Needle is a buyer-intent search tool built for founders and go-to-market teams. It searches public communities such as Reddit, Hacker News, GitHub and Stack Overflow for people who are describing a problem, asking for recommendations or comparing tools, and ranks those threads by how likely the author is to buy.
The company was founded in 2025 by Vaibhav Singhal, who says finding first customers by hand across many browser tabs was broken. Needle focuses on finding the conversation and leaves the reply to a human. It reports more than 1,700 founders and teams as users.
How does Needle work?
Setup starts with describing your market: your product, the problems it solves and the competitors buyers compare you with. No CRM integration or scraping setup is needed. Needle then tracks your keywords, drops spam, memes, tutorials and job posts, and gives each remaining match a buying-intent score.
Manual search runs a custom query on demand. Auto Search repeats a brand's saved phrases and sites on a schedule, and sends top conversations to a channel or digest. In a month it measured, Needle read 431,871 posts, kept 74,222 and flagged 20,291 as strong buying signals.
Key features of Needle
The core is intent ranking: each thread is scored for buying intent and sentiment, then tagged Hot lead, Worth engaging or Monitor. Result filters cover relevance, sentiment, sort order and platform. Competitor mention tracking, available on Growth and Scale, ranks comparison and switching threads above casual mentions.
Around that sit AI reply drafts with tone controls and rate-safe pacing, CSV export, and white-label reports on Scale. Trending Problems highlights rising complaints in startup and technical communities, and the free Needle Directory lets verified products list themselves with a backlink once approved.
Key Features
Multi-community search — One search queries Reddit, Hacker News, GitHub, Stack Overflow, Lobsters, Mastodon, Bluesky and Product Hunt, with YouTube, Tumblr and Forums on Growth and X and LinkedIn on Scale.
Buying-intent ranking — Each match is scored for buying intent and sentiment and tagged Hot lead, Worth engaging or Monitor, so the strongest threads appear first.
Noise filtering — Spam, memes, tutorials, job posts and off-topic mentions are removed before results are shown. Needle reports dropping 83% of keyword matches in a measured month.
Auto Search — Scheduled re-checks of a brand's saved phrases and sites, running every 12 hours on Solo, 4 hours on Growth and hourly on Scale, without using manual search quota.
Competitor mention tracking — Save competitor names once and see threads that mention them, with comparison and switching threads ranked above casual mentions. Available on Growth and Scale.
AI reply drafts — Draft reply options with tone controls that the user reviews, edits and posts personally. Daily limits are 25, 90 and 300 by plan.
Digests and hot-lead alerts — Summaries of new leads per brand plus individual alerts for high-intent threads, up to three per run, routed per brand to team chat tools.
CSV export and white-label reports — Leads can be exported as CSV on every plan, and Scale removes Needle branding from exported reports.
Trending Problems — A view of rising pain points in startup and technical communities, with a public preview, used for demand signals.
Needle Directory and free tools — A free directory for listing products plus free utilities such as a Reddit shadowban check and a name and brand checker.
Pros & Cons
Pros
Ranks threads by buying intent instead of sending every keyword match, so the best leads appear first.
Covers up to 13 public communities in one search, including Reddit, Hacker News, GitHub and Stack Overflow.
7-day free trial with full access and no credit card required.
Entry plan starts at $15/month, with 33% off on annual billing.
Does not post or message for you, and drafts are edited by a person, which lowers community ban risk.
Alerts can go to Slack, Discord, Notion, Airtable, webhooks, Teams, HubSpot and Pipedrive.
Cons
No ongoing free plan: after the 7-day trial the dashboard is read-only until a paid plan is chosen.
X (Twitter) and LinkedIn coverage, CRM sync and white-label reports are limited to the $149 Scale plan.
Solo allows 1 brand monitor and 5 manual searches a day, which may be tight for agencies.
Finds and ranks conversations only; replying and follow-up must be done manually.
Pricing
Solo $15 monthly
Growth $49 monthly
Scale $149 monthly
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Needle?
Needle is a buyer-intent search tool that scans public communities like Reddit, Hacker News, GitHub and Stack Overflow. It ranks threads by buying intent so founders and GTM teams can find people asking for a product like theirs.
How much does Needle cost?
Needle has three plans: Solo at $15/month, Growth at $49/month and Scale at $149/month. Annual billing is 33% off the monthly price on every paid plan.
Does Needle have a free trial?
Yes. Every new account gets 7 days of full Solo access with no credit card. When the trial ends, leads stay readable but monitoring pauses until a plan is chosen.
Which platforms does Needle search?
Solo covers 8 networks: Reddit, Hacker News, GitHub, Stack Overflow, Lobsters, Mastodon, Bluesky and Product Hunt. Growth adds YouTube, Tumblr and Forums, and Scale adds X and LinkedIn for 13 networks.
What does Needle integrate with?
Slack and Google Chat are available from Solo. Growth adds Discord, Notion, Airtable and custom webhooks, and Scale adds Microsoft Teams, HubSpot and Pipedrive.
How is Needle different from keyword alerts?
Keyword alerts fire on every mention, including memes and job posts. Needle filters out noise and ranks the remaining threads by buying intent, so high-intent conversations appear first.
Does Needle post replies automatically?
No. Needle offers AI reply drafts, but a person reviews, edits and posts them. The company states it will not build mass commenting, fake accounts or auto-posting.
Is Needle a replacement for Apollo or Sales Navigator?
Not exactly. Those tools show who could buy based on role and company filters, while Needle shows who is discussing a problem publicly right now. Needle says many teams use both.