Personally, I don't like thinking about competition—it makes me anxious. I'd rather be like Matthew McConaughey at the 2014 Oscars and just compete with myself (or at least ramble about it until the exit music comes on).

But in the business world, there's no way around thinking about your competitors. It's how brands know how to position themselves in the greater marketplace.

The right software can make those efforts more informed, more accurate, and more efficient. So I talked to the folks who actually do competitor analysis. Based on those conversations, lots of research into the market, and hands-on testing, I've compiled the best competitor analysis tools out there to help you find your competitive edge. 

And while I can't guarantee an anxiety-free experience, I can say that each of these options can help you get valuable insights into your competition.

The 9 best competitor analysis tools

• Similarweb for actionable market research

• Sprout Social for social listening

• Ahrefs for SEO

• Semrush for an all-in-one solution

• Owletter for email campaign analysis

• Owler for competitor research on a budget

• Earnest Analytics for consumer spending data

• Morning Consult for survey data

• Wappalyzer for tech stack monitoring

What makes the best competitor analysis tool?

The term "competitor analysis" is pretty vague, so I've segmented these software options into a few categories related to key elements of competitive market analysis:

• Social media monitoring: Tools designed to track competitors' social media performance for metrics like engagement rate, followers, and mentions

• SEO analysis: Software that can track competitors' web presence and content marketing performance

• Direct marketing: Applications for reporting on competitors' email, SMS, and advertising campaigns

• Competitor intelligence: Platforms for accessing competitors' financial data, historical performance, and market positioning

Most of these tools fall within the SEO and competitor intelligence categories, as those avenues tend to have the highest impact on business objectives. But whichever group these tools fall into, they all have these traits in common:

• Comparison capabilities: Each platform has tools dedicated specifically to identifying/analyzing competitor data in a way that can inform business practices.

• Novel insights: Each provides reporting with useful insights into competitors that aren't readily available.

• Sales/marketing use case: Provided insights should impact some element of sales and/or marketing channels. 

• Ease of use: The product should have turnkey utility with a dynamic yet accessible interface.

I spent time researching all of these categories and testing as many of the apps as I could. To get added insights from a range of professionals, I also surveyed several dozen industry experts, including marketing and sales managers, data and analytics VPs, SEO consultants, and company senior leadership. This list is based on a combination of my research and their recommendations.

The best competitor analysis tools at a glance

Best competitor analysis tool for actionable market research

Similarweb (Web)

Similarweb pros:

• Accessible market data segmented by use case

• Reliable, dynamic data sources

• User-friendly interface

Similarweb cons:

• Limited access to granular, niche data

The industry pros I surveyed mentioned Similarweb again and again. By the app's own reporting, Similarweb collects 10 billion digital data signals per day, analyzes 2 TB of data per day, and houses 200 data scientists. The result? A huge network of actionable market data.

All this data boils down into five Similarweb product segments:

• Digital Research Intelligence: Market-related data, like customer journeys, brand audiences, and industry intelligence

• Digital Marketing Intelligence: SEO-related data, like competitive analysis, keyword research, and PPC

• Sales Intelligence: Data across the sales pipeline, like lead generation, lead enrichment, and sales engagement

• Stock Intelligence: Dashboards for metrics related to stock performance

• Shopper Intelligence: End-user data, like consumer demand, shopper behavior, and on-site SEO

All this data utility is why digital marketing consultant Velizara Tellalyan uses Similarweb for comprehensive market intelligence: "This suite aggregates and analyzes broader sets of data related to my targeted competitors. I can analyze their marketing mix, audience engagement, etc. I can also benchmark my client's PPC search ads and display creatives against those of competitors using this tool."

Good market intelligence is worth its weight in gold to businesses, and Similarweb is a go-to source of it for many of the professionals who run those businesses' sales and marketing efforts. Its data is robust and reliable, and its interfaces are convenient and user-friendly. It may lack some of the intelligence depths of some of the niche consumer data tools out there, but it's tough to beat in terms of accessible sales and marketing data.

Similarweb pricing: Starter ($125/month), Professional ($333/month), Team (pricing by request), Enterprise (pricing by request)

Best competitor analysis tool for social listening

Sprout Social (Web)

Sprout Social pros:

• Rich insights into competitors and general trends

• AI-powered analytics and automations

Sprout Social cons:

• Relatively expensive

• Some key functionality is paywalled, like reporting and X trend analysis

It was tough to find reasons not to pick Sprout Social for this distinction. Marketing pros like Simon Bacher, CEO and co-founder of Ling, consider it industry-standard software for social media listening. 

