10 Best Competitor Analysis Tools Under $300

Searching for a competitor evaluation device that does all of it? Properly, they’re a bit dear. They’ll value about $1000 per seat or $10000 per annual contract, plus set-up charges apply in some circumstances. I’m certain these instruments are nice, and that price ticket is completely affordable for enterprise-level companies, however for a lot of companies on the market, that’s out of attain. 

So what are the competitor evaluation instruments for the “remainder of us”? Right here’s a number of glorious instruments that supply the identical functionalities as these enterprise-level options, and extra, for beneath $300 every and even for free:

1. Competitors App — finest finances device for all-in-one competitor monitoring. This device will maintain you notified of content material printed by your opponents, and all content material about your opponents, multi functional place. Worth: $19.9/mo.
2. Ahrefs — finest for website positioning and SEM competitor monitoring and evaluation. Use it for a deep dive into website positioning and search advert evaluation and steal visitors out of your opponents’ most profitable content material. Worth: $129/mo (Starter plan obtainable at $29).
3. Visualping — finest UX, CRO, and web site competitor monitoring. Every time the competitor adjustments one thing on their website, you’ll be the primary to know. Worth: $10/mo (free plan obtainable).
4. Brand24 — finest for social media aggressive monitoring and evaluation. See what individuals like and dislike about your opponents and use it to make enhancements in your services or products. Worth: $99/mo.
5. SparkToro — finest for competitor viewers evaluation. If you wish to attain your opponents’ viewers, that is the way you’ll discover them. Worth: $50/mo, free plan obtainable.
6. Mailcharts — finest for electronic mail and SMS competitor monitoring. Copy opponents’ finest concepts for newsletters, electronic mail workflows, and electronic mail blasts, and make your work simpler. Worth: $149/mo.
7. vidIQ — finest for YouTube competitor evaluation. Develop your YouTube channel by reverse-engineering your opponents’ success. Pricing: $10/mo, free plan obtainable.
8. Official advert libraries — finest for social media PPC competitor intelligence. Snoop in your opponents’ campaigns to make your advertisements stand out. Free.
9. BuiltWith — finest for web site tech stack evaluation device. Apparently, you may also see who makes use of your opponents and get an inventory of potential leads. Worth: $295/mo.
10. ChatGPT — does the heavy lifting of information evaluation, information cleansing & visualization for stories and analyzing opponents’ content material. Can compensate for some AI options of enterprise options. Worth: 20$, free plan obtainable.

How I examined the instruments

I needed to seek out the most effective instruments for small and medium companies (i.e., inexpensive and versatile pricing) and, on the identical time, collate an inventory of instruments that cowl all advertising and marketing channels it’s possible you’ll wish to monitor (website positioning, social media, electronic mail, and so forth.).

I personally additionally examined all of those instruments to see in the event that they dwell as much as their promise and a few I’ve been counting on for years. So within the remaining a part of the article, I’ll share a couple of stable concepts on the way to make good use of those instruments and spotlight one handpicked superior function from every.

Lastly, I replace this text occasionally to see if there new instruments, higher instruments, up to date pricing, or new noteworthy options. So, what you see is the most recent model of this evolving information.

Opponents App displays an extended listing of your opponents’ advertising and marketing channels, together with emails, newsletters, weblog posts, social media posts, web site adjustments, natural search, advertisements, and serves it to you on a pleasant aggressive evaluation dashboard.

This device is like having a devoted each day newspaper solely about your opponents. So, should you’re in search of a single platform to log into every morning to see what your opponents have been as much as — with out breaking the financial institution — that is the answer for you.

Whereas it’s an all-in-one resolution for just about each advertising and marketing channel, don’t anticipate the sturdy evaluation capabilities discovered in additional specialised instruments on our listing. Nonetheless, for entry-level competitor monitoring that will help you keep knowledgeable, it’s arduous to seek out something less expensive.

