It can be hard to find completely free online competitor analysis tools you can use effectively. However, there are digital marketing analytics tools that are a gold mine for insights and research on competitors at no cost.
We collected a list of the best online software solutions for market analysis and research such as :
- free social media competitor analysis tools;
- free website, keyword, backlink, and SEO competitor analysis tools;
- free PPC competitive analysis software;
- website change checkers and others
Today, it is absolutely critical to ensure you’re monitoring your competitors on a daily basis and updating your view of the market shifts.
On our previous posts
- 50 Best Web Competitive Intelligence Tools and Techniques and
- How To Do Competitive Market Research and Analysis? The Guide
we’ve focused on what are the benefits of competitive research and analysis and how to do it effectively.
Here, we will show you the top 25 costless online tools you can use freely to spy your competitors, spot new market trends, and find out what’s working within your niche.
Some of the tools are free by nature and others provide a completely free account with a comprehensive range of free features.
1. Crayon Intel Free (free market intelligence tool that monitor competitor’s content and design changes)
This great marketing intelligence tool can help you track, analyze, and act on many things that happen outside of your business.
With Crayon Intel Free you can monitor seamlessly the content and design changes from your competitors.
You can have a collection of competitors, track inspirational brands, get daily email digests, and get a comprehensive view of your competitors’ moves.
Crayon Intel Free is completely free to use, and you can track any number of companies.
Free options: only free account
2. Talkwalker’s Free Social Search(free social media competitor analysis tool)
Do you wanna know what social media strategies are your competitors pursuing? You can get the answer for free by Talkwalker’s Free Social Search.
This is a great real-time free social media search engine that can provide you with unlimited searches across all major social networks.
You can get an instant overview of your competitors’ social media campaigns. The tool shows you who’s talking about you and your competitors with live audience insights.
And the best thing is that you can enjoy unlimited real-time data.
Free options: only free
3. SiteAlerts (free keyword, social media, and website competitor analysis tool)
This is one of the most easiest to use and completely free online competitor analysis tools that answer many questions such as:
How much traffic do your competitors get? Where does the traffic come from? What software tools do they use? What keywords do they rank for? Is social media working for them?
SiteAlerts is a simple but very useful keyword, social media, and website competitor analysis tool that will provide you with a lot of marketing stats about your competitors as well as the technology they use.
Free options: a free account with a good range of features and paid accounts
4. VisualPing (free website change checker)
Do you want to monitor seamlessly your competitor’s websites changes at no cost? If so, VisualPing can be your solution.
It get you notified on each visual change of a website or website area.
Thus, you can be alerted every time when your competitor update prices, publish news or other important information to users.
Visualping is one of the most easiest to use free website change checkers.
Free options: free account with 62 checks/month and premium accounts
5. WhatRuns (discover what technology drives your competitor’s website at no cost)
WhatRuns is a free technology lookup tool that will show you what technologies are used on any website.
Actually, this is a free browser extension that shows you the technologies used on your rival’s website at the click of a button.
WhatRuns shows you almost everything that a website has. Web apps they pay for, CDN they’re hosted on, WordPress plugins, fonts – and much more info!
Also, the tool notifies you when a website starts or stop using a technology.
Free options: only free
6. Rank Signals (free keyword, backlink, and SEO competitor analysis tool)
Rank Signals is one of the greatest free online competitor analysis tools that allows you to discover SEO backlinks and traffic sources of your competitors.
You might know how important backlinks are for a good SEO strategy.
Rank Signal helps you identify your competitors best links and evaluate the quality and value of the links.
If you searching for a solid basis for a link building strategy, don’t hesitate to use this tool.
Free options: only free
7. Moat (free tool for analyzing your competitors’ ad creative)
Moat is an awesome free online marketing analysis tool that act as digital-ad search engine. It shows you the competitor’s ad creative and campaigns.
Simply type in the online field a brand and you will see the ads that they are using.
It also displays the dimensions of the ad and the dates during which the ad was (is) active.
