Gorilla vs F5Bot.
F5Bot is the free baseline. It emails you when your keywords show up on Reddit, Hacker News, or Lobsters. Gorilla is a paid one-shot search across Reddit, X, YouTube, TikTok and LinkedIn (Pro) with AI-ranked results. Different jobs.
The 30-second answer
If you know your keywords and want a free email feed, use F5Bot. If you don't know the right keywords yet, or you want results from X, YouTube, and TikTok too, run Gorilla.
Side by side
| Gorilla | F5Bot | |
|---|---|---|
| Platforms | Reddit, X, YouTube, TikTok | Reddit, Hacker News, Lobsters |
| Pricing | first run free | Free |
| Output | Ranked leads with intent score | Raw email matches |
| Query expansion | 20+ phrasings auto-generated | Exact keyword match only |
| Lead scoring | ✓ AI scored | ✗ No scoring |
| One-shot search | ✓ Yes | ✗ No (alerts only) |
| CSV / JSON export | ✓ Yes | ✗ No |
| MCP integration | ✓ Yes | ✗ No |
When each tool wins
F5Bot is better when
Budget is zero. You only care about your brand name or a couple of exact-match keywords. You're fine triaging raw posts in email, in your own time.
Gorilla is better when
You don't yet know the right keywords. You want the tool to expand your idea into 20 phrasings and search 5 platforms. You want a ranked, exportable list, not an email feed.
Alerts for Reddit
F5Bot has been running since 2014. It's free. If you want to know when someone posts your brand name or a specific phrase on Reddit, Hacker News, or Lobsters, that's the tool. Don't pay for an alternative.
The catch: you have to know the keywords first. Founders usually don't. You set "saas idea validator" as your alert and miss "tool to test my startup idea." Gorilla writes 20+ phrasings for you before the search runs.
The "you don't know your keywords" problem
Most early-stage founders guess wrong on keywords. They set "AI resume builder" as their alert. The actual searches are "I keep failing ATS screens" and "my CV gets ghosted" and "is my resume even being read." That's where buyers are.
Gorilla starts with your idea as you'd describe it to a friend. It expands to the words real people use. You skip the guessing.
Use both
Run Gorilla once a month to find new pockets of demand. Use F5Bot to keep a free email watch on those keywords between runs. About $1/mo total.