Short answer: F5Bot emails you when your keywords show up on Reddit, Hacker News or Lobsters, and its basic plan is free. Launchpat starts from your website, finds conversations where people ask for something like your product, rates which are worth a reply and drafts the reply for you to approve. Pick F5Bot for free, fast alerts on words you already know. Pick Launchpat if you want the threads found, filtered and a first reply written.
Side by side
| Launchpat | F5Bot | |
|---|---|---|
| Starts from | Your website or Steam page | Keywords you choose |
| Where it looks | Reddit and Bluesky; on paid plans also X, Hacker News and Steam | Reddit, Hacker News and Lobsters |
| Filtering | Rates each conversation and says why: audience, intent, brand risk, freshness | Subreddit, excluded and co-occurring words; AI filtering on Gold |
| Replies | Drafts the reply in your voice; nothing goes out until you approve it | Alerts only; you write the reply |
| Delivery | In the app, with a daily brief on paid plans | Email (instant, batched or a digest); Slack, Discord, RSS, JSON and an API on Gold |
| Price a month | Free scan; $19 (Monitor) or $49 (Pro) a month | Free; Silver $12.99 (non-commercial); Gold $49.99 |
Where F5Bot is the better pick
- A free plan with no card, and it has run since 2017.
- Hacker News and Lobsters on every plan, free included. Launchpat watches Hacker News only on paid plans and does not cover Lobsters.
- It checks every few minutes and can push alerts into Slack, Discord, RSS, JSON or your own code on Gold.
Where Launchpat is different
- You don't need the right keywords. Paste your website and it looks for people asking for what you built.
- Every conversation comes with a rating and the reasons, and the ones to skip are marked.
- It drafts the reply in your voice. You edit it and decide what goes out.