The way to use it:

• Use the dashboard to achieve each day top-level insights in your opponents exercise on the internet and evaluate them to yours. Search for spikes in social media engagement, increased publishing output, developments in natural visitors, or actions in crucial key phrases. The evaluations function additionally lets you see on-line exercise about your competitor comparable to evaluations.
• By no means miss a brand new weblog put up, an electronic mail, or an essential social media post out of your opponents. No want to leap between apps.
• Doc noteworthy competitor exercise. Whenever you see one thing fascinating, you possibly can add a notice on the spot and notify your teammates proper from the app.

Standout function: Monitoring all advertising and marketing channels for publications and mentions

Opponents App has a function known as Exercise which works like an RSS feed for every little thing your opponents say on-line and every little thing that’s mentioned about them.

The listing of issues you possibly can see within the Exercise feed is sort of spectacular:

• Social media posts.
• Adverts (dwell and archive).
• Web site adjustments (comparable to a brand new web page printed or a change within the title of a web page)
• On-line mentions.
• Opinions (you possibly can filter for particular rankings).
• Electronic mail.
• Key phrases.
• Backlinks.

Because of this, you’ll keep knowledgeable about each transfer your opponents make throughout varied advertising and marketing channels, and also you save effort and time on leaping between completely different instruments and sources.

For instance, you possibly can shortly spot new content material or campaigns launched by your opponents and gauge their impression on their viewers. For instance, should you discover a competitor gaining traction with a specific sort of content material or social media put up, think about how one can adapt and enhance upon that method in your viewers.

To make it even simpler, the Opponents App incorporates a e-newsletter that delivers this exercise feed on to your inbox.

Pricing

Opponents App provides an affordable entry level at $19.9 monthly, however that worth relies on the variety of websites you monitor. So, for monitoring two opponents, you’ll pay virtually $40, for 3, virtually $60, and so forth. To entry all monitoring options, you’ll pay $29.90 per competitor. That is nonetheless very aggressive in comparison with what enterprise options ask.

If I had been you, I’d be curious in regards to the Customized tier. Because the device is sort of inexpensive, it’s possible you’ll get some premium options like customized channel monitoring, human-curated stories, and battle playing cards and nonetheless save cash.

Ahrefs is an all-in-one website positioning toolset that gives best-in-class data about your opponents’ content material, backlinks, keywords, PPC advertisements, and far extra.

Ahrefs has a status for best-in-class information and sturdy performance, making it one of many business’s favorites (see what the industry says about Ahrefs). So, if you could dive deep into website positioning information, you possibly can’t go incorrect right here.

The way to use it:

• Establish content material gaps between you and your opponents to generate new content material concepts. A content material hole consists of key phrases that your opponents rank for, however you don’t. By filling these gaps, you can’t solely enhance your individual visitors but in addition doubtlessly cut back your competitor’s visitors by outranking them.
• See the place your opponents get their backlinks from to copy their ways or go after their hyperlinks. For instance, you would possibly uncover that your competitor has damaged pages on their website, offering you with a possibility to seize these hyperlinks.
• Monitor your natural share of voice to extend it relative to your opponents. Share of voice is a helpful metric as a result of it at all times reveals you if a change in visitors has been attributable to opponents and never a change in search demand or a change in how Google reveals the SERPs.

Standout function: Discovering content material gaps between you and your opponents

This function reveals key phrases for which your opponents rank, however you don’t. As I already talked about, these are known as content material gaps and may give you confirmed content material concepts in your content planning.

With Ahrefs, you possibly can evaluate complete domains and get new subject concepts. Or, you possibly can evaluate pages and see what subtopics your content material could also be lacking — a possible motive for decrease rankings.

Go to the Aggressive Evaluation device and enter your area and opponents.

The extra opponents you enter, the extra key phrases you’ll get.

If, in some unspecified time in the future, the listing will get too large to handle, you possibly can slender it down utilizing filters. For instance, you possibly can give attention to key phrases the place a minimum of two of your opponents rank within the high 10.

Listed here are a couple of fascinating key phrases Mailchimp might use to fill the content material hole:

Pricing

Ahrefs geared up with the Aggressive Evaluation device (together with different key phrase, backlink and SERP evaluation instruments for aggressive evaluation) begins at $129 monthly, or $108 should you pay yearly — see pricing.