"Sprout Social," Simon notes, "allows us to monitor brand mentions, hashtags, keywords, and more across various platforms. It helps us gain insight into how consumers perceive our and competitors' brands." Using AI, Sprout Social can gather and interpret competitor data to give you actionable information about what works for them, what doesn't, and how you can fill in the gaps with your own content.

With Sprout Social, you can see not only what your competitors are posting but also how users feel about them and analyze trends in their sentiments. And by tracking user conversations based on predefined topics and queries, you can find real-time opportunities to learn from your competitors.

One of the best aspects of Sprout Social is that it incorporates AI really deeply into its software. Sprout Social's AI pulls from a decade of historical data points to provide rich sentiment analysis and identify trends and behaviors. Armed with your knowledge about competitor performance metrics, like audience sentiment, response rate, engagement, and share of voice, you can use AI to generate content ideas, create content, respond to users, and automate redundant tasks.

For all this utility, Sprout Social comes with a premium price tag, but it's well worth it for companies that rely on their social media presence.

Sprout Social pricing: Standard ($249/month), Professional ($399/month), Advanced ($499/month), Enterprise (pricing by request)

Best competitor analysis tool for SEO

Ahrefs (Web)

Ahrefs pros:

• Competitive Analysis tool helps discover content gaps

• Huge suite of SEO tools

• Rich keyword database and updated backlink profiles

Ahrefs cons:

• Premium price tag

• Competitive analysis is just one small element of its functionality

If Sprout Social is the industry standard for social monitoring, Ahrefs is the gold standard of SEO competitor analysis. It's my go-to tool, and it's the product that came up most when I surveyed industry professionals.

One of those professionals was Ben Poulton, SEO consultant and founder of Intellar, who told me, "Ahrefs is my go-to software for SEO, and their functionalities for competitor analyses are super helpful right out of the gate. I can create detailed reports on competitive benchmarking by keyword and category. These help me and clients quickly spot gaps, underperforming areas, or highly competitive terms we do well on, but want to make sure we maintain."

Can other software like SEO audit tools do similar things? Sure. But as Poulton pointed out, "The edge Ahrefs has over its competitors is a bigger keyword database and more detailed backlink metrics." I've tried dozens of others myself, and I still come back to Ahrefs for competitor analysis for the same reasons. 

I use the Competitive Analysis tool to find new content opportunities and optimize current content, the Site Explorer to dive deep into competitor content performance, and the Ahrefs browser extension to get real-time performance data directly in the SERP. Put simply: Ahrefs offers the richest, most accessible suite of data for performing SEO competitor analysis. 

Ahrefs pricing: Lite ($99/month), Standard ($199/month), Advanced ($399/month), Enterprise ($999/month)

Best all-in-one competitor analysis tool

Semrush (Web, iOS)

Semrush pros:

• Huge suite of powerful analytics tools

• Market Explorer shows competitor market data

• Can replace multiple separate products

Semrush cons:

• Not quite as strong as other tools for specific tasks

You can use Semrush for pretty much any SEO task—which makes it the perfect tool for anyone looking for competitor insights beyond just blog content. It's like a web presence Costco—one spot for everything you could ever want, in quantities so big you need an oversized shopping cart.

Chase Koches, director of operations at Currier Marketing, uses Semrush for everything from social listening to content analysis to market intelligence. Here's how Koches said he uses one tool to check each box:

• "Social media listening: Connect your social account with Semrush to easily track your progress against your competition's.

• SEO/content analysis: Semrush has robust tools to help understand the keyword gaps that you have with your competitors, making developing a content strategy much easier.

• Market intelligence: Semrush is also useful in this realm for understanding where link profiles or backlinks might be lacking when compared to a competitor. As well, you can review advertising from competitors to see how they are competing in the market."

Semrush has useful products for executing each of these. Want to check in on competitors' social media presence? Social Media Tracker digs into their content, so you can see what works for them. Want SEO insights? Semrush has a slew of tools, like Backlink Gap, which helps you find viable content ideas based on competitor performance. Want market data? Use Market Explorer to discover a competitor's market share, size, and opportunities or EyeOn for continual monitoring.

I wouldn't expect Semrush to be quite as good at specific tasks as other products I mention on this list (I still prefer Ahrefs and Sprout Social for content analysis and social listening), but as a jack-of-all-trades product, it's powerful and reasonably priced. Plus, it integrates with Zapier, massively expanding its integration and automation capabilities. Here are some examples of how it works.

