Manually browsing Reddit for customers feels free — it isn't. Enter your own numbers to see your real monthly time cost, your cost per qualified conversation, and exactly where a monitoring tool would break even. All math runs in your browser from the inputs you control.
How do you charge?
Value per customer = $49 × 12 months = $588 (we assume a 12-month customer lifetime)
Of the good conversations you have, how many become customers?
Scrolling subreddits, searching keywords, reading threads
What an hour of founder time is worth (default $75)
Threads where you genuinely replied to a potential customer
Monthly time cost
21.7 hrs/mo × $75/hr
$1,624
Cost per qualified conversation
$1,624 ÷ 13 conversations/mo
$125
Expected monthly revenue from Reddit
13 conv/mo × 10% close × $588 (12-mo value)
$764
Same conversations, minus the browsing hours. We don't assume a tool finds you more leads — the slider below defaults to your own manual number, and only you can change it.
Tool cost
SubredditSignals: Starter $29/mo · Pro $59/mo
$29–$59
Cost per qualified conversation
$29–$59 ÷ 13 conversations/mo
$2.23–$4.54
Browsing hours reclaimed
If ~5-min alerts replace scrolling (you still spend time replying either way)
~21.7 hrs/mo
Expected monthly revenue from Reddit
13 conv/mo × 10% close × $588
$764
Currently set to your manual number — this is your assumption to make, not ours.
At your $75/hr rate, a $29/mo tool pays for itself if it saves you at least 0.4 hours (~23 min) a month; at $59/mo, at least 0.8 hours (~47 min). Or, ignoring time entirely: with each qualified conversation worth $58.80 to you (close rate × customer value), it breaks even by finding just 0.5–1 extra conversations per month.
Illustrative math only. Every figure above is computed from the numbers you entered, entirely in your browser — nothing is stored or sent anywhere. It is not a prediction, benchmark, or promise of results from SubredditSignals or any other tool. Your actual results depend on your product, your subreddits, and how you engage.
SubredditSignals watches your subreddits around the clock, scores each thread for buying intent, and alerts you in minutes — so the conversations you found above find you instead. Try it free for 14 days and compare your real numbers to this math.
Most founders measure Reddit lead generation in vibes: "I spent Sunday on r/SaaS and got a few replies." But the honest unit of account is the qualified conversation — a thread where a real potential customer described the problem you solve and you engaged them. Once you price your time, each of those conversations has a cost, and that cost is comparable across channels: cold email, paid ads, content, or Reddit. If a qualified conversation costs you $80 in browsing time and closes at 10% into a $588 customer, Reddit is a great channel — the question is only whether you should be the one doing the scrolling.
The hidden cost of manual prospecting isn't the conversations you find — it's the hours spent not finding them: scanning new posts, re-running keyword searches, reading threads that turn out to be irrelevant. At five hours a week and $75/hour, that's roughly $1,600 a month of founder time. Monitoring tools (SubredditSignals is $29–59/mo) don't magically create demand; they move the finding work from your calendar to software, alerting you within minutes of a relevant thread instead of whenever you next open Reddit. Timing matters too — early, helpful replies tend to be seen by the original poster and by everyone who finds the thread later.
This calculator keeps the comparison honest: it reuses your conversation count for the tool scenario unless you decide otherwise, and it shows every formula it uses. Read more about the approach on our Reddit lead generation guide or see plans and pricing.
A thread or comment where someone is describing the exact problem your product solves — asking for recommendations, complaining about a competitor, or requesting help — and where you actually replied. It is one step short of a lead: a real exchange with a potential customer, not just an upvote or a lurk.
It multiplies your weekly browsing hours by 4.33 (the average number of weeks in a month) and by the hourly value you assign your time, giving your monthly time cost. That cost is divided by your monthly qualified conversations (weekly count × 4.33). Every input is yours — the calculator adds no assumptions of its own.
A year has 52 weeks across 12 months, and 52 ÷ 12 = 4.33. Using 4 would understate monthly cost and volume by about 8%, so 4.33 is the standard weeks-to-months conversion.
For subscription products, a single closed customer is worth more than one month's payment. The calculator uses a 12-month customer lifetime as a simple, clearly-labelled assumption, so value per customer = monthly price × 12. If your average customer stays longer or churns sooner, adjust your interpretation accordingly — the multiplier is shown right next to the input.
Not automatically, and this calculator deliberately does not assume so. By default, the tool comparison uses the exact same conversation count you entered for manual browsing — the difference it shows is the browsing hours you get back and the change in cost per conversation. There is a slider to model catching more conversations with fast alerts (threads you would have missed while not browsing), but it only moves if you move it.
It is completely free with no signup or email required. All calculations run in your browser; nothing you type is stored, sent to a server, or shared.