You too can check out a few of our free SEO competitor intelligence tools. They’re nice for fast spot checks like checking your competitor’s natural visitors or checking high backlinks of the content material you’re competing with on Google. Discover out extra in 10 Things You Can Do in Ahrefs for Free.

Visualping is an internet site competitor evaluation device that notifies you anytime your opponents change one thing on their websites. It makes use of AI to summarize the online web page adjustments, and it’ll even let you know whether or not the change is essential or not, so it can save you time reviewing competitor adjustments.

This implies you now not must set reminders to verify their web sites weekly or pressure your eyes looking for the smallest updates, questioning in the event that they had been there final week.

The way to use it:

• Get impressed by UX and CRO tweaks on opponents’ web sites. These tweaks can encourage enhancements by yourself website, serving to you improve person engagement and enhance conversions.
• Monitor competitor’s pricing to tell your pricing technique. By monitoring worth adjustments, reductions, and promotions, you possibly can modify your costs to raised appeal to prospects. As an illustration, if a competitor drops their costs, you would possibly determine to supply a short lived low cost or add further worth to your merchandise to take care of your market place.
• Hold tabs on new job openings to see the place your opponents are investing their budgets. Job postings can reveal the place they’re increasing, what abilities they’re prioritizing, and which departments are receiving extra sources. For instance, if a competitor is hiring extensively of their advertising and marketing division, it’d point out a deliberate enhance in advertising and marketing efforts, prompting you to guage and presumably bolster your individual advertising and marketing methods to remain aggressive.

Standout function: Monitoring UX and CRO tweaks on opponents’ web sites

Visualping is nice for observing how your opponents attempt to squeeze extra out of each customer to their web site. In different phrases, you possibly can search for person expertise (UX) and conversion fee optimization (CRO) tweaks that you could undertake with out having to do all of the analysis and A/B testing.

All you could do is about up monitoring for the online web page you care about, and also you’ll get an alert when there’s a noteworthy change. This will embrace something from new product launches and press releases to extra delicate web site adjustments, like up to date CTA buttons and colours.

The alerts function a screenshot of the web page, with the adjustments highlighted. Additionally they embrace an AI abstract of all of the adjustments, so you possibly can shortly perceive what was up to date.

I chatted with the Visualping staff, and I’ve been instructed that you could work with their immediate engineering staff to customise the AI in your use case. That manner, you’ll know if the change is essential primarily based in your preferences.

Remember that you shouldn’t blindly copy your opponents’ actions. Ideally, the change has to make sense to you, and you need to know that the competitor does A/B testing (checking with BuiltWith is an efficient begin — extra on this under).

Pricing

Visualping provides a free plan with as much as 150 checks a month, which might in all probability be sufficient to cowl your opponents’ homepage, pricing web page, trial web page, and different essential pages weekly.

If you happen to’re extra severe about maintaining monitor of your opponents’ web sites, then check out the paid plans. These begin at $10 a month for 1000 checks — see pricing.

With Brand24, you possibly can monitor mentions of opponents in social media, information or on-line publications to reverse engineer their backlink methods.

They’re finest recognized for his or her social media monitoring options, so in case your technique is strongly reliant on social media, you’ll positively wish to check out this device.

The way to use it:

• See how efficient your opponents’ messaging is by way of attain, engagement, and sentiment. It will assist you perceive what resonates together with your shared viewers, permitting you to refine your individual messaging to enhance attain, engagement, and general sentiment.
• Monitor model mentions to see what individuals like and dislike about your opponents. Have a look at evaluations, social media posts, and discussions to seek out out what individuals love and what they complain about. This may give you concepts on what to do higher and the way to keep away from the identical errors, serving to you make your model extra interesting

My favourite performance: Monitoring opponents’ model mentions

Arrange a separate challenge (or initiatives) with the names of competitor manufacturers and merchandise. You’ll be able to go broad or be as particular as you want. For instance, in case your competitor’s model identify has a number of meanings, you possibly can filter out irrelevant key phrases with the Excluded key phrases discipline. For instance:

Right here’s an fascinating point out of the challenge administration device Asana. This might imply that should you had been to compete with them, you could possibly embrace time monitoring in considered one of your inexpensive plans to get an edge over your competitor.

