The 7 Best Competitor Analysis Tools (+ Their Alternatives)

They say comparison is the enemy of joy, but I’d argue comparison — when done right — can be one of the core ingredients of social media success. It can help you understand what makes your audience tick and what not to do.

Here’s a list of the seven best competitor analysis tools to help you get detailed data on your rivals, analyze trends they use, and get a wholesome picture of competitor performance — benchmarked against yours. But if they don’t match your budget or needs, I’ve also researched two alternatives for every tool.

But first…do you even need a competitor analysis tool?

This might sound controversial, but you don’t always need a tool for competitor analysis.

a) If you’re in the early stages of forming your social media marketing strategy, I’d argue you don’t need to focus on what your competitors are doing at all. Focus on refining your systems, creating & maintaining a solid content calendar, and building a community. Peeping at the competition’s marketing strategies should come (if it comes at all) much later.

b) Even if you feel the need to do a competitor analysis, you don’t always need a competitive analysis tool. It’s possible to do this task manually — especially if you’re on a tight budget and don’t need all those fancy software. I’d recommend the following simple steps:

• Begin by identifying your top competitors
• Proceed to find a gap in their strategy/product that you can fill for your overlapping customer base
• Fulfill your audience’s needs even better from the analysis you’ve done

Here’s a more thorough step-by-step guide with a downloadable template on how to do competitor analysis without any tools.

What should you look for in a competitor analysis tool?

Here’s the thing: On social media, everyone is your competition. Not just the top ten industry leaders. Every creator and small business wants a slice of their audience’s limited attention. You have to look beyond your direct competitors’ strategies and observe the marketing campaigns of other niches & industries, too.

Sure, you might take a deeper dive into the marketing campaigns of your competitors, but have an open mind about implementing strategies from other industries and niches as well. This will not only spark creativity, but also help you stand out from the noise.

For these purposes, you need a competitor analysis tool that doesn’t just give you direct competitor data, but also broader trends. Here are the factors I have examined for the competitive analysis tools in this article:

• Does this tool provide broader trends, insights, and content ideas? You need a tool that doesn’t just share reports on your direct competitors, but also on wider, inspiring marketing campaigns from other industries and niches.
• Does this tool include multiple marketing channels? Most competitive analysis tools are heavy on the pocket. While I have included affordable options and choices that cover singular channels, I’ve primarily focused on finding marketing tools useful to all marketing department areas. It should ideally contain everything from organic traffic to PPC competitor research to engagement metrics to help you do a wholesome analysis.
• Does this tool feel easy to use? No one wants yet another onboarding session to learn because the software is too complicated to learn on your own. I’ve focused on finding software that provide instant access and can help you hit the ground running.

With all the caveats out of the way, let’s get into the nitty-gritty of the competitor analysis tools.

TL;DR: The 7 best competitor analysis tools (and their alternatives)

1. vidIQ

Best competitor analysis tool for YouTube competitive analysis

Free plan/trial: Free plan available — but you can add only three competitors. All paid plans have a seven day free trial.

Price: Plans start at €16.58/month.

Top features:

• Understand your competition’s subscriber growth, most popular videos, and views per hour
• Has a Chrome extension for easy and convenient competitor analysis
• Export competitors’ keywords in a few clicks

VidIQ is a YouTube tool through and through. It can help you find keyword ideas, create video thumbnails, and audit your competitors’ channels against yours.

For a competitor analysis, all you have to do is enter your competitors’ channel(s) and vidIQ will analyze and compare your YouTube channel’s performance with theirs.

After entering their channel name, you’ll get a list of your competitors’ best-performing videos. From there you can slice and dice data however you like. You can filter for views per hour (VPH), publishing date, views, and performance metrics.

What I love about vidIQ is you can find evergreen topics for your YouTube videos by spotting a pattern in all your competitors’ analysis VPH metric. If an old video still has a high VPH, it indicates that the topic is evergreen. For example, suppose you’re a productivity creator and find videos on “time management” have the highest VPH across all your competitors. Conclusion: it's a topic that will always be relevant for your audience.

In the free plan, you can only add three competitors whereas paid plans shoot this number up to 20. If you’re serious about growing your YouTube presence, vidIQ also offers 1:1 coaching in its highest-tier plans at €99/month.

Alternative competitor analysis tools to vidIQ

• TubeBuddy is another tool for growing your YouTube channel and conducting a competitive analysis of other channels. Like viIQ, you can add multiple competitors (unlimited for Enterprise users) and compare total views, subscribers, and uploads. Pricing starts at $4.50/month.
• Tubular also has a comprehensive for social listening for video. You can enter keywords related to your competitor websites, names, or brands and check what their audience is speaking about them online. Pricing is not publicly available.

2. Competitors App

Best competitor analysis tool for a deep competitor analysis across marketing channels

Free plan/trial: No free plan. All paid plans have a 15-day free trial.

Price: Plans start at $19.90/competitor/month.

