Is there a free alternative to Google Alerts?

Yes, two worth using. Talkwalker Alerts is free, covers news, blogs, forums, websites and X, and delivers by email, RSS or Slack. F5Bot is free for Reddit, Hacker News and Lobsters keyword alerts. Neither judges relevance, so you still sort the results. Read on talkwalker.com/alerts and f5bot.com on 1 October 2026.

Why does Google Alerts miss so many mentions?

Because it only reports what Google has indexed, on Google's schedule. Social posts, community threads and messages inside Discord servers are indexed late or not at all, so by the time an alert arrives the conversation is often over. Tools that read those platforms directly catch them while a reply still matters.

Does Google Alerts still work in 2026?

Yes. It still lets you choose how often you are alerted, which sources to watch (news, blogs, web, video, books, discussions, finance), the language and region, and whether you get only the best results or all of them. It is a working tripwire, just a slow and noisy one.

Can I get Google Alerts in Slack?

Not natively: Google describes alerts as emails, so people forward them into Slack with email or automation tools. Talkwalker Alerts has a Slack integration, F5Bot posts to Slack and Discord on its Gold plan, and Eko lives in Slack or Discord and drafts the reply there.

Is this list biased since Eko is on it?

Yes, Eko is first on its own site, and saying so beats pretending. The rubric is published above the ranking with two criteria Eko loses, Google Alerts is kept second, two free tools sit right behind it, and every competitor note names what it does better. Facts come from vendor pages read on a stated date.

7 best Google Alerts alternatives in 2026

Google Alerts is free, takes two minutes, and for a brand-new project it is still a reasonable first tripwire. It emails you links when your keyword turns up in what Google indexes.

People outgrow it for the same few reasons: it only knows what Google has indexed, so community threads arrive late or never; it cannot tell your brand from a homonym; and everything lands in an inbox. Here are seven alternatives, with the free ones first where they do the job.

Eko is on this list. Eko is a social listening tool, so yes, we are ranking ourselves: the scoring rubric is published below, and Google Alerts keeps its place on merit.

Prices and facts last checked 2026-10-01

Quick comparison

Google Alerts alternatives compared on 2026-10-01
Tool	Best for	Slack	Discord	Entry price
Eko	Teams who work in chat and want to act on a mention without leaving it	Reads and acts inside it	Reads and acts inside it	$49/month for 10,000 credits
Google Alerts	A first, free tripwire on your own brand name	Not published	Not published	Free, no paid tier published
Talkwalker Alerts	Replacing a Google Alerts habit at no cost, with X and forums included	Alerts in, one way	Not published	Free
F5Bot	Watching a few keywords on Reddit and Hacker News at no cost	Alerts in, one way	Alerts in, one way	Free forever; Silver $9.99/month, Gold $49.99/month
Syften	Founders who want cheap, fast keyword alerts and will filter them themselves	Alerts in, one way	Not published	$29.95/month (Slack from the $49.95 Standard plan)
Awario	Precise boolean monitoring with historical reporting in one place	Alerts in, one way	Not published	€29/month billed annually (€49 billed monthly)
Brand24	Reporting-heavy monitoring where someone presents the numbers upward	Alerts in, one way	Not published	$199/month billed annually ($249 billed monthly)

Prices change without notice. Every row names the vendor page and the date it was read: check before you decide.

What Google Alerts does well

It costs nothing and asks for nothing: a Google login, a keyword, and you are done. No card, no query language, no seat to justify.

More control than people remember: how often (as it happens, daily or weekly), which sources (news, blogs, web, video, books, discussions, finance), language and region, and whether you get only the best results or all of them.

Where teams hit a wall

It sees the web through Google's index. A Reddit thread, a post on X or a message in a Discord server is caught late, if Google indexes it at all, and by then the conversation is usually over.

No judgement. A common word or a brand name shared with another company floods the inbox, and there is no way to tell it which of the two you are.

Email only, as far as Google's own help pages describe it. Nothing arrives in Slack or Discord, and nothing helps you reply.