This type of competitor monitoring permits you to:

• Modify your communication by adopting probably the most participating codecs and the phrasing your opponents use to advertise comparable options.
• Get product insights primarily based on the preferred and well-received releases.
• Assess how individuals understand your model and your opponents through sentiment evaluation.
• Benchmark your social media attain and share of voice in opposition to your opponents.

Pricing

Plans begin at $99 a month for monitoring three key phrases. Monitoring your model and your opponents would require the next plan for $179 a month that gives seven key phrases. You will get two months free off any plan should you pay yearly — see pricing. Brand24 additionally provides a 14-day free trial.

SparkToro is an viewers analysis device that may present details about what your opponents’ guests learn, watch, take heed to, and comply with.

As a aggressive evaluation device, it’s invaluable for brand new manufacturers that wish to higher perceive the viewers they’d like to succeed in. With Sparktoro’s insights, you possibly can create extra focused and interesting advertising and marketing campaigns, enhance your content material technique, and join together with your viewers on a deeper stage.

If you happen to’re already acquainted with this device, be certain to take a look at the revamped V2 model launched in April 2024. See a whole listing of latest options and utterly new issues you are able to do with Sparktoro V2 here.

The way to use it:

• Discover the most effective locations to promote by testing the web sites and social media profiles your competitor’s viewers visits. This helps you select the place to place your advertisements to succeed in extra individuals
• Make higher buyer profiles by trying on the social media profiles of people that comply with your opponents. Study their pursuits and hobbies to know them higher and enhance your advertising and marketing.
• Get new content material concepts by seeing what matters your competitor’s viewers talks about typically. Use this to create content material that pursuits them and grabs their consideration.

Standout function: Discovering the place a competitor’s viewers hangs out on-line

Let’s discover new sponsorship alternatives by in search of podcasts that folks visiting sparktoro.com take heed to.

All you could do is click on on “Podcasts” within the left-hand menu, and there you will have it.

So, on this instance, the Search Engine Journal Present is twice as “fashionable” with Sparktoro’s viewers as Advertising and marketing Smarts. You’ll be able to inform that from the Affinity Rating metric, which tells you the way a lot behavioral/demographic overlap a given podcast has with Sparktoro’s viewers (this rating will be present in different stories as properly).

With information like this, you possibly can simply spot new promoting and sponsorship alternatives throughout many various channels. All you could know is your opponents’ URL or the key phrase your viewers is probably going to make use of in Google, and Sparktoro does the relaxation.

Worth

SparkToro is free for twenty searches a month with restricted report capabilities. Paid plans begin at $50 a month (three months free should you pay yearly) — see pricing.

Mailcharts holds an unlimited assortment of electronic mail and SMS campaigns, serving to you examine ways of manufacturers just like yours. It’s a quite fascinating aggressive intelligence device because it lets you monitor the hidden automation and flows opponents use as a part of their buyer expertise journey.

The way to use it:

• Uncover electronic mail and SMS campaigns by sorts or competing manufacturers and get impressed by the copy and (within the case of emails) visible design they use.
• Perceive the sending habits of your opponents (cadence, topic traces, reductions, and so forth.). Copy what you want, or do one thing utterly completely different to make your model stand out.
• Examine electronic mail advertising and marketing automation strategies in your business. See what options opponents give attention to to onboard their customers, or how different manufacturers attempt to make prospects come again to their procuring carts.

Standout function: Finding out electronic mail advertising and marketing automation strategies

Because of Mailchart’s Journeys function, you possibly can examine the automated emails that manufacturers ship each time their subscribers set off a sure motion, comparable to abandoning the cart or making a challenge inside an app.

It’s a fantastic function as a result of it actually takes the handbook labor out of analyzing one of the essential varieties of electronic mail advertising and marketing; think about looking for an electronic mail set off manually.

