GummySearch alternatives in 2026: 10 tools compared by price and platform

GummySearch was the Reddit research tool a lot of indie makers and marketers used to find out what people complain about and ask for. It closed to new customers in November 2025, and it switches off for good on December 1, 2026. If you still have an account, you have a deadline. If you relied on it, you need something else. This guide covers what happened, then compares 10 tools that people are moving to, with prices I checked on each company's own site on October 20, 2026.

A disclosure before anything else: I build Ownfeed, which is one of the 10 tools below. To keep that from bending the list, the tools are sorted by their cheapest paid monthly plan, and Ownfeed gets the same kind of section as everyone else, including what it does not do.

What happened to GummySearch

GummySearch depended on Reddit's API. On November 6, 2025, its founder announced the shutdown, saying the company "was not able to reach an agreement that aligns with Reddit's Data API Usage policies." The closing page published on November 30, 2025 says it more bluntly: the shutdown is to comply with Reddit's API policies, which forbid commercial applications. Revenue was not the stated reason. Table 1 lists the dates from the company's own pages, and Figure 3 puts them on one line. Figure 2 is the notice on GummySearch's own homepage.

The practical point is simple. Whatever you pick next, export your GummySearch data first. The export is the only thing that survives December 1, and choosing a replacement has no deadline.

GummySearch's final price list was Free, $29, $59 and $199 a month. It did two jobs in one subscription: audience research across many subreddits, and alerts when people used your keywords. The tools below mostly do one of those jobs, so it helps to know which one you actually used before you compare them.

The alternatives at a glance

Table 2 lists the 10 tools, sorted by their cheapest paid monthly plan. Redreach and MediaFast come last because neither shows a monthly price on its site. Figure 4 shows which platforms each one covers. The hero chart at the top, Figure 1, compares the same entry prices against GummySearch's old Starter plan.

Two things stand out in Figure 4. Five of the ten tools are Reddit only, much like GummySearch was, and F5Bot adds only Hacker News and Lobsters. And the tools that cover X, LinkedIn or YouTube as part of the plan are mostly at the expensive end, with Ownfeed the exception at $39.

F5Bot

F5Bot emails you when your keywords show up on Reddit, Hacker News or Lobsters. It has run since 2017 and has a free plan with no card. Silver at $9.99 a month adds 20 keywords, advanced filtering and full post text. Gold at $49.99 adds 200 keywords, RSS and JSON feeds, AI filtering, and Slack and Discord alerts. What it does not do is research: there is no view of what a whole subreddit has been asking about. On the free plan, expect to do the sorting yourself, since every keyword match is sent. Figure 5 shows its homepage.

PainOnSocial

PainOnSocial is the closest to GummySearch's research side. It scans subreddits you pick, groups the complaints into pain points, scores them with AI, and shows the posts behind each one. Starter is $19 a month with a 7-day trial and allows 20 scans a month of up to 2 subreddits each. Professional is $49 a month with 300 scans, up to 5 subreddits per scan, and startup idea reports. It is built for finding problems worth solving, not for alerts on posts you could reply to today. Figure 6 shows its pricing page.

RedShip

RedShip watches Reddit for threads where people ask for what you sell, scores them, and also tracks competitor mentions, Reddit threads that rank on Google, and how AI assistants cite Reddit. You write the replies yourself. The Founder plan is $29 a month for 1 product, 10 keywords and 3 competitors. Company is $49 a month for 3 products, 30 keywords and 10 competitors. Its site lists quarterly and yearly discounts. I could not confirm from the page whether a free trial exists. Figure 7 shows its homepage.

Subreddit Signals

Subreddit Signals is a Reddit lead tool that sorts posts by buyer intent within subreddits you choose. Starter is $29 a month for 1 brand and up to 10 subreddits. Pro is $59 a month for up to 5 brands and 25 subreddits, plus tracking of visits that come from AI assistants. Both plans have a 14-day trial that needs a card. Its pricing page contradicts itself on whether Pro includes unlimited subreddits, so check before you count on it. Figure 8 shows its pricing page.

Syften

Syften monitors a wide set of communities: Reddit, Hacker News, Indie Hackers, Stack Exchange, GitHub, forums, Slack communities, mailing lists, podcasts and the open web. Entry is $29.95 a month with 3 filters and 100 results a day. Standard is $49.95 with 20 filters, AI filtering and Slack. PRO is $119.95 with 100 filters, webhooks and MCP. X costs $40 a month extra and YouTube $20, on Standard and above. Every plan has a 14-day trial with no card. It is the most flexible keyword monitor here, and like most monitors it expects you to write and tune the filters. Figure 9 shows its homepage.