You can follow your competitors’ brands and get notified every time they publish a new ad.
Free options: a free account that work great and a PRO oprion
8. SimilarWeb (free online tool for analyzing your competitor’s web rankings)
This is one of the most comprehensive free online competitor analysis tools when it comes to traffic insights for any website.
Just type a website in the online field and instantly you’ll get global rank, country rank, and category rank of that website.
You also will see nice graphs that show the traffic sources, top 5 organic keywords of your competitor’s website, the leads from social media channels, audience Interests, and much more.
SimilarWeb lets you add competitors and even gives you suggestions on who you may want to follow and watch.
Free options: a free account with a good range of features and paid accounts
9. Feedly (free news aggregator site for tracking competitors’ news and mentions)
Feedly is a news aggregator site that can work greatly as one of the free online competitor analysis tools .
It’s one of the easiest ways for checking your competitors’ new posts without bouncing all over the web. You won’t miss a beat from your competitors’ news and mentions.
With Feedly you are able to monitor easily news about your competitors’ products, services, posts, content, Tweets or even YouTube videos.
You can create a collection for a given topic – news, competitors, etc. – and put all the sites you currently read into the list.
Moreover, Feedly also recommends other similar and related sites based on the your collection content.
Free options: a free version that will keep you up to date with content and a paid account
10. Open Link Profiler (free SEO and backlink competitor analysis tool)
OpenLinkProfiler.org is an awsome free online SEO and backlink competitor analysis tool that enables you to check the backlinks of any website.
You get an immediate link analysis of any website you want. You can export 1,000 links per website for free (more in paid versions).
You can also use a Link Manager for free and get notifications about new links by email.
Open Link Profiler is an online marketing analytics software tool that works great for those who aim to get higher rankings on search engines such as Google and Bing.
Free options: a free account that allows you to export 1000 links per website and premium versions
11. Website Grader (a free online website competitor analysis tool)
Website Grader from Hubspot is a very cool tool that will provide you with instant insights on your competitors’ overall score based on website’s performance and SEO activity.
The tool also give you information about how well is optimized your competitor’s websites for mobile.
You can also see how good are your competitor websites’ page titles, headings, and meta descriptions.
Free options: only free to use
12. BuiltWith (a free website profiler for insights on your competitor’s marketing strategies)
BuiltWith is one of the best free online competitor analysis tools that provides technology information for any website you want to check.
It helps you find out what technology are used for building your competitor’s website, in order to get leads, marketing intelligence, and analysis.
Fill in a competitor’s website and instantly see what software systems they use. This gives you powerful insights on their marketing strategies.
BuiltWith answer questions such as: “What content management system are your competitors using?”, “What are they tracking?”, “What plugins are installed on their website?”
Free options: BuiltWith is completely free to use for individual site lookups.
13. Majestic (free backlink and SEO competitor analysis tool)
Majestic is an online SEO competitor analysis tool that specializes in backlinks. It provides you with a depth of backlink data for your competitor’s website.
Majestic is a very easy to setup web-based software. First, you need to register for a free account to get the insights.
After logging in, you can begin using Majestic immediately.
The free version will show you information about the number of links to your competitor’s URL, the number of of links to the domain, the number of domains that link to the URL and to the domain, Citation Flow, Trust Flow, a link profile graph of the citation flow and trust flow, timeline charts, and other.
Free options: free account with a great range of features
14. Searchmetrics (free SEO, content marketing, and PPC compatitor analysis tool)
Searchmetrics is one of the most powerful free online competitor analysis tools with a lot of functions and options.
It is a web-based SEO and content marketing software solution to help you improve your online presence and research your competitors.
It’s quite easy to jump in and see a lot of types of data for any website you need.
With a free account you can see a lot of SEO data for your competitors such as the top keywords their websites are ranking for, organic vs paid keywords, users by locations, market analysis including your top organic competitors, and more.
Reports are absolutely easy to understand and include PPC competitive analysis and social media competition.
