Side by side
| IdeaFast | F5Bot | |
|---|---|---|
| Job | Research: which problems recur in a community | Alerts: tell me when a keyword appears |
| Price | One-time scan packs, first scan free | Free plan (5 keywords, personal use). Paid $9.99 to $214.99 a month, enterprise from $500 |
| Sources | Reddit only | Reddit, Hacker News and Lobsters |
| Output | Problems scored by frequency and severity, with linked threads | Email when a keyword is mentioned |
IdeaFast is best for
- You do not yet know which keywords or problems matter, and need to find out
- You want problems ranked by how often and how badly they recur, with evidence attached
- You are choosing between several ideas and want to compare the strength of each
IdeaFast is not ideal for
- You want keyword alerts. F5Bot does exactly that, with a free plan to start, and IdeaFast has no alerting at all
- You need Hacker News or Lobsters coverage
Should you use F5Bot instead of IdeaFast?
If what you want is to be emailed when someone mentions your keyword, yes. Its free plan covers five keywords, and paid plans add more keywords and faster alerts when you outgrow it. There is no version of this comparison where IdeaFast is the better keyword alerter, because it does not do alerts.
The two solve adjacent halves of the same problem. F5Bot assumes you already know the keyword. IdeaFast is for the stage before that, when the useful question is which problem is worth building for at all.
What IdeaFast does instead
It reads a few hundred recent posts from a community, clusters the ones describing the same underlying problem, and scores each cluster for how often and how severely it comes up. Every problem links back to the exact thread behind it.
The output is a ranked list of problems with evidence, not a feed. That is more useful for deciding, and less useful for reacting.
A reasonable workflow using both
Run a scan to find the recurring problems and note the exact words people use. Feed those words to F5Bot as keywords. You then get the up-front research and the ongoing alerts, and the alerts are watching terms that came from real complaints rather than terms you guessed.
Frequently asked questions
Is F5Bot free?
Partly. F5Bot has a free plan marked for personal use only: 5 keywords, up to 20 alerts a day, delivered within 2 hours, with 7 days of match history. Paid plans, read on f5bot.com on 21 September 2026: Silver $9.99 a month (20 keywords, alerts within 5 minutes), Gold $49.99 a month (200 keywords, AI filtering, RSS and JSON feeds, Slack and Discord), Platinum $214.99 a month (300 keywords), and an enterprise Diamond plan from $500 a month. Paying yearly gives one month free. Many reviews still describe F5Bot as free-only with no paid tier, which is out of date.
Is IdeaFast free like F5Bot?
F5Bot has a free plan for keyword alerts, limited to 5 keywords and 20 alerts a day. IdeaFast gives you a free first scan and publishes a lot of already-scanned research free on the site, but paid packs are one-time purchases. They are not really priced against each other because they do different jobs.
Does IdeaFast do keyword alerts?
No. There is no alerting, no email notification and no live monitoring. F5Bot does that, free for up to 5 keywords.
What does IdeaFast give me that F5Bot does not?
A ranked view. F5Bot tells you a keyword was mentioned. IdeaFast reads a few hundred posts, groups the ones about the same problem, scores how often and how badly each recurs, and links the threads.
Can I use both?
That is the sensible setup. Use IdeaFast to find which problems and phrases matter, then set F5Bot to alert on those exact phrases.
See it on your own subreddits
Check the problem behind your own idea: scan the communities where your customers talk. Your first scan is free with no card, then $19 for 40 scans or $49 for 100, paid once.
Start your free scan