How we scored these

Where the work actually happens: Almost every tool here can push an alert into Slack. The question is what you do next. If reading the alert sends you to a web app to act, the tool is a notifier and your team still context-switches.
Is Discord a source or a destination?: Most tools that mention Discord mean they can post to it. Reading what is said inside a server is a different capability. Of every vendor checked here, exactly two publish it: Eko and Common Room.
Does it judge, or only match?: A keyword matcher returns everything containing your word, homonyms included. A tool that judges relevance returns fewer things and is wrong sometimes. Which you want depends on whether you have time to sort.
Does it draft the reply?: Finding the mention is half the job. Tools differ on whether they leave you staring at a blank box afterwards.
Breadth of sources: Eko loses this one. The enterprise platforms cover print, broadcast and image recognition, and Brand24 publishes the longest source list of the mid-market tools. If breadth is the requirement, buy breadth.
Historical data and reporting: Eko loses this one too. She is built to catch what is happening now, not to let an analyst slice three years of archive. If you need to present trends to a board, a dashboard tool is the right purchase.
Time to first useful result: Boolean query builders are powerful and they are also why plenty of monitoring seats go unused. Measured from signing up to a result somebody reads.
Is the price on the website?: Four of the tools here do not publish one. That is a real cost: it means a sales call before you can compare, and it is why several rows in these tables say 'not published' rather than a number someone guessed.

The 7 best Google Alerts alternatives

1. Eko

For the moment Google Alerts stops being enough: she reads Reddit, Hacker News, X, YouTube, review sites, the press and your Discord server as things happen, keeps what is really about you, and brings it into Slack or Discord with a drafted reply. $49 a month after a 30-day free trial with 2,500 credits and no card. If a weekly email of news links is all you need, stay with the free tools below.

Runs in:: Slack, Discord and Teams
Entry price:: $49/month for 10,000 credits
Free tier:: 30-day trial with 2,500 credits, no card
Best for:: Teams who work in chat and want to act on a mention without leaving it

Vendor site · read 2026-09-21

2. Google Alerts

Kept second because it is still the right answer for a new project with no budget. Keep it running as a backstop even after you add something better: it costs nothing.

Runs in:: Your email inbox
Entry price:: Free, no paid tier published
Free tier:: Free
Best for:: A first, free tripwire on your own brand name
Better than Eko at:: It costs nothing and takes two minutes. Nothing here beats free as a first step.

Vendor site · read 2026-09-21

3. Talkwalker Alerts

The best free swap. It watches news, blogs, forums, websites and X, and delivers by email, RSS or a Slack integration, which Google Alerts does not. Same limit on judgement: you still sort the results yourself.

Runs in:: Email, RSS or a Slack integration
Entry price:: Free
Free tier:: Free
Best for:: Replacing a Google Alerts habit at no cost, with X and forums included
Better than Eko at:: It is free and covers X and forums out of the box. For a zero-budget tripwire, that is hard to argue with.

Vendor site · read 2026-10-01

4. F5Bot

Free keyword alerts for the places Google is slowest on: Reddit, Hacker News and Lobsters. Pair it with Google Alerts or Talkwalker Alerts for a zero-cost setup; the $49.99 Gold plan adds AI filtering and Slack and Discord delivery.

Runs in:: Email, with Slack and Discord webhooks on the top plan
Entry price:: Free forever; Silver $9.99/month, Gold $49.99/month
Free tier:: Free tier is permanent, no card
Best for:: Watching a few keywords on Reddit and Hacker News at no cost
Better than Eko at:: It is free, and for plain Reddit and Hacker News keyword alerts that is genuinely hard to beat. Start here before paying anyone, including us.

Vendor site · read 2026-09-21

5. Syften

From $29.95 a month, fast raw alerts across Reddit, Hacker News, forums and dozens of communities Google barely indexes, by email or RSS, and into Slack from $49.95. The step up when speed is the problem.

Runs in:: Alerts by email, RSS, API or webhook, and into Slack from the $49.95 plan
Entry price:: $29.95/month (Slack from the $49.95 Standard plan)
Free tier:: 14-day trial on the PRO plan, no credit card. No free plan.
Best for:: Founders who want cheap, fast keyword alerts and will filter them themselves
Better than Eko at:: Price, speed and rawness. It also monitors Slack communities and Discourse forums as sources, which Eko does not. If you want every match with no judgement in the way, it is the cleaner tool.

Vendor site · read 2026-10-01

6. Awario

€29 a month billed annually for real boolean queries and an exportable history. The step up when precision is the problem: you write the query, it watches the web and social.