Free options: free account with powerful features and paid versions
15. SpyFu (free SEO and keyword competitor analysis tool)
When it comes to the most popular free online competitor analysis tools, SpyFu is on the top places and will impress you with its depth and wealth of features.
SpyFu is an SEO tool that allows you to gain a deep insight on your competitor’s keyword campaign.
Its options include keyword spy tools, PPC competitor monitoring, keyword grouper, competitor shared keywords, and much more.
Except keywords, Spyfu also seamlessly tracks backlinks to your competitors websites and their PPC advertising. This is a very comprehensive tool for tracking your competitors and any other website you want.
It can greatly support your online marketing and digital advertising efforts at no cost.
Free options: a free account with several features with data limits and premium accounts
16. Wappalyzer (uncover what technology is used on your competitors’ websites at no cost)
Wappalyzer is a simple and absolutely easy to use free online software tool that uncovers the technologies used on websites.
It can shows you the content management systems, ecommerce platforms, server software, analytics tools, and many other technology solutions used in your competitors’ websites.
Moreover, the tool also shows you what are the leading technologies per industry.
Wappalyzer is an open-source platform capable of identifying 1,222 different web technologies.
Free options: only free
17. Adbeat (for spying on your competitor’s ad strategies at no cost)
If you are searching for free online competitor analysis tools that provide deep insights into the world of digital advertising, Adbeat can be your answer.
It is a different but very useful free solution. You are able to monitor and analyze all the advertisements that your competitors publish.
Adbeat shows you the messaging, creative, placement, size, the number of ads, ad channels, the types of ads, and many other data.
You are able to see the value propositions your competitors are focusing on. And all of these – for free.
Free options: free account with a great range of features and paid accounts
18. iSpionage (tool for PPC & SEO competitive Intelligence)
iSpionage is an online competitor analysis tool that provides valuable PPC and SEO data.
The tool spies on your competitors and shows you what search keywords and advertisement content allow them to attract customers.
Moreover, you’ll be able to discover how much they spend on the paid and organic search, see their landing pages, and uncover their approximate monthly PPC budget.
You can also use this information to discover the top advertisers in your industry.
iSpionage shows you the data with attractive top-notch reports and various types of graphs.
Free options: a free account with a great range of features and paid accounts
19. Social Blade (a free social media competitor analysis tool)
Social Blade is a great completely free tool that tracks user statistics for social media platforms such as Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and Twitch.
It allows you to gain deeper insights of your competitor’s user growth and trends.
The tool is able to provide you with global analytics for any content creator or brand you want.
Social Blade collect data from channels like Twitter, YouTube, Twitch, Daily Motion, and Instagram and uses these data to create graphs and charts that track progress and growth.
Thus, you can gain very interesting insights for competitors. Social Blade also provides you with a day-by-day follower update as well as a live follower count.
Another great feature is the ability to compere brands’ social presences against each other.
Free options: only free
20. Mailcharts (a free email marketing tool for competitive analysis)
Mailcharts is a quite powerful tool for email marketers as well as for those who want to spy on competition.
It collects emails from competing campaigns to help you develop your own.
Mailhcharts has an enormous library of emails from countless brands.
It can track and monitor your competitors and their brands to regularly be notified of their activity.
In addition, Mailcharts can compare competitor’s campaigns to your business’ campaigns to let you see where your emails stand.
Moreover, Mailcharts offers a lot of email examples for your inspiration. This way, you can understand what today’s top-performing emails look like.
Free options: a free account that allows you to track 3 companies and paid versions.
21. Likealyzer (a free social media competitor analysis tool)
If you are searching for comprehensive free online Facebook competitor analysis tools, Likealyzer is a very good solution.
LikeAlyzer will show you an instant health check of any Facebook page.
You can get valuable insights and analytics on your competitors’ Facebook presence by seeing their likes, engagement rate, and PTAT (People Talking About This).
You can also measure responsiveness, posts per day, average post length and other information of multiple competitors to understand where you stand.
