Yes. When this page was last checked, F5Bot listed a free forever tier at $0 alongside paid Silver ($9.99/mo, 20 keywords) and Gold ($49.99/mo, 200 keywords) plans. Some comparison blogs claim a specific free keyword count; F5Bot's own page does not name one, so neither will we.

Is Kasspian an F5Bot alternative?

No, and it is the wrong way to think about it. F5Bot tells you when your words appear. Kasspian tells you which rooms to be in and what to say. If you only want alerts, F5Bot is free and excellent.

That is probably the right answer. Use Kasspian to pick the rooms and write the first move, and F5Bot to hear about mentions after you are in them.

Kasspian

Switching

Kasspian vs F5Bot

F5Bot does one job. Kasspian does a different one.

A keyword alerter. It watches Reddit, Hacker News and Lobsters for your words and emails you within minutes, and it has been free for years.

Every figure below was read from F5Bot’s own site on 18 August 2026. Check it before you buy, prices move.

From their own page

What F5Bot is

Pricing: A free forever tier at $0 with keyword alerts, email notifications and basic filtering flags. Silver is $9.99/mo for 20 keywords and Gold is $49.99/mo for 200.
Platforms: Reddit, Hacker News and Lobsters. Three, deliberately.
What you give it: Keywords. Nothing else, which is most of its appeal.
Speed: Alerts “within minutes” of a matching post, in its own words.

Side by side

The actual difference

F5Bot

F5Bot is the cheapest useful thing in this whole category and nobody should be talked out of it. It does one job, it does it fast, and the free tier is not a trial.

Kasspian

Kasspian is not an alerter and will not replace it. It answers the question F5Bot assumes you have already answered: which rooms your buyers are actually in, what to say when you get there, and whether posting will get you removed. Different job, and the two sit together fine.

Be honest

Use F5Bot, not Kasspian, when

You want free keyword alerts on Reddit, Hacker News or Lobsters. Just use F5Bot. Kasspian does not do this and pretending otherwise would waste your time.
Your keywords are already chosen and specific, like your own product name.
You want a tool that emails you and otherwise stays out of the way.

The other way

Use Kasspian when

You have no keywords yet because you do not know which communities to watch.
The alerts you get are in rooms where self-promotion is banned, and you need to know where you can actually act.
You want more than Reddit, Hacker News and Lobsters: the directories, marketplaces and non-Reddit communities your buyers use.

Describe your business and read the answer before you pay anything. Free tier, no card, and the rooms come with whether you are allowed to post in them.

Find my first customers Or see the rooms for your business type→

Questions

Is F5Bot still free?: Yes. When this page was last checked, F5Bot listed a free forever tier at $0 alongside paid Silver ($9.99/mo, 20 keywords) and Gold ($49.99/mo, 200 keywords) plans. Some comparison blogs claim a specific free keyword count; F5Bot's own page does not name one, so neither will we.
Is Kasspian an F5Bot alternative?: No, and it is the wrong way to think about it. F5Bot tells you when your words appear. Kasspian tells you which rooms to be in and what to say. If you only want alerts, F5Bot is free and excellent.
Can I use both?: That is probably the right answer. Use Kasspian to pick the rooms and write the first move, and F5Bot to hear about mentions after you are in them.

Receipts

Where these figures came from

F5Bot homepage and plans

F5Bot is their trademark, not ours. Nothing here is endorsed by them.

Other comparisons

The rest of the set

vs Syften

An AI-filtered keyword monitor.

vs Subreddit Signals

A prioritised Reddit feed.

vs OneUp

An agent platform.

vs PainOnSocial

Pain-point discovery from Reddit.

vs BuzzAbout

AI social intelligence at scale.

vs ReplyGuy

AI that finds conversations mentioning your keywords and auto-posts replies that mention your product naturally, as their homepage puts it.

vs Google Alerts

Google's free monitoring service: enter a query, get email digests when new results matching it appear in Google's index.

vs Brand24

AI-powered social listening and media monitoring: mentions, sentiment, reach and reputation metrics across Facebook, Instagram, X, news, blogs, Reddit and LinkedIn, sold to marketing teams and brands.

vs GummySearch

Audience research for Reddit, from 2021 until it closed.