Semrush pricing: Pro ($129.95/month), Guru ($249.95/month), Business ($499.95/month)

Best competitor analysis tool for email campaign analysis

Owletter (Web)

Owletter pros:

• Automatically capture and organize competitor email campaigns

• Unique competitor email analytics and trend graphs

• Custom keyword alerts

Owletter cons:

• Lowest tier is fairly limited

• Can't provide private insights into metrics like open rates

There's one important aspect of competitor analysis that I haven't touched on yet: owl-related software names. And also email marketing. Owletter combines both into one seamless package.

Owletter is a dedicated competitor email campaign analysis platform, which can be an incredibly powerful tool for companies that depend on email outreach. Just set your competitors, and the software collects screenshots of all their mailing list blasts (making it more like a net than an owl, if you think about it—"Netter" must have been taken). 

Once you build out a repository of competitor marketing communiqué, Owletter tracks and analyzes them. You can collect and sort these emails to track competitors' outreach efforts and emulate what works. You can even set up keyword-based alerts to ping you when they mention terms that matter to your business.

As someone who's done a fair amount of email marketing over their career, I can attest that there can be more speculation than prediction when it comes to designing campaigns. Owletter lets you cut out campaign guesswork by seeing what successful companies do. You can use Owletter to track campaign metrics like spam status, send times, send days, frequency, and seasonality. 

Pricing is pretty affordable overall, though the monthly roundup, single alert, and one-year storage may be a bit limiting for Starter-tier users. Still, Owletter is a unique tool that can give email marketers some massively useful insights.

Owletter pricing: Starter ($19/month), Pro ($39/month), Unlimited ($79/month)

Best competitor analysis tool for competitor research on a budget

Owler (Web)

Owler pros:

• Useful free plan

• Detailed competitor profiles with relational mapping

• Competitor search based on specific metrics

Owler cons:

• Limited depth compared to high-end options

• Interface is a little slow

Yes, this is another owl-themed app, and no, I will not be making an owl pun. I will, however, note that Owler is the best competitive intelligence tool for businesses with slim sales budgets.

Ling co-founder Simon Bacher also included Owler in his suite of preferred competitor analysis tools, noting, "Owler assists in understanding market trends, tracking performance metrics, and staying updated on industry news." Designed to help companies discover more qualified leads, it allows users to track and set up alerts for both competitors and potential customers. 

Owler's company profiles give useful insights into data like funding amounts, revenue, number of employees, and public updates. Not sure which companies are your competitors? Owler charts competitive relationships so you can browse related companies and find broader industry trends. You can even drill down by metrics that matter to you, like location, company size, revenue, and business sector. I'll warn that the interface can be a little sluggish, but it's pretty user-friendly overall.

With a rare free plan and very affordable paid plan, Owler is an almost shockingly cost-effective solution. For bigger sales teams, Owler Max comes with its own CRM and additional integrations to help drive more efficient lead acquisition and smarter lead tracking. Owler won't give you the kind of market depth you get from Similarweb or enterprise-level market research firms, but if you're looking for pure competitor profiling, research, and monitoring, Owler is a (no, not hoot) steal.

Owler pricing: Community (free), Pro ($35/month), Max (pricing by request)

Best competitor analysis tool for consumer spending data

Earnest Analytics (Web)

Earnest Analytics pros:

• Consumer credit card transaction data

• AI-based benchmarking and insights

• Free trial available

Earnest Analytics cons:

• Expensive, and must talk to sales agent for pricing

For some occasions, a pie from Costco (seeing a theme emerge here) is perfect. For others, it's time to pull out that complicated NYT recipe that'll take an entire day to get wrong. Similarly, for some use cases, pre-packaged third-party competitor reporting is enough. For others, you'll need to piece it together with raw data.

Earnest Analytics isn't for the faint of heart. By offering access to credit card data, the platform enables you to compile your own competitor financial analyses and projections. The benefit, as NicheMerch Founder James Riso puts it, is that it lets you "reliably estimate revenue growth, transaction size, and retention rates."

These consumer spending trends are available across a huge range of companies, so you can track transaction trends dating back to 2016 for multiple competitors. Armed with real spending data, you can compile high-leverage reporting for more accurate purchase volume and revenue growth based on historical data, not just conjecture.

If my pie analogy isn't for you, it's worth noting that Earnest Analytics does more than just present raw data. With its AI-fueled benchmarking, market share calculations, consumer behavior analysis, and macro-level economic context, it's a complete hub for alternative data insights you won't get from any of the other products on this list. 

