It's not just you, and it's usually not bots either. Here's what's actually happening during a restock, and what genuinely improves your odds.
You had the tab open. You knew the time. You clicked "Add to Cart" the second the page updated — and it still said sold out before checkout finished loading. This happens constantly in the keyboard hobby, and it's frustrating enough that it's worth explaining what's actually going on, instead of just telling you to "refresh faster."
The single biggest factor is batch size versus audience size. A designer or vendor restocking a popular board might have 200–500 units on hand. Meanwhile, that board's announcement is going out to a community subreddit with a million members, a Discord with tens of thousands of active users, and a mailing list on top of that. Even if only 2% of an engaged audience is actively trying to buy at that exact moment, that's still more people than units available. No bots required — just simple demand outpacing a small production run.
This is different from mass-market retail, where a vendor can order however many units they think they'll sell. Enthusiast keyboard runs are usually manufactured in one batch based on pre-committed group buy numbers or a designer's best guess at demand. There's rarely a "we'll just make more" option waiting in the wings.
Vendors and designers know scarcity drives urgency, and they lean into it. Restock announcements are often deliberately scheduled around a specific time, promoted a day or two in advance, and sometimes paired with a countdown. That's not manipulative by hobby standards — it's just standard demand-generation — but it does mean the entire interested audience is primed to hit "buy" within the same 60-second window, which guarantees instant scarcity even for boards that will eventually get more stock later.
If a restock is announced with a specific date and time, that's the moment competition is highest. Boards that quietly go back in stock without fanfare tend to last much longer.
Less than you'd think, at least compared to sneakers or graphics cards. Most keyboard vendors sell directly through their own storefront rather than a resale-friendly marketplace, and the audience is small enough that building a dedicated bot for one drop usually isn't worth the effort. It happens occasionally on the highest-hype group buy exclusives, but for the average restock, it's genuine one-to-one human demand outpacing supply — which, honestly, doesn't feel much better in the moment, but it does mean there's no shadowy army to blame.
The obvious question is why a vendor wouldn't just order a bigger batch next time and end the scarcity for good. In practice, a few structural reasons keep that from happening as often as buyers would like. Minimum order quantities from the factories producing cases and PCBs mean a designer often has to commit to a batch size months before they know real demand — guessing too high ties up cash in unsold inventory, which is a real risk for small, independently-run keyboard brands rather than large corporations. Guessing too low means selling out fast, which is frustrating for buyers but far less financially risky for the vendor.
There's also a genuine manufacturing lead time between deciding to make more and actually having more to sell — tooling, anodizing, and assembly on a keyboard case isn't something that can be scaled up overnight the way a digital product could be. So even when a vendor sees a restock sell out in minutes and knows demand clearly exceeded supply, the earliest they can realistically respond with a second batch is often months later, not days.
Some do, though it's a smaller factor than in sneakers or GPUs, since most keyboard vendors sell direct rather than through easily-scriptable third-party marketplaces. The bigger factor is usually just batch size — a 500-unit restock announced to a community of tens of thousands will sell out fast on real demand alone.
Marginally, but a saved cart with your address and payment pre-filled, combined with knowing the exact restock time in advance, matters far more than refresh speed.
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