Ai Competitor Tracker

Monitor any company's website, pricing, hiring signals, and social media activity. Detects changes over time using SHA-256 content hashing and optional AI-powered analysis.

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Features

• Website monitoring — SHA-256 hash-based change detection for any public page
• Pricing extraction — regex-based price tier extraction from pricing pages
• Hiring signals — Google Search scraping for job posting activity changes
• Social media monitoring — Twitter/X timeline via 5 Nitter instances with Google Search fallback
• AI analysis — optional Claude-powered strategic analysis of detected changes (requires your Anthropic API key)
• Persistent snapshots — previous snapshots stored in Apify KV Store for diff comparison

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Input Parameters

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
competitors	array	required	List of competitor objects to monitor (see schema below)
monitorTypes	array	["website","pricing"]	Which signals to monitor: website, pricing, hiring, social
analysisDepth	string	"basic"	"basic" = hash diffs only. "detailed" = AI analysis on detected changes
maxPagesPerCompetitor	integer	5	Max pages to crawl per competitor (1–20)

Competitor object schema

{
    "name": "Notion",
    "url": "https://notion.so",
    "pricingUrl": "https://notion.so/pricing",
    "twitterHandle": "@NotionHQ"
}

name and url are required. pricingUrl and twitterHandle are optional.

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Output Data Structure

Each result item in the Apify Dataset has the following structure:

{
    "competitor": "Notion",
    "url": "https://notion.so",
    "monitoredAt": "2026-02-27T08:00:00.000Z",
    "changes": [
        {
            "type": "pricing_change",
            "severity": "high",
            "summary": "Pricing page content changed",
            "oldHash": "abc123...",
            "newHash": "def456...",
            "detectedAt": "2026-02-27T08:00:05.123Z"
        }
    ],
    "snapshots": {
        "homepage": {
            "url": "https://notion.so",
            "contentHash": "sha256hex",
            "contentLength": 142340,
            "httpStatus": 200,
            "title": "Notion – The all-in-one workspace",
            "scrapedAt": "2026-02-27T08:00:00.000Z"
        },
        "pricing": {
            "url": "https://notion.so/pricing",
            "contentHash": "sha256hex",
            "pricingTiers": [
                {"price": 8.0, "raw": "$8"},
                {"price": 15.0, "raw": "$15"}
            ]
        },
        "hiring": {
            "query": "Notion careers jobs hiring 2026",
            "job_count": 7,
            "strategic_signals": 3,
            "change_detected": true,
            "change_direction": "increasing"
        },
        "social": {
            "handle": "NotionHQ",
            "source": "nitter",
            "nitter_instance_used": "https://nitter.net/NotionHQ",
            "total_tweets_checked": 20,
            "high_engagement_tweets": [
                {"replies": 12, "retweets": 45, "quotes": 8, "likes": 312}
            ]
        }
    },
    "aiAnalysis": {
        "strategic_implication": "Notion raised prices on the Plus tier...",
        "threat_level": "high",
        "recommended_actions": ["Revisit your pricing page", "Launch comparison landing page"],
        "opportunity": "Highlight your lower price point in ads"
    }
}

changes is empty when no changes are detected compared to the previous run. aiAnalysis is only present when analysisDepth is "detailed" and changes were found.

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Social Monitoring — Nitter Fallback Strategy

Nitter public instances are community-maintained and can go offline without notice. This Actor uses a layered fallback to maximise uptime:

1. Tries 5 Nitter instances in order (privacydev.net, poast.org, nitter.net, 1d4.us, kavin.rocks)
2. If all Nitter instances fail, falls back to Google Search ({handle} site:twitter.com recent)
3. If Google also fails, the social snapshot is returned with an error field explaining the failure — the Actor continues with all other monitors and does not crash

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Usage Example

{
    "competitors": [
        {
            "name": "Linear",
            "url": "https://linear.app",
            "pricingUrl": "https://linear.app/pricing",
            "twitterHandle": "@linear"
        },
        {
            "name": "Jira",
            "url": "https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira",
            "pricingUrl": "https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/pricing"
        }
    ],
    "monitorTypes": ["website", "pricing", "hiring", "social"],
    "analysisDepth": "detailed",
    "maxPagesPerCompetitor": 5
}

For AI analysis, set the ANTHROPIC_API_KEY environment variable in your Actor run configuration.

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Pricing

$5 per 1,000 result items or $49/month for unlimited monitoring runs.

Apify charges compute units separately for Actor execution time (typically < 0.1 CU per run with 5 competitors).

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Notes

• Snapshots are stored between runs in Apify KV Store so that change detection works correctly across scheduled runs
• Schedule this Actor daily or hourly via Apify Scheduler for continuous monitoring
• Pricing page extraction uses regex heuristics and may miss unusual price formats
• This Actor does not use the official Twitter/X API and does not require any Twitter credentials