finished is enough for you.
What to carry over from F5Bot
Your keyword list is worth keeping. The terms that produced real conversations tell you how buyers phrase the problem, and that phrasing is the seed of a better signal. So is the habit of checking daily, which is the part most people lose when they move to a tool they can mute.
Take your F5Bot keywords and write one sentence that describes the conversation behind them. "Someone asking what to use instead of a spreadsheet for client invoices" is a signal. "invoice tool" is a keyword. The sentence is what a scoring system can work with.
What to look for in an F5Bot alternative
- A score on every match, with the reason written out, so you can skip low scores without reading them
- A tag for who is talking: buyer, current customer, feature request, competitor user
- Coverage of Reddit and Hacker News at minimum, since those are the two places F5Bot users already rely on
- Delivery somewhere you already look, such as Slack or a text, rather than a new email pile
- A reply draft in your own voice, so a good match turns into a comment inside the hour
- No charge when a sweep finds nothing, so quiet weeks do not cost you
What Oetzi does instead
Oetzi is a social listening tool that reads before it alerts. You describe the conversation in one sentence. It compiles that into native searches on X, Reddit, LinkedIn, Threads, Bluesky, Hacker News, and Substack Notes, backfills the last seven days, and sweeps on the cadence you choose. Every match carries an intent score from 0 to 100, the reason, and a tag for who is talking. Matches land in an inbox, in Slack when connected, and by text. For any conversation it drafts two reply variants in your voice, and nothing posts without your approval.
It is not free the way F5Bot is. Reading is free, and a sweep of one signal across every platform is 2 credits, refunded when nothing qualifies. The pricing page has the rest. Oetzi does not cover Lobsters.
Who should stay with F5Bot
Stay if your keywords are your product name and a few misspellings, and you only want to know when someone mentions you. Stay if Lobsters matters to you. Stay if you enjoy reading the whole feed and your volume is a few emails a day. F5Bot is free at f5bot.com, and for brand mentions on Reddit and Hacker News it is hard to argue with free.
Questions
Is F5Bot still free?
Yes. F5Bot is free and covers Reddit, Hacker News, and Lobsters with keyword alerts delivered by email. The vendor does not publish a paid tier or a roadmap. It has no scoring, no drafting, and no delivery channel besides email, which is why people look for alternatives once their keyword volume grows past what they will read.
Does Oetzi replace F5Bot for Reddit and Hacker News?
For Reddit and Hacker News, yes. Oetzi searches both, scores each match for buying intent, tags who is talking, and drafts replies you approve. It also covers X, LinkedIn, Threads, Bluesky, and Substack Notes. It does not cover Lobsters, so keep F5Bot running for that one if it matters to you.
Can I keep my F5Bot keywords when I switch?
Keep them, but do not paste them in as keywords. Write one sentence per thing you sell that describes the conversation you want to catch, using the phrasing your F5Bot hits taught you. Oetzi compiles that sentence into native searches per platform plus a scoring rubric, so the terms still do work without matching every stray mention.
Oetzi is an AI marketer for founders who need users. It finds the threads where people ask for a product like yours on seven platforms, checks whether the AI engines recommend you, and drafts replies, posts, and short video in your voice. You approve everything. 100 credits included, 10 free to try with no card, 50 bonus credits with the first payment.
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