Google Alerts alternatives: free and paid mention alerts

Google Alerts alternatives side by side

The Google Alerts alternatives to price are Talkwalker Alerts, F5Bot, Syften Entry and Brand24 Individual, as read on October 24, 2026. Talkwalker Alerts is free; F5Bot is free for personal use, with Gold at $49.99 a month, billed monthly; Syften Entry is $29.95 a month; Brand24 Individual is $249 a month, billed monthly.

For news alerts at no cost, Talkwalker Alerts lists News and Blogs among its four result types.

Free swaps: Talkwalker Alerts and Reddit search feeds

Talkwalker Alerts is free, delivers by email, RSS or Slack, and sends to any email address. Its eight setup steps start with a topic typed into its alerts search bar, include a preview before you save, and end with verifying your email address. Talkwalker says queries take Boolean operators. Talkwalker Alerts vs Google Alerts sets the two side by side.

Reddit's help center describes the New sort as the newest posts first, regardless of upvotes and comments, and lists comments as one of five content types you can search. A Reddit search sorted by new also loads as an Atom feed of results, which a feed reader can follow.

Community alerts for Reddit and Hacker News

F5Bot's home page offers a free plan for trying it out and its tiers page marks that plan personal use only, while its terms license unpaid accounts for internal use, whether personal or within your own organization.

F5Bot monitors Reddit, Hacker News and Lobsters, comments included. The Free tier allows 5 keywords, alerts up to 2 hours late and 7 days of match history. Gold allows 200 keywords, instant or scheduled alerts and 90 days of history, at $49.99 a month, billed monthly, or $549 a year.

Syften Entry is $29.95 a month for 3 community filters (a filter is a search query for mentions you track), 100 community results a day and 1 web filter. X monitoring (+$40.00 a month) and YouTube monitoring (+$20.00 a month) are paid add-ons on Standard and PRO. For tools built around Reddit, see the Reddit monitoring tool guide.

Paid tools that add sentiment and reports

Brand24 Individual, at $249 a month, billed monthly, lists Facebook, Instagram, X, news, blogs and Reddit as sources and includes AI Sentiment Analysis, which labels each mention positive, negative or neutral. Daily and weekly reports are on every plan; PDF, PowerPoint and white-labeled reports start at Pro. A Brand24 keyword is any word or phrase you want watched, and Individual allows 3 of them with 2K mentions a month.

Awario Starter is $49 a month, billed monthly ($29 a month, billed annually), with 3 topics and 30,000 new mentions a month. Mentionlytics Essential is $141 a month, billed yearly, with 10 keyword rules and 15k monthly mentions.

When Google Alerts is still enough

Google Alerts is still enough for one business name in news and blogs, read once a day: its form offers a once-a-day rhythm and a Sources menu that includes News and Blogs. Signs that a paid tool may earn its price are a report shared with a boss or client, more sources than the form offers, and several names to watch at once. The free brand monitoring tools list adds the other no-cost routes.

Brand24's trial, 14 days with no card, is the paid step up. It runs on Pro features with up to 10 keywords and 30k mentions, so it shows more than Individual would.

• Talkwalker Alerts for a free second alert, with Slack delivery.
• F5Bot for Reddit and Hacker News: free for personal use, Gold for a business.
• Brand24 for sentiment and reports across sources.