Who says “instead of”
The phrase people use when they are comparing two ways of doing something. It catches both tool comparisons and the quieter cases where the competitor is a spreadsheet or a cron job.
Counted across 2,009 posts from 38 communities, collected since 22 July 2026.
142 posts in our collection mention “instead of”, spread across 31 communities, and 40 of them are asking a question rather than making a statement.
| Community | Posts | Share of the mentions |
|---|---|---|
| r/SaaS | 16 (3 ask) | |
| r/SideProject | 14 (1 ask) | |
| r/webdev | 14 (3 ask) | |
| r/startups | 9 (3 ask) | |
| r/devops | 7 (3 ask) | |
| r/software | 7 (2 ask) | |
| r/nocode | 6 (3 ask) | |
| r/opensource | 6 (1 ask) | |
| r/EntrepreneurRideAlong | 5 (1 ask) | |
| r/microsaas | 5 | |
| r/smallbusiness | 5 (3 ask) | |
| r/indiehackers | 4 | |
| r/musictheory | 4 (2 ask) | |
| r/technicalwriting | 4 (3 ask) | |
| r/ClaudeAI | 3 (1 ask) | |
| r/DataHoarder | 3 (2 ask) | |
| r/dataisbeautiful | 3 | |
| r/freelance | 3 (2 ask) | |
| r/guitarlessons | 3 (2 ask) | |
| r/marketing | 3 (1 ask) | |
| r/privacy | 3 | |
| r/Bookkeeping | 2 (1 ask) | |
| r/Entrepreneur | 2 | |
| r/PostgreSQL | 2 | |
| r/SQL | 2 | |
| r/UXDesign | 2 (1 ask) | |
| r/AskPhotography | 1 (1 ask) | |
| r/Guitar | 1 (1 ask) | |
| r/graphic_design | 1 | |
| r/programming | 1 | |
| r/webflow | 1 |
The most recent of them
Real threads, opening on Reddit. The reply count is what it was at the moment we collected the post, which is the state a thread is in while answering it is still worth doing.
Reading this table
The phrase lands hardest in r/SaaS, which holds 16 of the 142 mentions we have collected. That concentration is the part worth acting on. A word spread thinly across every community is usually too generic to build on, while a word that clusters tells you which room to stand in.
Before you reply anywhere, check what the community allows. Most of the places above have a profile in our directory covering who posts there, whether promotion is tolerated at all, and what tends to get removed. The wider rules are in the self-promotion guide.
Search for something else
Someone is shopping
A word is a hint. A customer is a judgement.
Lidar reads these communities daily, weighs every post against what your product does rather than against a keyword, and sends you the handful that are worth answering.