Free options: free
22. Klear (influencer audit and social media analysis tool)
Klear is a very cool tool that audits influencer activities on your competitors’ social media accounts.
Thus, you are able to find out influencers and connect with them for your own marketing efforts.
You can search for influencers by skills and location and the tool will generate influencers for you in several categories. This information allows you to determine the quantity and the quality of their followers.
Klear also generates the account’s top content on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
Free options: a free plan with limited but powerful features and paid options
23. Followerwonk(a free social media research tool)
Followerwonk is a pretty powerful free online tool for learning more about your competitors’ Twitter followers.
The tool allows you to see and analyze your competitors’ followers, the people they follow as well as their overall Twitter actions at no cost.
Also, you can find out the time when your rivals are the most active on Twitter.
Followerwonk uses actionable visualizations to compare your social graph to others.
Using this tool you can analyze and improve your social growth by seeing Twitter analytics. You also can find and connect with new influencers from your market and easily share your reports with your team.
Free options: a free plan and paid options
24. Social Searcher (free social media competitor analysis tool)
Those who are searching for free social media competitor analysis tools, will be happy to know about this one.
Social Searcher provides you with real-time search on the most popular social media platforms – Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
The tool is super easy to use. You just have to fill the name of your competitors to see who mentioned them, and how often, on the key social media sites.
Practically, you are able to instantly measure and track what people are saying about your or your competitor’s brand, product, services and etc. in one easy to use dashboard.
Free options: free
25. Talkwalker Alerts (a free web monitoring tool with results from social media)
Talkwalker Alerts allows you to monitor the Internet for new content about your name, competitors, or any other topic you want.
The tool can bring every single mention of your competitors across the Web – from websites, blogs, forums, and even Twitter to your inbox in one email.
Further, there are social media analytics filters that cover the most important conversations so you only receive the alerts that matter for you and can customize your strategy accordingly.
Free options: free
26. SEOlium (professional Google rank tracker for SEO)
SEOlium is a new Google rank tracker tool for SEO. You can use it to monitor your market and use the data to better understand and improve your business.
It’s a quite different and powerful tool. Unlike other similar tools, SEOlium produces, own, and fully controls their raw data (Google ranks).
As such, there are no artificial limits (number of projects, competitors, or reports). You have consumption-based pricing.
SEOlium is extremely accurate with superb user-Interface and speed and has many many other great features.
Conclusion
At our web age, when the ways to collect data are critical, you have tons of various factors to take in account when spying on your competitors.
Understanding your competitor’s strengths, weaknesses, and strategies is the basis on which to create and develop your business strategy and data driven decision making.
And if you are on a limited budget, there are some pretty powerful free online competitor analysis tools that can provide you with valuable insights.
We’ve collected some very useful free tools that cover a range of areas, from social media to SEO and website competitor analysis. You just have to decide which area of your competitor’s presence you want to research on.
You might be using some of these tools already.
Which online competitor analysis tools are you using? Share your experience with us.
FAQs
How do competitors analyze for free? ›
- Google Trends. Google Trends is a website that helps users in tracking down the most popular Google Searches across several geographies and linguistic communities. ...
- Similar Web. ...
- Ubersuggest. ...
- SEMrush. ...
- Siteliner. ...
- Vidiq. ...
- Moz. ...
- Buildwith.
- Identify your competitors. Who are your competitors? ...
- Use online tools to analyze their strategies. ...
- Compare them to one another. ...
- Perform a SWOT analysis. ...
- Identify your unique position.
- Identify your competitors. This sounds straightforward, but in fact there are different kinds of competitors to consider. ...
- Gather information about your competitors. ...
- Analyze your competitors' strengths and weaknesses. ...
- Determine your competitive advantage.
A thorough SWOT analysis of each of your competitors can be revealing. Based on what you learn, you can find ways to deal with their strengths and capitalize on their weaknesses. You can be better prepared for the threats they pose and take advantage of opportunities they create.
