11 Best Free Competitor Analysis Tools in 2024

Everyone in the business world wants to overtake their competitors by any means. As the business continues to evolve at a breakneck pace, it has become more crucial to stay ahead of the competition. To do so, businesses must find out what their competitors are doing.

To answer that question, almost every business relies on competitor analysis. In fact, over 90% of the fortune 500 companies use competitive intelligence to gain competitive advantage. And why not? After all, competitor analysis tools can show how you stand against your competition and also provide you with insights about their strategies.

In this article, I will be sharing what competitor analysis is and some of the best free competitor analysis tools available right now. These tools can help you with building a great online presence and make your business stand out in the competition.

So, let’s get to it!

What is Competitor Analysis?

Competitor analysis, also known as competitive intelligence or competitive research, is a technique that helps businesses to understand their competitors and where they stand against them. It involves assessing their strengths and weaknesses, products, marketing strategies, and more.

Businesses use competitor analysis tools to understand how their competitors are doing in the marketplace and identify opportunities or threats to their business.

Benefits of Competitor Analysis

Competitor analysis can help businesses with deeper market understanding, better product development, discover potential threats and more. Let’s take a look at how competitor analysis tools can benefit your organization:

• Better marketing strategy: When you fully understand what your competitor is doing and what their techniques are, you can build your own strategy for better growth. For example, if you realize that your competitor is spending more on social media ads and gaining traction, you can also tweak your marketing strategy accordingly.
• Discover New Opportunities: By correctly analyzing your competitors, you can discover what products or services your customers want but they are unable to find. This lets you come up with solutions to meet those needs and tap into new market opportunities.
• Turns Weaknesses into Wins: If you understand where your competitors fall short, you can turn those weaknesses into advantages. For example, if your competitor lacks the resources to do something, and you have those resources, you can step in and expand your presence in the market.
• Helps in Building Your USP (Unique Selling Product): Competitor analysis can help your business in building unique selling propositions and helps your business set itself apart from its competitors. When you carefully study your competitors, you can develop a product or service that can give you an upper hand against your rivals.

Top Competitor Analysis Tools

I have researched multiple competitor analysis tools and made a list of the best options for you. Below are some of the best free competitor analysis tools.

1. Similarweb

If we talk about free competitor analysis tools, then Similarweb has to be on our list. This free website analysis tool lets you gain an overview of any website or app along with how it competes against its competitors. 

You can check various metrics like total website visits, month on month change, bounce rates, average page visit duration and more. You can also track the audience and their demographics for a better understanding of your rival’s website and apps. 

Features of Similarweb Website Analysis Tool 

• Competitive tracker to track and monitor competitors 
• Website and app analysis 
• Real-time database updates 
• Audience and industry research 
• Advertising, SEO and PPC services 

Pros and Cons of Similarweb

Pricing: Similarweb offers 4 types of paid plans and a 7-day free trial. These are: 

• Starter: Starts at $125/month/user 
• Professional: Starts at $339/month/user 
• Team: Available on request 
• Enterprise: Available on request 

2. BuzzSumo

BuzzSumo is one of the top competitor analysis tools with content creation and optimization features. It helps you to find trending topics and also provides insights on content to capture your audience’s attention. 

Furthermore, you can also monitor your competitor’s online presence and create a benchmark. So, if you want to optimize and look over your content marketing strategy and connect with your target audience, BuzzSumo is definitely worth considering. 

Features of BuzzSumo Competitor Analysis Tool 

• Tracks multiple topics and trends in real-time 
• Automates and integrate with APIs 
• Helps you to keep updated with latest news and trends in your industry 
• Monitors your rivals’ social media 
• Offers SEO analysis 

BuzzSumo Pros and Cons

Pricing: BuzzSumo offers four types of pai plans with a 30-day free trial. 

• Content creation: Starts at $199/month 
• PR and Comms: Starts at $299/month 
• Suite: Starts at $499/month 
• Enterprise: Starts at $999/month 

3. Google Analytics

Google Analytics is also a market analysis tool that gives you a deeper overview of your website’s traffic. It offers you insights into your audience along with their geographic and demographic details, their general behaviors etc. Plus, Google Analytics offers you free competitor research tools so that you can understand the ins and outs of your competitors and improve the marketing ROI. 

Features of Google Analytics 

• Real-time website or app monitoring 
• Market campaign reporting and analysis 
• Audience behavior and conversion reports 
• Funnel analysis 
• Predictive analysis and audience demographics 

Pricing: Google Analytics offers a fully featured free plan. However, if you need an enterprise plan (Google Analytics 360), it is available on request. 

Google Analytics Pros and Cons

4. SEMrush

SEMrush is one of the most used marketing tools in the world. This free competitor analysis tool is widely used to track website rankings and perform keyword research. It helps businesses by providing insights on CPC, search volume, market analysis and more. Moreover, you can also rely on SEMrush if you want to analyze your rival’s top backlinks, organic and paid keywords. 

SEMrush is a valuable tool to understand your true competition from SEO perspective. It can also help your business with organic search, traffic analysis and social media optimization. 