Top features:

• Track your competitors’ every move — including social media, email marketing, paid traffic, PPC research, and keyword tracking
• Monitor competitors’ reviews to adjust your brand positioning
• Get all the competitor research delivered to your inbox

Competitors App is one of those full package competitor analysis tools. You can get a deep insight into every single one of your competitors — including their website changes, PPC campaigns for Google ads, competitor email campaigns, and keyword rankings.

Competitors App is perfect for you if you have a full-fledged, mature marketing strategy that includes a wide variety of marketing campaigns. All you have to do is enter your competitor websites, and the software will do real-time monitoring for you.

You have a 360-degree view of what your competition is up to in this tool. You can just log on to your account and see their email marketing, social media posts, any spikes in engagement, popular content, backlink analysis, and so much more.

Alternatives competitor analysis tools to Competitors App

• Similarweb is one of the best competitor analysis tools for comprehensive data across content marketing and market research. It has a lot of market data can segment based on your requirements. Similarweb isn’t the competitive analysis tool for social media specifically, but it’s one of the best in market research. There’s no free plan, but all paid plans have a 7-day free trial. Price starts at $125/month.
• Mention is the competitor analysis tool exclusively for social media monitoring. You can monitor mentions from all over the Internet, analyze audience sentiment, and even get an AI summary of your mentions. It isn’t as thorough as Competitors App in examining every single marketing channel, but it’s still useful enough to boost your marketing efforts. There are no free plans, but all paid plans have a free trial of 14 days. Price starts at $49/month for one user.

3. SparkToro

Best competitor analysis tool for getting insights about your competitors’ audience

Free plan/trial: Free plan available. It includes five searches per month.

Price: Paid plans begin at $50/month.

Top features:

• Discover the content your and your competitors’ audience consumes — including websites, podcasts, newsletters, etc.
• Find advertising opportunities by snooping at your competitors’ audience web-hangout places
• Uncover the search keywords your audience uses on Google

SparkToro is an audience research software, but it has plenty of amazing use cases which makes it an A+ competitive intelligence tool — especially for small and medium businesses. How?

Comprehensive data about your audience is one of the most crucial parts of a cohesive social media strategy. The problem? You don’t have an audience when you’re just starting out. You’re at zero followers. How do you understand your audience then? You pry into your competitors’ audience.

Just enter your competitors’ websites and SparkToro will unearth a mountain of actionable insights. You can find which podcasts their audience listens to, which newsletters they sign up for, what keywords they use on search engines, and so much more.

This data will be immensely helpful in practicing social listening for your audience, even when you’re in the initial stages of building a community. You can find places to advertise, the right marketing channels to invest in, and ultimately form your own successful marketing strategy rooted in numbers.

Alternative competitor analysis tool to SparkToro

• Audisense is another excellent audience research software that can also help you do competitor research. You can segment your audience’s influencers and get actionable insights into their interests and personality. Like SparkToro, Audisense is best to use when you’re still figuring out your market positioning and your competitors’ audience data is much larger than yours. There’s no free plan, but all paid plans offer a free trial. Pricing starts at £1199/month.
• YouScan is another competitive research tool that can help you figure out your strengths and weaknesses against competitors. You can identify new competitors, measure your competitor’s market share on social media, and imbibe these insights into your own content strategy. There’s no free plan or free trial. Pricing starts at $299/month, billed annually.

4. Semrush

Best competitor analysis tool for SEO competitive analysis

Free plan/trial: No free plan. Paid plans have a seven day free trial.

Price: Plans begin at $139.95/month.

Top features:

• Monitor your competitors’ social media activity across a variety of marketing channels
• Add filters for types of posts (like posts with links, photos, or videos)
• Filter for insights into each individual social network

Semrush is the ultimate SEO competitor analysis tool. Although it also has a social media tracker to keep tabs on your competitors' social media activity, it’s best suited for businesses with a search engine optimization strategy.

You can benchmark your website traffic against competing websites, find keyword gaps, and get an in-depth analysis of your competitors’ ads. In social media, you can track your competitions’ content and audience growth. Semrush also provides valuable insights about the most successful hashtags, posts, and accounts in your niche.

All you have to do is add your and your competitors’ social media profiles. Even if you enter just their domain name, Semrush will try to find their profiles across social networks. You can view their top posts, most popular hashtags, and dive deep into multiple social networks.

Semrush is perfect for any creator or business with a strong SEO content strategy. Its SEO competitor research features are powerful, but it doesn’t go that deep into social media competitor strategies. You can work both in tandem and do a combined competitor analysis.

Alternative competitor analysis tools to Semrush

• Ahrefs is the king of competitive analysis tools for SEO. You can monitor your competitors’ organic traffic and pinpoint content gaps to get some of that search traffic for yourself. It’s the best choice for getting content ideas via keyword research. There’s no free plan or free trials. Prices start at $129/month for one user.
• Phlanx is the social competitor analysis tool equivalent to Semrush. It’s even more basic — offering only the crucial metrics for your competitor research. You also get an influencer directory and social media audits for your report. There’s no free plans, but all paid plans have a 30-day free trial. Prices start at $49/month for one user.

