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) |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | - |
| Solo | $15/mo | $120/yr |
| Growth | $49/mo | $390/yr |
| Scale | $149/mo | $1190/yr |
Annual billing is 33% off - about 4 months free.
Free plan: no card required. 1 manual search a day across 6 builder communities, 10 results per search (5 fully unlocked), and a one-time welcome scan on your brand. Reply drafts, exports, filters, and recurring Auto Search alerts are paid features.
7-day trial on all paid plans (Solo, Growth, and Scale). Card required at checkout; one trial per account. A non-refundable $1 trial fee is charged today and credited toward your first invoice. The charge-notice email arrives on day 4. Cancel before the trial ends to avoid further charges. Promo codes apply to your first paid invoice after the trial.
Core usage limits (summary)
| Limit | Free | Solo | Growth | Scale |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Manual search runs (daily) | 1 | 5 | 30 | 150 |
| Manual search runs (monthly) | 30 | 300 | 1,800 | 9,000 |
| Max results / manual search | 10 (5 unlocked) | 50 | 200 | 500 |
| Brand profile (Auto Search) | 1 per account | 1 per account | Up to 3 per account (Enterprise upgrades available) | |
| How often Auto Search runs (for your brand) | Every 8 hours · Daily · Weekly | Every 4 hours · Every 12 hours · Daily · Weekly | Every hour · Every 4 hours · Every 6 hours · Every 12 hours · Daily · Weekly | |
| 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 | |
| AI reply drafts (monthly) | 450 | 900 | 3000 |
Limits note: Manual searches count toward the search-run counters above. Automatic Auto Search runs do not use those manual quotas.
Free plan
- Manual search - 1 run a day (30/month) across the free builder communities: Reddit, Hacker News, Stack Overflow, Lobsters, Bluesky, GitHub. 10 results per search; the first 5 are fully unlocked.
- Welcome scan - one free search on Auto Search after brand onboarding (7-day lookback window; subset of communities). We email the result, or deliver it to a Slack, Google Chat, or Discord webhook if you connect one.
- Not included - AI reply drafts, exports, search filters, scheduled Auto Search, and recurring digest alerts (the welcome-scan alert is the only alert the Free plan sends).
Search networks (summary)
One manual search can query 10+ communities on Growth and Scale (every network your plan includes at once). Solo includes a smaller set.
| Network | Free | Solo | Growth | Scale |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |
| Stack Overflow | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Hacker News | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| GitHub | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Lobsters | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Bluesky | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Mastodon | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |
| 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 - Solo: CSV. Growth: PDF + CSV. Scale: PDF + CSV + Excel + JSON.
- 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. Digests use webhooks/chat apps only (not account 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.