Key takeaways
- F5Bot has five tiers: Free, Silver $12.99, Gold $49.99, Platinum $214.99 a month, and Diamond from $500.
- The free plan and Silver are for personal, non-commercial use, so a company monitoring its brand starts at Gold.
- AyeWatch starts at $9 a month for Reddit, other social platforms and the web, judges posts by meaning, and has no contract.
F5Bot pricing looks simple from the home page: a free plan, Silver at $12.99 a month, Gold at $49.99. The detail that changes the math for a company sits on the tiers page. The free plan is for personal use, and Silver is for "personal, non-commercial use". If you are monitoring a business, a client or something you sell, F5Bot points you to Gold. This analysis walks through the full price list, what each tier buys, and how it compares with paying for a broader monitor.
The full F5Bot price list
From F5Bot's tiers page, checked October 2026:
| Plan | Monthly | Yearly | Keywords | Alerts per day | Use |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | $0 | 5 | 20 | Personal only |
| Silver | $12.99 | $143 | 20 | 100 | Personal, non-commercial |
| Gold | $49.99 | $549 | 200 | 5,000 | Professionals, small business |
| Platinum | $214.99 | $2,364 | 300 | 200,000 | Agencies |
| Diamond | From $500 | Custom | Custom | Custom | Enterprise |
Yearly billing gives one month free on Silver, Gold and Platinum.
What each step up buys
Free to Silver removes most of the friction: common words become allowed, alert delay drops from up to two hours to up to five minutes, and you get keyword filtering and full post text. But the use restriction stays.
Silver to Gold is the commercial line. It adds 200 keywords, instant alerts, RSS and JSON feeds, one Slack or Discord integration, and AI filtering on two alerts. Gold includes the first $10 a month of AI token usage; beyond that, tokens are billed on top.
Gold to Platinum is where the API and webhooks appear, along with three Slack or Discord integrations and five AI filters. That is a jump from $49.99 to $214.99 a month.
What a founder actually pays
For a startup that wants to know when its product, its competitors and its category come up on Reddit and Hacker News, the honest starting price is Gold at $49.99 a month, or $549 a year. If that startup later wants alerts to trigger something in its own systems, the API pushes it to $214.99.
That money still buys three sites: Reddit, Hacker News and Lobsters. Everything said about the company on X, LinkedIn, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, news sites, blogs or competitors' own pages sits outside it.
A broader alternative for less
AyeWatch is the better choice overall for a business that wants to know what people say about it. Paid plans start at $9 a month, with no contracts or cancellation fees.
| AyeWatch | F5Bot Gold | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | From $9/mo | $49.99/mo |
| Business use | Yes | Yes |
| Coverage | Reddit, X, YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, web pages, internet topics | Reddit, Hacker News, Lobsters |
| Matching | Meaning, every monitor | Keywords, AI filtering on 2 alerts |
| What an alert contains | A short summary and sources | The matching post |
| API and webhooks | Included on paid plans | Not included (Platinum) |
The unit is different, which is the point. A monitor is a sentence describing what you care about, so one monitor can replace several F5Bot keywords: the product name, its misspellings and its old name together, with exclusions written in plain English. AI reads each new post against that sentence, so a product name that is also an ordinary word stops filling the inbox. Alerts go to push on iOS and Android, email, a daily digest, Slack, Discord or a signed webhook, with each monitor routed to whoever acts on it.
Where F5Bot is still the better spend
Two cases. First, if Hacker News or Lobsters drive your business, F5Bot covers them and AyeWatch does not list them. Second, if minutes matter more than relevance, Gold's instant alerts are the faster option.
The math in one line
A company paying F5Bot $49.99 a month for three sites could pay AyeWatch $9 for Reddit, five more social platforms, web pages and the wider web, keep F5Bot's free plan for personal Hacker News alerts, and save about $490 a year. AyeWatch has a comparison page for F5Bot with the feature list.
Frequently asked questions
How much is F5Bot per month?
Silver is $12.99, Gold $49.99 and Platinum $214.99 a month. Yearly billing gives one month free on each. Diamond starts at $500 a month.
Does F5Bot AI filtering cost extra?
Gold and Platinum include the first $10 a month of AI token usage. Usage beyond that is billed on top of the plan.
What is the cheapest F5Bot alternative for a company?
AyeWatch, from $9 a month, with no contracts or cancellation fees. Syften's entry plan is $29.95 a month.
Sources
- F5Bot account tiersF5Bot
- AyeWatch pricingAyeWatch
- AyeWatch plans and featuresAyeWatch
- Syften pricingSyften