What two tools should you use when doing competitor research? ›- Simply Measured. Simply Measured is one of those incredible tools that can do a lot, and their listening and social analytics products each have great competitor research capabilities. ...
- Ahrefs. ...
- SEMrush. ...
- BuzzSumo. ...
- SpyFu. ...
- Snaplytics.
- WordStream's Free Keyword Tool.
- BuzzSumo.
- Semrush.
- Spyfu.
- Ahrefs.
- Google Auction Insights.
- Seed Keywords.
- Tag Clouds.
No, Google Analytics does not track if your users visit your competitor's websites after visiting your website. Google Analytics shows only your website's bounce rate and click-through rate. However, you can compare your results with a competitor using other third-party tools like SemRush.
What are the 4 major competitive strategies? ›- Cost leadership strategy. It suits large businesses that can produce a big volume of products at a low cost, and that is why Walmart implemented this strategy. ...
- Differentiation leadership strategy. ...
- Cost focus strategy. ...
- Differentiation focus strategy.
According to Porter's Generic Strategies model, there are three basic strategic options available to organizations for gaining competitive advantage. These are: Cost Leadership, Differentiation and Focus.
What are the 3 variables of analyzing competitors? ›Company should monitor three variables when analyzing each of itscompetitors●share if market: the competitor's share of the target market●share of mind: name the first company that comes to mind in this industry●share of heart: name the company from whom you would prefer to buy the productSuppliersare firms and ...
What is a digital competitive analysis? ›
A digital competitive analysis will look at your website's accessibility, your digital content, your search engine visibility, your social media presence and your company's online reviews. It will also look at your ability to track and analyze the data that's out there.
How do you do a simple competitive analysis? ›- Step 1 - Choose your Top Competitors. ...
- Step 2 - Describe Each Competitor. ...
- Step 3 - Describe Their Competitive Offering. ...
- Step 4 - Summarize Their Online Presence. ...
- Step 5 - List Their Strengths. ...
- Step 6 - List Their Weaknesses. ...
- Step 7 - Identify Your Opportunities.
A radar chart is a tool that you can use to compare the products of your competitors based on different characteristics. It will help you identify which competitors are scoring high or low within the characteristics you've selected.
How do you benchmark your competitors? ›- Conduct industry research for rate metrics.
- Identify your competitors.
- Create a report of competitive metrics.
- Conduct the analysis.
The SWOT analysis is a competitive analysis framework that is often used to help brands understand their own competitive advantage by detailing their Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats.
Which website helps us in getting competitive insights? ›SEMrush shows you the search engine results pages (SERPs) and keywords and it's updated in real-time. With your real-time keyword and competitive insights, you can create content that'll interest your readers. This type of marketing plan helps you hit the target market.
What are at least 3 ways you can gather data about your competitors? ›Customer data gathered from your own customers or those of your competitors through interviews, surveys and polls. Financial reports and company profiles, available from sources such as Dun & Bradstreet and Hoovers. Stock market data. Market research reports.
How accurate is SpyFu? ›Over time, we've made many improvements including the example about taking shopping, video and other results into account. Realistically, these days, you can expect our roll-up estimates like Ad Budget and SEO clicks to be accurate about 90% of the time.
Can I use Google keyword Planner for free? ›You can use this free tool to discover new keywords related to your business and see estimates of the searches they receive and the cost to target them. Keyword Planner also provides another way to create Search campaigns that's centered around in-depth keyword research.
Is Serpstat free? ›Start using Serpstat, it's free!
Which free software is best for stock analysis? ›
- TradingView.
- Finviz.
- Yahoo Finance.
- TC2000.
- CNN Money.
- Robinhood.
- NinjaTrader.
- Benzinga Pro.
Key Takeaways
While no pure free market economies actually exist, and all markets are in some ways constrained, economists who measure the degree of freedom in markets have found a generally positive relationship between free markets and measures of economic well being.
