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What it costs you
SignalScout itself is free. The money goes to two kinds of provider, on your own accounts:
- the data provider, for every page of posts it fetches;
- the AI model provider, for every post a model reads.
Most of the money is spent at fetch time, before any filter sees a post. So the best way to spend less is a narrower search, not a stricter filter.
Where the money goes in one poll
Each stage drops posts, so each paid stage after it reads fewer.
Rough prices, per item:
| Item | About |
|---|---|
| A Reddit post | $0.0003 to $0.0015, depending on the provider |
| An X post | $0.0002 |
| A LinkedIn post | $0.002 |
| An Instagram comment | $0.0027, the most expensive item |
| Scoring one post on a cheap model | $0.001 |
Instagram is the exception: its conversations are in the comments, so the provider costs more than the model there.
Three controls
Test a plan before it runs
On the last step of a new monitor, Test this plan runs each search once, against ten posts. It shows how often each search finds a post, what a month would cost at your schedule, and what the test itself cost: about one and a half cents per search on Reddit. It runs only when you press the button.
A plan whose estimate is above the monitor's cap is flagged search by search. The monitor is then saved without starting, so you can narrow the expensive search first.
A monthly cap on each monitor
Each monitor can have a monthly cap. When it is reached, the monitor either:
- Pause the monitor: it stops, and waits until you raise the cap and resume it; or
- Keep it, and start again next month: it skips every poll for the rest of the month, then starts again by itself.
There is no cap by default: SignalScout does not decide how much of your key it may spend. The cap can be passed by up to one poll, because a poll's cost is known only after the provider answers.
The filter
Three cheap stages sit in front of the scoring model: keywords, similarity, and triage. Each monitor shows how many posts each stage kept back. You can turn the whole filter off per monitor. It then costs more, and hides nothing.
A strict filter hides leads silently
An empty inbox looks the same whether the week was quiet or the filter dropped good posts. The filter starts permissive on purpose. Check the dropped counts on the monitor before you make it stricter.
Every figure is an estimate
SignalScout counts what each call reported and multiplies by a price it knows. Your provider's invoice is the real number. The estimate can differ because:
- a failed call may still be billed, but reported nothing;
- your provider's month may start on a different day than the calendar month;
- a provider can change its price;
- a free allowance is not taken into account.
So every amount on a screen is marked estimated and shown to four decimal places. Use it to notice a monitor that spends too fast. Use the invoice to know what you owe.