Right here’s an instance: Mailchart captured a subscription abandonment journey from Masterclass.

Primarily based on the copy of the emails, you should use the identical persuasion strategies to make the person rethink or use the identical time interval between the emails.

Pricing

Mailcharts provides a free plan with 1,000 electronic mail samples and a handful of different useful options. Premium plans begin at $149 — see pricing.

vidIQ is a device that helps you perceive what makes profitable YouTube channels tick. It reveals you what your opponents are doing proper, like which key phrases they’re utilizing and which matters are fashionable.

The way to use it:

• Evaluate your channel with opponents to see how typically they put up, what matters they select, and the way they edit their movies. This helps you study what works properly for others so you possibly can enhance your individual channel’s efficiency.
• Get new content material concepts by trying on the key phrases different channels use and checking vidIQ’s views per hour metric. This reveals you which ones movies are presently fashionable, so you possibly can create content material that pulls extra viewers.

Standout function: Analyzing efficiency information proper inside YouTube

vidIQ provides an extension to the Chrome internet browser that lets you get information proper inside YouTube. In my view, a few of the most dear information factors offered right here are:

• Video tags: You’ll be able to see which key phrases your competitor is attempting to focus on and the place they rank. You need to use the identical ones in your channel or get comparable key phrase concepts.
• Views Per Hour (VPH) metric: If you happen to spot a video older than a yr however nonetheless will get a excessive VPH, this could possibly be an evergreen subject.

Pricing

The above performance comes with the free vidIQ plan. However should you’re severe about video advertising and marketing and monitoring your competitor’s YouTube channels, positively think about paid plans that begin from $10 ($7.50 if paid yearly) — see pricing.

Some advert networks let you see all advertisements presently operating on their platforms (and typically even archived advertisements). You’ll be able to merely lookup your competitor and examine their advertisements for gratis. Such libraries are the most effective PPC competitor instruments you possibly can add to your toolkit.

On the time of writing, the sort of service is formally supported on:

• Meta (Fb, Messenger, and Instagram)
• TikTok
• Google Ads
• X
• LinkedIn (no separate library: you could discover your competitor’s profile after which go to Posts/Adverts).

The way to use them:

• See in case your competitor is operating any advertisements within the first place. Establishing that may assist you negotiate your advertising and marketing finances; if they’re investing closely in advertisements, you would possibly think about growing your finances to remain aggressive.
• Search for the options or offers they promote probably the most to encourage your individual offers. As an illustration, if a competitor is providing a particular low cost or highlighting a specific product function, you possibly can create comparable offers or spotlight completely different options that make your product stand out.
• Examine the language and visible design of the advertisements and touchdown pages. You’ll be able to both create one thing completely completely different to face out or use their type as inspiration should you want a fast solution to launch your individual marketing campaign. For instance, if their advertisements are colourful and daring, you would possibly go for a modern and minimalist look to distinguish your self. Or, if their method appears efficient, you possibly can undertake comparable methods to draw consideration shortly.

Standout function: Finding out opponents’ campaigns to face out

Let’s say you’re attempting to advertise your challenge administration software program, and Asana is considered one of your opponents. A fast seek for this advertiser on the Meta advert library reveals a transparent sample: they’re presently utilizing minimalistic visible design to advertise their content material. Utilizing comparable imagery in your advertisements will not be the most effective concept as a result of your model would possibly get confused with theirs and even be seen as a copycat.

Pricing

All official advert libraries are free.

BuiltWith is a device that helps determine the applied sciences any web site is utilizing, like promoting platforms, cost methods, internet servers, and CDNs.

Whereas the earlier instruments present you “what” opponents are doing, this device helps to reply the query “how” they’re doing it.