Runs in:: A web dashboard you log into
Entry price:: €29/month billed annually (€49 billed monthly)
Free tier:: 7-day trial, no credit card. No free plan.
Best for:: Precise boolean monitoring with historical reporting in one place
Better than Eko at:: Boolean query control and a historical archive you can slice and export. If you want to write the query yourself, Awario lets you and Eko does not.

Vendor site · read 2026-09-21

7. Brand24

$199 a month billed annually for broad coverage, sentiment and reports a manager can read. The step up when you have to report on what is being said, not just know about it.

Runs in:: A web platform you log into
Entry price:: $199/month billed annually ($249 billed monthly)
Free tier:: 14-day trial, no credit card. No free plan.
Best for:: Reporting-heavy monitoring where someone presents the numbers upward
Better than Eko at:: Presentation-grade reports and the broadest published source list of the mainstream tools, including Twitch, podcasts and app stores.

Vendor site · read 2026-09-21

Free and under-$50 Google Alerts alternatives

Computed from the same verified prices as the table above, not a hand-kept list. A tool that does not publish a price cannot appear here, because there is no way to know.

Eko — $49/month for 10,000 credits · 30-day trial with 2,500 credits, no card
Awario — €29/month billed annually (€49 billed monthly) · 7-day trial, no credit card. No free plan.
Syften — $29.95/month (Slack from the $49.95 Standard plan) · 14-day trial on the PRO plan, no credit card. No free plan.
F5Bot — Free forever; Silver $9.99/month, Gold $49.99/month · Free tier is permanent, no card
Mentionlytics — $49/month billed yearly (listed at $69) · 14-day trial, no credit card. No free plan.
Talkwalker Alerts — Free · Free
Google Alerts — Free, no paid tier published · Free

Publish no price at all

All else equal, a hidden price costs you a sales call before you can compare anything. That is not a reason to rule them out, it is a reason to start elsewhere.

Mention — A web and social media monitoring tool, owned by Agorapulse since 2025, that is moving its publishing and reply features over to Agorapulse.
Brandwatch — An enterprise consumer intelligence and social listening suite with deep historical data and advanced analytics.
Talkwalker — An enterprise social listening and consumer intelligence platform known for source breadth and image recognition.
Meltwater — An enterprise media intelligence and PR platform covering news, social and broadcast.

How to choose

Where the work actually happens Almost every tool here can push an alert into Slack. The question is what you do next. If reading the alert sends you to a web app to act, the tool is a notifier and your team still context-switches.
Is Discord a source or a destination? Most tools that mention Discord mean they can post to it. Reading what is said inside a server is a different capability. Of every vendor checked here, exactly two publish it: Eko and Common Room.
Does it judge, or only match? A keyword matcher returns everything containing your word, homonyms included. A tool that judges relevance returns fewer things and is wrong sometimes. Which you want depends on whether you have time to sort.
Does it draft the reply? Finding the mention is half the job. Tools differ on whether they leave you staring at a blank box afterwards.

Frequently asked questions

Is there a free alternative to Google Alerts?: Yes, two worth using. Talkwalker Alerts is free, covers news, blogs, forums, websites and X, and delivers by email, RSS or Slack. F5Bot is free for Reddit, Hacker News and Lobsters keyword alerts. Neither judges relevance, so you still sort the results. Read on talkwalker.com/alerts and f5bot.com on 1 October 2026.
Why does Google Alerts miss so many mentions?: Because it only reports what Google has indexed, on Google's schedule. Social posts, community threads and messages inside Discord servers are indexed late or not at all, so by the time an alert arrives the conversation is often over. Tools that read those platforms directly catch them while a reply still matters.
Does Google Alerts still work in 2026?: Yes. It still lets you choose how often you are alerted, which sources to watch (news, blogs, web, video, books, discussions, finance), the language and region, and whether you get only the best results or all of them. It is a working tripwire, just a slow and noisy one.
Can I get Google Alerts in Slack?: Not natively: Google describes alerts as emails, so people forward them into Slack with email or automation tools. Talkwalker Alerts has a Slack integration, F5Bot posts to Slack and Discord on its Gold plan, and Eko lives in Slack or Discord and drafts the reply there.
Is this list biased since Eko is on it?: Yes, Eko is first on its own site, and saying so beats pretending. The rubric is published above the ranking with two criteria Eko loses, Google Alerts is kept second, two free tools sit right behind it, and every competitor note names what it does better. Facts come from vendor pages read on a stated date.

EkoTry Eko for free

The detailed head to head: Eko and Google Alerts