Pricing is by request, so I can't guess at the price. But "if you can afford this," James noted, "it is an excellent way to put your own metrics in context." You can test limited access to Earnest Analytics for free, so if rich consumer spending data piques your interest like Swiss meringue, it's worth checking out.

Earnest Analytics pricing: Pricing by request (probably very expensive)

Best competitor analysis tool for competitor survey data

Morning Consult (Web)

Morning Consult pros:

• High-frequency survey data

• Collaborative interface

Morning Consult cons:

• Limited free access

So far this list has been pretty focused on quantitative data, but when it comes to data analysis, numbers don't get to have all the fun. That's where decision intelligence platform Morning Consult comes in.

Morning Consult offers high-frequency survey data, meaning users get the most powerful, most relevant, most updated qualitative user data available. As James described to me, this is useful for giving analytics professionals insights on "attitudes relevant to your and others' brand as well as trends in your market, with quite useful contextual data on the respondents." 

To promote seamless collaboration and actionability, Morning Consult offers this data through its intuitive Intelligence interface. Meanwhile, those who want to integrate the intel into other software solutions can use its proprietary API. 

This dashboard provides survey data vetted and analyzed by internal data scientists to establish clear trend narratives that translate to deployable strategies. As a result of this exceptionally rich data and analysis, you get deeper customer understanding and more accurate predictive analysis. 

If actionable, recent user survey data is invaluable to what you do, then so is Morning Consult.

Morning Consult pricing: Individuals ($129/month), Teams ($104/user/month, minimum 5 seats), Enterprise ($42/user/month, minimum 20 seats)

Best competitor analysis tool for tech stack monitoring

Wappalyzer (Web)

Wappalyzer pros:

• Instant access to website tech stacks and contact information

• Also offers numerous market data classes

• Available by web, browser extension, integration, and API

Wappalyzer cons:

• Pricey

• Supplemental data isn't as robust as dedicated market data platforms

• Reports can take a long time to generate

While the other products on this list have been dedicated to researching how competitors are doing, this one shows you how competitors are doing what they're doing. More specifically, Wappalyzer shows you the technology they use to do it.

Wappalyzer is an application that instantly pulls up the tech stack that powers your competitor websites of choice. Just look up a competitor who's chewing up real estate in your market and see everything from their payment processing software to their CMS. As you develop your business, you can look behind the curtain to see how to build a rival online presence. 

Beyond software recommendations, you can also use this data to create website and contact lists filtered by software type, social media presence, contact information, and even common industry keywords. For example, you can look up WordPress to see which websites use it, then target each of them to market a premium WordPress application. Be advised that the broader the search, the longer reports can take. And they can take quite a while—one of mine took upwards of an hour.

Need more than software specs? Wappalyzer also offers additional insights like market research, competitor analysis, data enrichment, and website monitoring. Plus, you can connect the platform by browser extension, API, or direct integration and apply workflow automations to streamline searches. This is one of the more unique offerings on the list, but it could be extremely valuable for some people.

Wappalyzer pricing: Pro ($250/month), Business ($450/month), Enterprise ($850/month)

What about Google competitor analysis tools?

As always, Google has its own suite of tools you can use to perform elements of competitor analysis. Here are a few:

• Google Search: To dive into your competitors' online presences, you can always start with a good ol'-fashioned Google Search.

• Search Console: Look up competitor domains to find out which queries they're ranking for.

• Google Trends: See which topics and queries your competitors are publishing about.

• Google Analytics: Use Auction Insight Reports to see how the competition's ads are performing.

• Google Merchant Center: The Price Competitiveness report can show you how your product pricing fares against the competition, while the Best Sellers list shows which products are performing the best.

• Google News: Set up alerts to see when your competitors post about topics in your market, mention priority keywords, or get mentioned.

Picking the right competitor analysis tools for the job

It should be pretty clear that each of the competitor analysis tools I selected has distinct use cases. That means picking the right one depends on what you need to know about your competitors, what you intend to do with that information, and what your budget is.

As I mentioned earlier, they basically break down into tools for social media monitoring, SEO analysis, direct marketing, and competitor intelligence. However, those really break down even further into two types of competitive analysis:

• Market data analysis: Similarweb, Owler, Earnest Analytics, Morning Consult, or Wappalyzer

• Digital marketing analysis: Ahrefs, Semrush, Sprout Social, or Owletter

You can't go wrong with any of these tools. And whichever you use, remember that they can do even more when you automate your competitor analysis.

Related reading:

• The best business intelligence (BI) software

• The best AI productivity tools

• The best SEO tools

• How marketers can automate data analytics