The way to use it:

• Discover area of interest promoting platforms your opponents use and see should you can promote there too. By figuring out the particular platforms the place your opponents are putting their advertisements, you possibly can attain comparable audiences.
• Uncover firms that use your opponents’ merchandise — doubtlessly an excellent supply of prospects in your gross sales staff to pursue. If an organization is already utilizing a product just like yours, they could be concerned about switching to your providing should you can present higher options, pricing, or customer support. Attain out to those firms with tailor-made pitches to draw their enterprise.
• Monitor your competitor’s market share to know how their technique could also be impacting their enterprise. If they’re gaining market share, analyze what they’re doing proper and think about incorporating comparable ways into your individual technique. If they’re dropping market share, search for alternatives to capitalize on their weaknesses and seize extra of the marketplace for your small business.

Standout function: Discovering area of interest promoting platforms

Since most promoting platforms use monitoring codes and pixels for retargeting, analytics, and attribution functions, you’ll see which platforms your opponents are current on.

Discovering out that your opponents use Google, Fb, and Twitter advertisements isn’t a shock for anybody, although. However you could find some area of interest platforms or show networks which may be price trying into. Right here’s an instance of what BuiltWith can reveal in its “Analytics and Monitoring” part. This firm advertises on Reddit:

Pricing

BuiltWith is free for the use case I depicted above. Paid plans begin from $295/mo and could also be price it for companies that want a deeper dive into tech stacks — see pricing.

Shocked to see ChatGPT right here? The very fact is that AI will be extremely helpful in competitor evaluation. Superior AI options, which are sometimes seen in high-end instruments, reveal this potential:

However since these instruments are for many who can afford them, you should use ChatGPT together with one of many instruments on this article to get comparable performance at a fraction of the value.

The way to use it:

• Ask ChatGPT for content material concepts primarily based on fashionable matters inside your business. You’ll be able to enter competitor weblog titles or trending matters, and ChatGPT can assist brainstorm new content material that resonates together with your viewers.
• Analyze competitor social media methods by feeding ChatGPT with their posts. It could assist determine profitable engagement ways, widespread themes, and content material that generates probably the most interplay.
• Ask for advert copy options. If you happen to discover opponents operating efficient advertisements, you possibly can enter their advert copy into ChatGPT to generate comparable, high-impact advert copy tailor-made to your model and viewers.
• Analyze buyer suggestions. Enter buyer evaluations and suggestions out of your opponents into ChatGPT. It could assist summarize widespread praises and complaints, providing you with insights into areas.
• Crunch numbers and visualize information. Use ChatGPT to course of and interpret numerical information out of your opponents. You’ll be able to enter gross sales figures, engagement metrics, or different related information, and ChatGPT can assist you analyze developments, create forecasts, and generate visualizations to raised perceive the aggressive panorama.

Standout function: Analyzing massive units of person evaluations to seek out opponents’ robust and weak factors.

I ran this type of evaluation in my guide to competitive analysis. You want information from a evaluate website like Capterra or Trustpilot (you possibly can even manually copy/paste the evaluations, it solely takes a couple of minutes) after which this immediate.

Consequently, you’ll get two charts with the highest 10 constructive and detrimental issues talked about within the evaluations. It would look one thing like this:

How you should use this information is determined by the findings. Usually, you’d wish to shut any severe function gaps and use complaints to win over your competitor’s prospects. For instance, if individuals complain in regards to the UX features, you possibly can devise a marketing campaign across the superiority of your product’s look and really feel.

Ultimate ideas

Earlier than you go, let me spotlight a couple of extra aggressive evaluation sources (not essentially instruments) which are tremendous useful and primarily free:

• IPO stories (aka S-1 stories) and monetary stories of publicly traded firms. Two ideas right here: attempt to see if somebody already analyzed the paper (example) and see if AI instruments like Documind or PDF.ai can assist you undergo the paperwork.
• Surveys and focus teams to get quantitative and qualitative information about your market and opponents.
• Ghost procuring to get direct buyer experiences out of your opponents and presumably uncover their gross sales ways.
• Overview platforms like G2, TrustPilot, Yelp, or Google My Enterprise to verify what your opponents’ prospects say.

In order that’s it. If you happen to’re simply discovering out about aggressive intelligence instruments however are not sure what’s the precise solution to conduct a aggressive evaluation, we even have a simple guide (including a template).

Obtained questions or feedback? Ping me on X or LinkedIn.