figures verified 2026-09-10

Syften vs F5Bot

F5Bot is free and has delivered over 430,000 alerts a day for nine years across Reddit, Hacker News, and Lobste.rs. Syften covers 15 or more sources, has API access from $49.95 a month, and MCP on its PRO plan. Keep F5Bot if free email alerts on three sources are enough. Move to Syften if you need more sources, Slack delivery, AI filtering, or programmatic access without paying $214.99 a month.

Feature	Syftenas of 2026-09-10	F5Botas of 2026-09-10	discatchthe plan
Built for agents first(partial: an MCP server exists but the product is dashboard-first)	partial	no	yes
MCP server	PRO only	no	planned
REST API and webhooks	PRO only	$214.99/mo	yes
Push that wakes an agent(calls your agent when a catch fires, instead of waiting to be polled)	no	no	yes
Waterfall coverage(several providers per source, cheapest first, merged)	no	no	yes
Pay per unit	no	no	yes
Query-time price quote	no	no	yes
Discourse forums	yes	no	yes
Relevance judged by your model(raw candidates plus a prescore by default)	no	no	yes
Never posts for you	yes	yes	yes
Open playbooks(copyable scripts that plug into the API, published under MIT)	no	no	yes
Entry price	$29.95/mo	free	free, then units
Entry price, annual	none (no annual plans)	$109/yr (Silver)	free, then units
Entry price, monthly	$29.95/mo	$0 (free) or $9.99/mo	free, then units
API access	from $49.95/mo (Standard)	$214.99/mo (Platinum only)	included
MCP	PRO only ($119.95, 8 tools, API key)	no	planned
Sources	15+	3 (Reddit, HN, Lobste.rs)	6 in phase 1b, more planned
Operating since	2019	2017	pre-launch
Free-tier alert speed	n/a (no free tier)	within 2 hours	1h or slower (planned)

Price

F5Bot is free for personal use with 5 keywords, 10 alerts per keyword per day, 20 total daily alerts, and delivery within two hours. Emails include small text ads. Silver costs $9.99 a month or $109 a year and removes ads, adds keyword filtering, and delivers within five minutes. Gold is $49.99 or $549 and adds AI filtering with $10 a month of token usage included, mass upload, and RSS/JSON feeds. Platinum is $214.99 or $2,364 and adds API and webhook access. Diamond starts at $500 for custom limits.

Syften starts at $29.95 a month with no annual option. Entry includes 3 community filters, 100 results a day, 7-day archive, and email delivery. Standard is $49.95 and adds 20 filters, Slack, AI filtering, API, and a 1-month archive. PRO is $119.95 with 100 filters, 500 results a day, webhooks, MCP, and unlimited archive.

For email alerts only, F5Bot’s free tier costs nothing and Syften’s Entry costs $29.95 a month. For API access, F5Bot charges $214.99 at the Platinum tier and Syften charges $49.95 at Standard. For MCP, F5Bot has none and Syften charges $119.95 at PRO.

Sources

F5Bot monitors three sources: Reddit, Hacker News, and Lobste.rs. It checks for new content every few minutes on paid plans and within two hours on the free tier.

Syften monitors Reddit, Hacker News, Bluesky, Mastodon, GitHub, Indie Hackers, Slack communities, Discourse forums, Stack Overflow and Exchange, Lobste.rs, DEV, Product Hunt, podcasts, newsletters, and the public web. It does not monitor LinkedIn or Facebook. X and YouTube are paid add-ons.

Both cover Reddit, Hacker News, and Lobste.rs. Syften adds 12 or more platforms beyond those three. F5Bot has no per-source pages; its /what page is a single paragraph listing the three sites. Syften has dedicated pages for /reddit, /hackernews, /bluesky, /mastodon, /github, /indie-hackers, /twitter-mentions, /youtube, /podcast, /slack-monitoring, /slack, and /forums.

F5Bot checks for new content every few minutes on paid tiers and within two hours on free. Syften’s documentation lists the same sources as monitoring continuously; result delivery speed depends on the plan tier and filter configuration.

Agent surface

F5Bot has no agent surface. No llms.txt, no MCP server, no OpenAPI spec, no machine-readable pricing. API and webhooks are available only on the Platinum tier at $214.99 a month. The API has four endpoints: get alerts, create, update, and delete. Webhooks retry at increasing intervals and auto-disable after 50 failures in 12 hours.

Syften ships an llms.txt (13 KB) and an MCP server with 8 tools on the PRO plan at $119.95. The MCP uses API-key auth and Streamable HTTP. It is not listed on any MCP registry. Syften states that its MCP does not push new mentions. The API is documented on a single page with no OpenAPI file.