Ownfeed

Ownfeed is the tool I build. You paste your product URL, it reads the product page, and every day it searches public posts on Reddit, X, Bluesky and Hacker News. AI keeps only the posts where your product would help, such as people describing a problem or asking for a tool, and puts them in one feed (Figure 10 and Figure 11). You read the feed, save posts, and reply in your own words. It never posts or replies for you and never connects to your social accounts.

Pricing: a $1 trial for 1 day that becomes $39 a month unless you cancel first, or $89 every 3 months. Each plan covers 1 product. The 3-month option also adds beta sources in small daily amounts, with no guarantees. What it does not do: there is no free plan, no subreddit browser, and no research dashboard of whole communities. If you used GummySearch to study a market over months, the research tools in this list are a better fit.

BuzzAbout

BuzzAbout is an AI research tool across Reddit, X, LinkedIn, YouTube, TikTok and Instagram, sold on credits. Starter is $98 a month for 2,000 credits and 1 listening agent. Pro is $178 for 5,000 credits and 3 seats. Business is $450 for 20,000 credits and unlimited agents. Monthly plans start with a $1 one-day trial. It suits teams doing market research across several networks, and its price reflects that. Figure 12 shows its pricing page.

Octolens

Octolens has the widest platform list here: Reddit, X, LinkedIn, YouTube, TikTok, Bluesky, Hacker News, GitHub, Stack Overflow, DEV and review sites. Pro is $159 a month billed yearly, with 15,000 mentions, 10 keywords and hourly refresh. Scale is $499 a month billed yearly and adds real-time refresh plus podcasts, news and newsletters. The site says monthly billing exists but does not show its price. There is a 7-day trial with no card. It is built for companies tracking their brand everywhere, not for a solo maker on a small budget. Figure 13 shows its pricing page.

Redreach

Redreach finds Reddit posts where people ask for recommendations, tracks brand and competitor mentions, and can send outreach DMs through a Chrome extension. It lists three plans by seat count and a one-time 3-day pass, with a money-back guarantee for the first 48 hours after payment. On October 20, 2026 the site did not show dollar prices in a form I could read, so I have not put a price on it here. Figure 14 shows its homepage.

MediaFast

MediaFast is a Reddit marketing helper. It finds relevant subreddits, checks their rules, drafts posts, and flags threads worth commenting on, while you publish by hand. The only price shown on its site is a one-time lifetime plan of 16,800 yen. Its FAQ mentions a monthly option but the page does not show what it costs. Figure 15 shows its homepage.

Price bands

Figure 16 shows each tool's range from its cheapest paid plan to its most expensive self-serve plan. Most of the field sits where GummySearch did: an entry plan between $19 and $39 a month, and a higher plan around $49 to $59. Then there is a clear jump to the multi-platform tools, which start near $100 and reach $450 to $499.

Free options are thinner. Table 3 lists what you can try before paying a full month. Only F5Bot has a plan that stays free. Everything else is a trial, and three of them, Subreddit Signals, Ownfeed and BuzzAbout, either ask for a card or charge $1 up front.

How to choose

1. Export your GummySearch data first. Nothing on this list can import it, but it is your record of which searches worked.
2. Decide which job you need. Studying what a market complains about points to PainOnSocial, BuzzAbout or Syften. Finding posts you can answer this week points to F5Bot, RedShip, Subreddit Signals, Ownfeed or Redreach.
3. Decide where your customers talk. If they are only on Reddit, the Reddit-only tools are cheaper. If they are on X, Bluesky or LinkedIn too, look at Ownfeed, BuzzAbout, Octolens, or Syften with its add-ons.
4. Start with the free or cheapest option. F5Bot costs nothing and tells you within a week whether your keywords produce anything worth reading.
5. Test against searches you already know. Run a trial on the searches that once led to a real conversation, and compare what comes back to what you remember.
6. Prefer tools where you write the reply. Reddit communities remove promotional comments, and a tool that posts for you puts your account at risk.

If you want to do part of this by hand, the guide to finding customers on Reddit covers searching and replying without a tool, and the comparison of Reddit lead generation tools goes deeper on the lead side.

FAQ

Method and limits

• Prices and plan details come from each company's own website, read on October 20, 2026. Where a page did not show a price, the price is left out rather than taken from a third-party site. Prices change, so check before you buy.
• GummySearch's dates come from its shutdown announcement of November 6, 2025, its closing page of November 30, 2025, and its help center.
• The tools were chosen from earlier market research on Reddit monitoring and lead tools, plus the tools most often named as GummySearch replacements. The list is not exhaustive.
• Platform coverage is what each plan lists. A platform shown only in a FAQ, without a plan that includes it, is not counted.
• I did not run a side-by-side test of result quality. This guide compares prices, platforms and stated features, not how many useful posts each tool finds.
• Conflict of interest: I build and sell Ownfeed, one of the 10 tools. Screenshots are only of Ownfeed's own public pages. No other tool paid for or reviewed this guide, and there are no affiliate links.