Country Rankings of Economic Freedom
2, 2022, Singapore, with its extremely low tax rates, minimal regulations on businesses, and highly capitalist system of economics, ranks first, being 84.4. % economically free. 1 Switzerland ranks a close second at 84.2% free, followed by Ireland at 82.0%.
- local business directories.
- your local Chamber of Commerce.
- advertising.
- press reports.
- exhibitions and trade fairs.
- questionnaires.
- searching on the Internet for similar products or services.
- information provided by customers.
You can't see Google Analytics data for another website unless the person who owns the website gives you access, or shows it to you. To get an estimate of how many visitors a website you don't own gets, you can look at other metrics. Such as: How many likes and follows their Facebook page gets.
› blog › competitive-intelligence... ›How to Do a Competitive Marketing Analysis Using 6 Free Google ...
Eight online tools for competitor research
9 Free Market Analysis and Competitor Analysis Tools
A competitive analysis should examine your competitors' features, market share, pricing, marketing, differentiators, strengths, weaknesses, geography, culture and customer reviews. This article is for new and established small business owners who want to analyze their competition to improve their products or services.
Which method can be used to identify competitors? ›Keyword research is the best way to identify your indirect competition. By conducting a competitive SEO analysis, you can determine which businesses or publishers are competing for space on Google. After all, many of your customers are looking for your products and solutions by typing them into search engines.
What tool can be used to understand competitor information? ›Ahrefs. Ahrefs is a great SEO and keyword research tool. You can use it to see what your competitors are ranking for, how much organic traffic they're getting, and understand what content of theirs is performing the best. You can also compare domains to see content gaps and track specific keywords over time.
What are the 4 major competitive strategies? ›- Cost leadership strategy. It suits large businesses that can produce a big volume of products at a low cost, and that is why Walmart implemented this strategy. ...
- Differentiation leadership strategy. ...
- Cost focus strategy. ...
- Differentiation focus strategy.
What are the 3 basic competitive strategies? ›
According to Porter's Generic Strategies model, there are three basic strategic options available to organizations for gaining competitive advantage. These are: Cost Leadership, Differentiation and Focus.
What are the 5 types of competitive strategies? ›- Cost leadership. ...
- Product differentiation. ...
- Customer relationship management (CRM) ...
- Cost focus. ...
- Commitment to customers strategy.
- Uncover the Keywords They're Targeting. ...
- Analyze Their Rankings Against Keywords. ...
- Research Their Most Shared Content. ...
- Stay Alert for New Content. ...
- Track New Links. ...
- Monitor Their Social Activity. ...
- Read Their Blogs and Newsletters.
Company should monitor three variables when analyzing each of itscompetitors●share if market: the competitor's share of the target market●share of mind: name the first company that comes to mind in this industry●share of heart: name the company from whom you would prefer to buy the productSuppliersare firms and ...
Which is the easiest way of identifying competitor in your area? ›- local business directories.
- your local Chamber of Commerce.
- advertising.
- press reports.
- exhibitions and trade fairs.
- questionnaires.
- searching on the Internet for similar products or services.
- information provided by customers.
Customer data gathered from your own customers or those of your competitors through interviews, surveys and polls. Financial reports and company profiles, available from sources such as Dun & Bradstreet and Hoovers. Stock market data. Market research reports.
Which website helps us in getting competitive insights? ›SEMrush shows you the search engine results pages (SERPs) and keywords and it's updated in real-time. With your real-time keyword and competitive insights, you can create content that'll interest your readers. This type of marketing plan helps you hit the target market.
How long does it take to do a competitor analysis? ›But a good general rule is six to seven weeks to analyze one competitor, and seven to eight weeks to analyze multiple companies.
What is the difference between benchmarking and competitor analysis? ›From a competitive analysis perspective, this means carefully selecting the right competitors to compare your brand with. And from a benchmarking perspective, it means identifying relevant key performance indicators.
What is a competitor analysis template? ›It's a competitive analysis framework that lists your company's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats and is helpful in shaping your overall marketing strategy as well. SWOT leans into your competitors' strengths and compares them to your business to define areas of improvement.