Neither is well-suited for an agent workflow today. F5Bot’s API costs $214.99 a month, more than most full social listening products. Syften’s MCP is gated to the PRO plan at $119.95 a month, uses API-key auth instead of OAuth, and pulls only when an agent calls it. Neither has an OpenAPI spec or a .well-known/mcp.json for automated discovery.

	Syften	F5Bot
API tier	Standard ($49.95)	Platinum ($214.99)
MCP	PRO ($119.95, 8 tools)	none
Auth	API key (Bearer)	API key (Bearer)
OpenAPI spec	no	no
llms.txt	yes	no
MCP registry	not listed	not listed
Webhooks	PRO only	Platinum only

Agent surfaces as of 2026-09-10.

Freshness and trust

F5Bot has been running since 2017 and delivers over 430,000 alerts daily. It lists logos from Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, and 17 other companies, inferred from signup email domains rather than named partnerships. It has no testimonials, no case studies, no blog, and no dated content anywhere on the site. Its 28-question FAQ and 10 undated guides are the deepest content.

Syften has operated since 2019 and shows a trust strip: "Operating since 2019, 177 commits in last 30 days, last release 13 hours ago." It has 11 named testimonials including the CEOs of PostHog and RevenueCat. Its changelog has 11 dated entries through June 2026. Its blog published a burst in May 2026 and has been mostly quiet since.

Both are solo-founder products. F5Bot has a longer track record and a larger daily alert volume. Syften has more public social proof and a visible changelog.

F5Bot is the only product in the social listening category that Hacker News mentions unprompted. It has been mentioned 23 times since 2025 versus 1 for Octolens and zero for the others. This organic credibility is its strongest trust signal, stronger than any badge.

Who should pick which

Keep F5Bot if you need free keyword alerts on Reddit, Hacker News, and Lobste.rs by email and do not need API access, Slack delivery, or sources beyond those three.

Move to Syften if you need more than three sources, want AI filtering, need Slack or webhook delivery, or want API or MCP access at less than the $214.99 that F5Bot charges for its Platinum tier.

If you need both free Reddit and HN alerts and wider coverage, use both. F5Bot’s free tier and Syften’s Entry plan are not mutually exclusive.

The third option

discatch includes free Hacker News alerts at one-hour intervals with no credit card, similar to F5Bot’s free tier but for one source. API and MCP are planned on every tier including free. Standing catches push to a webhook, Claude Code command, or Doozy todo when a mention appears.

Questions

Is F5Bot really free?

Yes. The free tier includes 5 keywords, 20 alerts a day, delivery within 2 hours, and email with small text ads. It has been free since 2017.

Can I use F5Bot’s API for free?

No. API and webhook access require the Platinum tier at $214.99 a month or $2,364 a year. There is no API access on any lower tier.

Does Syften cover all three of F5Bot’s sources?

Yes. Syften monitors Reddit, Hacker News, and Lobste.rs, the same three sources F5Bot covers, plus 12 or more additional platforms.

Why does Syften’s F5Bot page list wrong tier names?

Syften’s alternative page references "paid Power, Ultra, and Enterprise tiers." F5Bot’s actual tiers are Silver, Gold, Platinum, and Diamond. The Syften page has no verified-on date and the tier names are incorrect as of 2026-09-10.

Does F5Bot have an MCP server?

No. F5Bot has no MCP server, no llms.txt, and no OpenAPI spec. It is not listed on any MCP registry.

How fast are F5Bot’s free alerts?

Within two hours. Silver ($9.99) delivers within five minutes. Gold ($49.99) and above offer instant or scheduled delivery.

Who ranks for "syften vs f5bot" today?

Syften’s F5Bot alternative page ranks first. The remaining results are small rivals (LeadsRover, LeedLime, Prowlo, Devta) writing about the pair to insert themselves as the third option. F5Bot has no marketing site to defend itself.

What does discatch change?

discatch offers free Hacker News alerts like F5Bot. API and MCP are planned on every tier. Catches push to an agent when they fire. Prices are placeholders until launch.

Try it yourself

The third option, priced for your own terms. A quote is free and needs no key.

curl

curl -X POST https://api.discatch.com/v1/quote -d '{ "query": "\"your product\"", "sources": ["hackernews", "discourse", "web"], "since": "7d" }'

MCP · coming in phase 3

{
  "tool": "quote",
  "arguments": {
    "query": "\"your product\"",
    "sources": [
      "hackernews",
      "discourse",
      "web"
    ],
    "since": "7d"
  }
}

Last reviewed 2026-09-10 by Parsa Khazaeepoul, founder, dcouple. Syften and F5Bot facts read on 2026-09-10. Research: docs/seo/competitor-map.md.