5. Brand24

Best competitor analysis tool for tracking your competitors’ brand mentions

Free plan/trial: No free plan. All paid plans have a 14-day free trial.

Price: Plans start at $149/month for one user.

Top features:

• Do a competitor research of the mentions and reach of your rivals
• Discover what content and topics work best for your competitors 
• Practice sentiment analysis of your competitors

Brand24 is one of the best AI-powered competitive analysis tools to spy on your competitors’ marketing campaigns: it helps you monitor brand mentions, reach, and best-performing content. You can also use this competitor data to conduct a backlink analysis and use those valuable insights in your own marketing strategies (like complementing your keyword research).

Enter the keywords you want to monitor and Brand24 will do the competitor social media monitoring for you. You can see where your competition gets most of its mentions and reach from, the audience’s sentiment about their brand, and other valuable insights.

Use Brand24 as a competitor research tool to find how your competition is promoting their products or services and where you can improve.

Alternative competitor analysis tools to Brand24

• Meltwater has a host of tools for media relations, social listening, social media management, etc. Its competitor analysis features include analyzing your competitors’ strategies, ad spending, opinions on customer review sites, website traffic, app downloads, and more. Pricing isn’t publicly available.
• Mentionlytics is another top-tier competitor monitoring tool that helps you keep up to date with your competitors, although I’d say the user experience of the software isn’t that great. You can monitor competitors' strategies by checking for brand mentions and diving deeper into their social media engagement and analytics. There’s no free plan, but all paid plans have a 14-day free trial. Pricing starts at $69/month for five users.

6. BuzzSumo

Best competitor analysis tool for Facebook Pages

Free plan/trial: No free plan. All paid plans have a seven day free trial.

Price: Plans begin at $199/month for one user.

Top features:

• Compare up to nine competitor Facebook pages simultaneously
• Spot market trends and engagement metrics for your competition over time
• Get competitor analysis insights broken down by type of posts, scheduling strategy, and content gaps

BuzzSumo is a content marketing software. But its features can be spinned for competitor analysis tools, too. You can quickly analyze your competitors’ content and examine what’s working well for them — which blogs are getting the most social media shares? Which social channel is working the best?

However, BuzzSumo excels explicitly in being a competitive analysis tool for Facebook Pages. You can compare up to nine competitor pages and get insights into audience sentiment, post types garnering the most reactions, and average engagement.

If you’re big on Facebook Pages, BuzzSumo serves as an excellent competitive intelligence tool. It’s a no-brainer choice if you also have a blog and need a competitor keyword research tool.

Alternative competitor analysis tools for BuzzSumo

• Sprinklr is one of the best enterprise solutions for competitor analysis. You can benchmark your performance against competitors’ data such as likes, shares, audience behavior, and more. You can also compare your key performance indicators (KPIs) against the competition. There are no free plans, but a free trial for 30-days on all paid plans. Prices start at $249/month/user.
• Brandwatch is not one of the best competitor analysis tools, but it can give you a competitive advantage with its market intelligence features. You can monitor conversations about your competitors, analyze audience sentiment, and use this data to inform your own marketing strategy. Pricing isn’t publicly available.

7. RivalIQ

Best competitor analysis tool for in-depth competitor social media analytics

Free plan/trial: No free plan. All paid plans have a 14-day free trial.

Price: Plans start at $239/month for one user.

Top features:

• Get notified every time a competitor posts on social media
• Compare your social media performance with industry averages
• Receive raw data on market position, too — like social media bios

RivalIQ is a social media analytics tool that doubles as a competitor analysis tool. It helps you analyze competitors’ social media bios, social content, boosted posts, hashtags, follower-growth, and so much more.

You can set up alerts to get notified every time a competitor posts on their social media channels and also compare your social media performance with the industry average (along with specific competitors).

RivalIQ has the best use case for social media agencies that need to provide benchmarking reports to their clients. You get a comprehensive dashboard full of focus companies (your direct competitors) and industry averages.

Alternative competitor analysis tools for RivalIQ

• Social Insider is a good social media management tool with competitor insights. The analytics aren’t as in-depth, but they’ll still help you gain a competitive edge. There aren’t any free plans, but all plans have a 14-day free trial. Pricing begins at $99/month for one user.
• Social Status also has competitor research features. You can benchmark your performance against competitors on the basic metrics such as likes, comments, and shares. The user experience isn’t as great as RivalIQ, though. There’s a free plan available, but it doesn’t have competitive analysis. Paid plans begin at $9/month. Paid plans have a 14-day free trial. 

Use competitor analysis as an addition to your strategy, not as the foundation

It’s easy to get swayed by your competitive research — getting overly invested in their growth/decline, comparing your metrics with theirs, and doing constant competitor tracking to see what they’re up to.

But at Buffer, we believe competitor analysis is never a necessity in social media. What is a necessity is staying true and authentic to your brand. Don’t change your approaches, systems, and strategies just out of comparison.

Can competitive research be incredibly valuable? Definitely. But it shouldn’t entirely take over your own brand’s ethos.

In the end, remember competitor analysis should be an addition to your social media strategy, not its foundation.