Features of SEMrush

• Traffic analysis and organic search 
• Social media analyzer 
• Advertising analysis 
• Offers competitor PR promoting tools 
• Competitor SEO analysis tools 

Pricing: SEMrush offers three paid plans, and these are: 

• Pro: Starts at $129.9/month 
• Guru: Starts at $249/month 
• Business: Starts at $499/month

SEMrush Pros and Cons 

5. SpyFu

SpyFu offers an easy-to-use interface with all the insights about your competitor whether it is ads, keywords, backlinks and more. With this competitor research tool, you can learn your rival’s SEO strategies, search PPC keywords, and even search and download the report. 

Additionally, you can search any domain to check its appearance on google for the past 16 years along with the Google Ads they have published, their organic position and even the ad variations. 

Features of SpyFu Competitor Analysis Tool 

• Competitor analysis and renal tracking 
• Competitor Keyword research tools and backlink builder 
• Google AD advisor 
• PPC and SEO reports 

SpyFu Pros and Cons

6. Crayon

Crayon is an AI-powered competitor analysis tool that monitors your competitors and gives you timely updates directly to your inbox. This software includes a dashboard with all the competitor’s data and updates for a better side-by-side comparison. 

Crayon also offers collaboration features, so that you and your team can work together to manage competitors’ insights. 

Features of Crayon 

• Performance metrics with win/loss analysis 
• AI powered competitor monitoring 
• Provides insights about your competitor 
• Content analysis tool 
• Integration with top sales and messaging apps 

Pricing: Crayon’s pricing plans are available on request. You can schedule a demo through their official website and ask for a quotation. 

Crayon Pros and Cons

7. Ahrefs

Ahrefs is a useful tool for improving your website’s search engine performance. It helps you find good keywords, locate successful content in your niche, and keep track of how well your website is ranking. 

You can also use Ahrefs as a competitor analysis tool to check out how well your competitors are doing in terms of organic traffic, keywords they rank for, websites linking to them, and the ads they run. 

It’s great for SEO agencies, content marketing teams, and anyone who owns a website and wants to improve its search engine performance quickly. 

Features of Ahrefs 

• Website audit and optimization 
• Find new keywords for your industry  
• Track your ranking and progress 
• Content idea generator 
• Get quality and quantity overview of your competitor’s backlinks 

Ahrefs Pros and Cons 

8. Ubersuggest

Ubersuggest is an SEO tool, and it’s free as a Chrome extension. It gives you details about how tough a term is to rank for, the cost per click, and how often people search for it each month.  

It also offers an extension that provides helpful info about keywords on Google, YouTube, Amazon, and other sites. It’s a great free tool for beginners to analyze their competition. 

Features of Ubersuggest Competitor Analysis Tool 

• Keyword research 
• Backlink tracker 
• Domain overview 
• Keyword gap and estimated traffic overview 
• CPC analysis 

Pricing: Ubersuggest offers three paid plans, these are: 

• Individual: Starts at $12/month 
• Business: Starts at $20/month 
• Enterprise: Starts at $40/month 

Ubersuggest Pros and Cons

9. Sprout Social

Social media is the best way to connect with customers, and Sprout Social is one of the best competitor analysis tools for it. 

With Sprout Social, you can check how well your competitors are doing on social media. They provide lots of info and reports about Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. These reports help you improve your social media strategy by giving you data on what works and what doesn’t. 

You can easily see what your competitors are posting and compare your growth to others without spending lots of time on research and complicated spreadsheets.  

Features of Sprout Social: 

• Track your competitors’ fundamental metrics 
• Find insights through social media platforms 
• All in one social media manager tool 
• Profiles, location and keywords monitoring 
• Identifies influencers and trends 

Pricing: Sprout Social offers four types of paid plans with a 30-day free trial. 

• Standard: Starts at 249/month.
• Professional: Starts at $399/month. 
• Advanced: Starts at $499/month. 
• Enterprise: Available on request.

Sprout Social Pros and Cons

10. Moz

Backlinks are important for SEO as they can improve a website’s search engine rankings, and you can use this free competitor analysis tool to check out your competitors’ backlinks. Moz will help find and create better content, find your top competitors, spot keyword gaps and discover top keywords. 

Features of Moz

• Content analysis and optimization. 
• Site overview.
• Discover keyword opportunities. 
• Explore top competitors.
• Site audits and rank tracking.

Moz Pro Pros and Cons 

11. Hootsuite

Just like Sprout Social, Hootsuite is also a helpful tool for marketing and managing social media platforms. It’s great for analyzing your competitors. With this tool, you can post on various social media accounts all from one place and keep to a regular schedule. 

You can also use it to make your social media tasks easier, like checking your feed and responding to comments, all without going to each site separately. It’s especially good for businesses trying to handle their presence on different social media platforms. 

Features of Hootsuite Competitor Analysis Tool

• Content creation and publishing 
• Social media analytics 
• Customer engagement reports 
• Connect with social media platforms like Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, LinkedIn, etc. 
• Social media post suggestions 

Hootsuite Pros and Cons

Conclusion 

There you have it! Those were the top free competitor analysis tools available in the market right now. These free competitor analysis tools provide valuable insights for businesses looking to outpace their competition.  

Whether it’s SimilarWeb for comprehensive website analysis, BuzzSumo for content optimization, or SEMrush for robust SEO tools, each tool offers unique features. Despite all those options, it’s essential to consider individual business needs and budget constraints when selecting competitor research tools. 

FAQs