Competitor analysis template
2026-10-06
A competitor analysis is one column per competitor and one row per fact you can check in public. This template has 22 rows on pricing, product, ads and channels, with the place each one can be read. Download it as a CSV and open it in any spreadsheet.
The template
| Section | Field | What to write | Where it is public |
|---|---|---|---|
| Company | Name and domain | The company and the site buyers land on. | Its homepage. |
| Who it sells to | The buyer the homepage names, in its own words. | The homepage headline and the first section under it. | |
| Headline | The homepage headline, copied. | The homepage. Copy it again at every re-read; a new headline usually means a new target buyer. | |
| Pricing | Entry price | The cheapest paid plan per month, monthly and annual billing. | The pricing page. If it shows no figure, write "not published" and how a buyer gets a quote. |
| Plans and limits | Each plan with the limit that separates it from the next: seats, records, competitors, exports. | The pricing page and its plan comparison table. | |
| Trial and refund | Free plan, trial length, whether a card is needed, refund terms. | The pricing page and its FAQ. | |
| What the top plan adds | The features held back for the most expensive plan. | The plan comparison table. | |
| Product | Main features | The three to five features the site leads with. | The homepage and the product pages. |
| Shipped in the last 90 days | Dated releases. | The changelog or release notes, and the docs. | |
| Ads | Meta ads | Running or not, how many, and what the most recent ad says. | Meta Ad Library. |
| Google ads | Running or not, how many, formats (search, display, video). | Google Ads Transparency Center. | |
| LinkedIn ads | Running or not, how many, and the offer in the most recent ad. | LinkedIn Ad Library. | |
| TikTok ads | Running or not, how many. | TikTok Ad Library. | |
| X ads | Running or not, and the posts found. | X has no ad library outside the EU. Its ads can be found through the replies to them. | |
| Channels | SEO | How many pages the site publishes and the keywords it ranks for. | Its sitemap for the page count; a keyword tool such as SpyFu or Similarweb for rankings. |
| Backlinks | Number of linking sites and what kind they are (press, directories, partners). | A backlink tool. | |
| Cold outbound | Whether it sends cold email, and from how many domains. | Look-alike domains (for acme.com: tryacme.com, getacme.com) that have mail servers set up and redirect to the main site. | |
| Reviews | Review count and rating per site. | G2, Capterra and Trustpilot profiles. | |
| Social accounts | Accounts, followers and how often each posts. | The links in the site footer. | |
| Founder audience | Followers of the founders' own accounts and how often they post. | The founders' LinkedIn and X profiles. | |
| Press | Coverage in the last 12 months. | A news search for the company name. | |
| Summary | Date read | The date you filled in this column. | It tells you which columns are due for a re-read. |
Example: the pricing rows for SpyFu and Similarweb
We filled in the pricing section for two tools from their pricing pages on 6 October 2026.
| Field | SpyFu | Similarweb |
|---|---|---|
| Entry price | $39/month, or $29/month billed annually (Basic) | $199/month, or $125/month billed annually (Competitive Intelligence) |
| Plans and limits | Basic: 10,000-row results and exports, 5,000 tracked keywords, 1 user. Pro + AI, $119/month after a $59 first month: unlimited results, 15,000 keywords. Team / Agency, $249/month: 5 users, 50,000 keywords. | Competitive Intelligence: 1 seat, 3 months of history. Competitive Intel & SEO & AEO, $399/month: 6 months of history, 150 tracked prompts. Competitive Intel, SEO & AEO & Ads, $649/month. Business and enterprise packages are quoted by sales. |
| Trial and refund | 30-day money-back guarantee; cancel at any time. | Free trial. |
| What the top plan adds | 5 user seats, unlimited tracking projects, a daily site audit. | Ad data: creatives, campaigns and ad spend. |
| Date read | 6 October 2026 | 6 October 2026 |
The entry prices are $160 a month apart. The "What the top plan adds" row shows a second difference: Similarweb keeps ad data for its $649 plan, and SpyFu lists its 10+ years of historical data in every plan.
How to do a competitor analysis with it
- Pick five to ten competitors. Take the names your buyers bring up, the ones on your category's review-site pages, and the ones that show up when you search your own name with "alternatives".
- Fill in one column per competitor, top to bottom, only from the sources in the last column. Leave a cell empty when the source does not say; a month later you will not remember which cells were guesses.
- Write the date at the bottom of each column.
- Read across each row. The rows where one competitor differs from the rest are the findings: the only one with a free plan, the only one running LinkedIn ads, the only one with no published price.
- Add your own company as the first column and mark the rows where you are behind.
- Re-read the pricing and ad rows every month. In our monitoring data for 13 companies over 30 days, 10 changed their ads or channels and 4 changed pricing (the counts are here).
Filling it in automatically
CompetitorBase fills in the pricing, ad and channel rows for a domain and re-checks them every 24 hours, with an email when one changes. Starter costs $29/month for 10 competitors, with a 3-day free trial.