F5Bot setup
Real-time keyword alerts from Reddit, Hacker News and Lobsters.
What it does
F5Bot emails you when your keywords appear in new posts and comments. It matches exact phrases, ignores capitalisation, and offers filters such as whole words only or posts only.
- Main source of Reddit and Hacker News threads
- Each project can have its own free F5Bot account: alerts sent to that project's address are filed under it, others by the exact keyword that matched
Get set up
- On the project's F5Bot tab, use the suggested address (your connected inbox plus +project) and save
- Sign up at f5bot.com with that address
- Add the 5 keywords listed there; the status line turns green when F5Bot's first email arrives
Where it goes
Nothing to paste into Larvabot. Once the steps above are done, it just works.
Staying free
No API calls at all: Larvabot reads the alert emails from your inbox, and alerts for keywords no project owns are ignored.
How the quota guard works →Larva tip
The F5Bot account must use an address that arrives in the inbox connected in Settings → Inbox: Larvabot reads the alerts from there. Each project's F5Bot tab suggests one (your inbox plus +project) and shows whether it's connected.
Fallback order
For Reddit, Larvabot tries these in order and skips any that aren't set up, are out of free quota or are busy.
- 1F5Bot email alerts (via IMAP)
- 2Reddit API (legacy app OAuth)
- 3Reddit via Larvabot's relay
- 4Reddit public JSON
- 5Reddit RSS
- 6Web search (site:reddit.com)
More communities tools
Curious why F5Bot made the cut? F5Bot in the free stack →