Needle offers Solo, Growth, and Scale plans. This page summarizes current pricing and limits. For live numbers, use the Pricing page.
Pricing
| Plan | Monthly | Annual (33% off) |
|---|---|---|
| Solo | $15/mo | $120/yr |
| Growth | $49/mo | $390/yr |
| Scale | $149/mo | $1190/yr |
Annual billing is 33% off - about 4 months free.
7-day free trial - no card. Every new account gets full access for 7 days, counted from when your first scan finishes: 8 networks, manual search, recurring Auto Search, digest alerts, AI reply drafts, and CSV export. Nothing is charged and there is nothing to cancel. When the trial ends your dashboard becomes read-only - your leads stay visible - until you choose a plan. There is no forever-free tier.
Paid plans bill immediately at the price shown (monthly or annual). Promo codes apply to your first invoice.
Core usage limits (summary)
| Limit | Solo | Growth | Scale |
|---|---|---|---|
| Manual search runs (daily) | 5 | 30 | 150 |
| Max results / manual search | 50 | 200 | 500 |
| Brand profile (Auto Search) | 1 per account | Up to 3 per account | Up to 5 per account (contact us if you need more) |
| How often Auto Search runs (for your brand) | Every 12 hours · Daily | Every 4 hours · Every 8 hours · Every 12 hours · Daily | Every hour · Every 2 hours · Every 4 hours · Every 8 hours · Every 12 hours · Daily |
| How far back Auto Search looks (rolling window per pass, after the first run) | 24 hours | 12 hours · 24 hours | 1 hour · 4 hours · 12 hours · 24 hours |
| AI reply drafts (daily) | 25 | 90 | 300 |
Limits note: Manual searches count toward the search-run counters above. Automatic Auto Search runs do not use those manual quotas.
The 7-day free trial
- Everything Solo has - 5 manual searches a day, 1 brand, recurring Auto Search on Solo cadence, digest alerts, AI reply drafts, and CSV export.
- Starts automatically at signup, with no card. The first Auto Search run for your brand begins as soon as onboarding finishes.
- When it ends - nothing is deleted. Your leads, searches, and brand settings stay readable; scanning, alerts, reply drafts, exports, and new brands pause until you choose a plan.
- No cancel step - because nothing was ever charged.
Search networks (summary)
One manual search queries every network your plan includes at once: 8 on Solo, 11 on Growth, and 13 on Scale.
| Network | Solo | Growth | Scale |
|---|---|---|---|
| ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |
| Stack Overflow | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Hacker News | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| GitHub | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Lobsters | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Bluesky | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Mastodon | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Product Hunt | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| YouTube | ✓ | ✓ | |
| Tumblr | ✓ | ✓ | |
| Forums | ✓ | ✓ | |
| X (Twitter) | ✓ | ||
| ✓ |
Forums is a single network in Search (not a host picker). Each run searches a curated set of public product forums (Growth: 15 per run; Scale: 30 per run; 50 in Needle’s registry). The source site appears when you open the post link.
Confirm live caps on the Pricing page.
Feature differences
- Exports - CSV on every plan.
- White-label reports - Scale only (see Pricing).
- Search timeframes - Solo: up to 24 hours. Growth: up to 7 days. Scale: up to 30 days (see Pricing).
- Digest / chat channels for brand digests - Solo: Google Chat and Slack. Growth and Scale add more channels (see Pricing); configure in Settings. Separately, every account with access gets a daily lead digest by email.
Lead Filtering & Persona Segmentation
Needle offers precise filters to help you target the right prospects:
- By Platform & Community: Scope your searches to specific platforms where your target personas reside (e.g., GitHub for developers, Hacker News for technical founders, Reddit for specific sub-communities).
- By Intent Score: Filter results by intent tiers (High, Medium, Low) to prioritize leads who are actively looking for recommendations or expressing an urgent need.
- By Sentiment: Target negative sentiment to find prospects frustrated with existing options, or positive sentiment to find satisfied users of certain tools.
- By Timeframe: Filter results by lookback window (from the last hour up to 30 days, depending on plan).
Platform Tracking & Capabilities
Each platform monitored by Needle tracks relevant user interactions:
- Reddit & Hacker News: Tracks posts, submissions, comments, and replies.
- Stack Overflow & GitHub: Tracks questions, answers, issue boards, and discussions.
- Bluesky, Mastodon, Tumblr, YouTube: Tracks post content, video details, and public threads.
- Forums: Tracks public Discourse forum threads and topics.
Intent Score & Accuracy
Needle analyzes the context of each conversation to assign an Intent Score (0–100):
- High Intent (75-100): Active recommendations request, evaluation of tools, or urgent help requests.
- Medium Intent (50-74): Passive research, comparison discussion, or general queries.
- Low Intent (0-49): Informal chat, casual mention, or general news.
We continually tune our search signals to ensure high precision, reducing the noise associated with simple keyword-matching alerts.
Reply drafts (Manual & Auto)
Draft reply on a result: two AI suggestions from your brand profile; you paste on the platform yourself. Counts toward reply-draft limits above.
- Limits and pricing may change over time - Pricing page wins if this doc drifts.
- Search (Manual & Auto) - how the dashboard maps to these limits.