AI Competitor Intelligence

AI-powered competitor monitoring with automatic change detection. Track pricing, features, and positioning on any website. Instant alerts when competitors change prices or update messaging. AI insights, historical comparison, and competitive analysis included.

What Does This Actor Do?

This Apify Actor monitors competitor websites and extracts structured data about their pricing, features, and market positioning. It uses AI to detect changes and provide actionable insights.

Key Capabilities:

• 📊 Extract pricing tiers - Plans, prices, features, billing cycles
• 🔔 Detect changes - Get alerts when competitors update pricing
• 🤖 AI insights - Executive summaries and recommendations
• 📈 Competitive analysis - Market positioning and benchmarking
• 📸 Visual snapshots - Screenshots for historical records

Why Use This Actor?

Feature	This Actor	Enterprise CI Tools
Cost	$0.03-0.05/page	$1,250-3,500/month
Setup	5 minutes	7-8 weeks
API Access	Full REST API	Limited
Commitment	Pay-per-use	Annual contracts

Pricing (Pay-Per-Event)

Event	Price	Description
pricing_page_monitored	$0.03	Base extraction per page
screenshot_captured	$0.015	Screenshot storage
change_detected	$0.05	Change alert triggered
competitor_analysis	$0.04	Market positioning report
ai_enrichment	$0.05	AI-powered insights

Cost Examples

Use Case	Pages	Frequency	Monthly Cost
Startup	5 competitors	Weekly	~$3-5
Growth	20 competitors	Daily	~$20-40
Enterprise	50 competitors	Daily	~$50-100

Quick Start

Basic Configuration

{
  "companies": [
    {
      "name": "Zapier",
      "pricing_url": "https://zapier.com/pricing",
      "category": "automation"
    },
    {
      "name": "Mailchimp",
      "pricing_url": "https://mailchimp.com/pricing/marketing/",
      "category": "marketing"
    }
  ],
  "change_detection": true,
  "enable_ai_insights": true
}

Full Configuration

{
  "companies": [
    {
      "name": "Stripe",
      "pricing_url": "https://stripe.com/pricing",
      "category": "payments",
      "competitors": ["PayPal", "Square"]
    }
  ],
  "monitoring_frequency": "daily",
  "change_detection": true,
  "competitor_analysis": true,
  "enable_enrichment": true,
  "enable_ai_insights": true,
  "include_screenshots": false,
  "use_proxies": true,
  "proxy_country": "US",
  "minimum_confidence": 70,
  "max_concurrency": 3,
  "custom_selectors": {
    "price_selectors": ["[class*='price']", "[data-price]"],
    "tier_selectors": ["[class*='plan']", "[class*='tier']"]
  }
}

Sample Output

Extracted Pricing Data

{
  "company": "Zapier",
  "url": "https://zapier.com/pricing",
  "confidence_score": 100.0,
  "pricing_data": {
    "tiers": [
      {
        "name": "Free",
        "price": "$0",
        "currency": "USD",
        "billing_cycle": "monthly",
        "features": ["100 tasks/month", "5 Zaps"]
      },
      {
        "name": "Professional",
        "price": "$19.99",
        "currency": "USD",
        "billing_cycle": "monthly",
        "features": ["750 tasks/month", "Unlimited Zaps"]
      },
      {
        "name": "Team",
        "price": "$69",
        "currency": "USD",
        "billing_cycle": "monthly",
        "features": ["2,000 tasks/month", "Shared workspaces"]
      }
    ],
    "has_enterprise": true,
    "promotions": ["Save 33% on annual"]
  }
}

Change Detection Alert

{
  "changes_detected": {
    "has_changes": true,
    "severity": "moderate",
    "change_summary": ["Price increase detected in Pro tier"],
    "price_changes": [
      {
        "tier": "Professional",
        "old_price": "$14.99",
        "new_price": "$19.99",
        "change_percentage": 33.4
      }
    ]
  }
}

AI Insights

{
  "ai_insights": {
    "executive_summary": "Monitored 5 competitors. 2 showed price increases averaging 15%. Market trending toward usage-based pricing.",
    "key_findings": [
      "Freemium models becoming standard (4/5 competitors)",
      "Enterprise tiers increasingly common",
      "Annual discounts average 20-33%"
    ],
    "recommendations": [
      "Consider annual billing discount to improve LTV",
      "Review feature-to-price ratio vs market"
    ]
  }
}

Input Parameters

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
companies	array	required	List of companies to monitor
monitoring_frequency	string	"daily"	How often to check (hourly/daily/weekly)
change_detection	boolean	true	Enable change alerts
competitor_analysis	boolean	true	Enable market analysis
enable_enrichment	boolean	true	Enable data enrichment
enable_ai_insights	boolean	true	Enable AI summaries
include_screenshots	boolean	false	Capture visual snapshots
use_proxies	boolean	true	Use residential proxies
proxy_country	string	"US"	Proxy location
minimum_confidence	integer	70	Minimum data quality score
custom_selectors	object	null	Override CSS selectors

Extracted Data Points

Data	Description
Pricing Tiers	Plan names, prices, billing cycles
Features	Full feature lists per tier
Limits	Users, storage, API calls
Promotions	Discounts, promo codes
Enterprise	"Contact Sales" detection
Metadata	Page title, last modified, canonical URL

Use Cases

Product Teams

• Monitor competitor pricing changes
• Inform pricing strategy decisions
• Track feature additions/removals

Business Intelligence

• Build competitive pricing databases
• Feed data into BI dashboards
• Automate market research

Sales Teams

• Know competitor pricing instantly
• Prepare competitive battlecards
• Track promotional activity

Agencies

• Monitor multiple clients' competitors
• Generate competitive reports
• Track industry pricing trends

Integrations

• Scheduled Runs - Daily, weekly, or custom monitoring
• Webhooks - Real-time alerts to Slack, Teams, email
• API Access - Full REST API for all data
• Zapier/Make - Connect to 5,000+ apps
• Google Sheets - Export to spreadsheets

Technical Details

How It Works

1. Navigates to pricing page with Playwright
2. Waits for JavaScript content to load
3. Extracts data using multi-layer approach (CSS + DOM)
4. Compares with historical data for changes
5. Enriches with AI insights
6. Stores results in Apify dataset

Anti-Detection

• Residential proxy rotation
• Human-like browsing behavior
• Configurable request delays
• Automatic retry on failures

Custom Selectors

For sites with non-standard layouts, provide custom CSS selectors:

{
  "custom_selectors": {
    "price_selectors": ["[class*='amount']", "[data-testid='price']"],
    "tier_selectors": ["[class*='card']", "[data-plan]"],
    "feature_selectors": ["[class*='feature'] li", ".benefit-item"]
  }
}

Limitations

• Dynamic Content - Some heavily JS-based sites may need custom selectors
• Personalized Pricing - Cannot extract user-specific pricing requiring login
• Enterprise Tiers - "Contact Sales" is flagged but actual price unknown
• Rate Limits - Default 3-5 pages/minute to avoid detection

FAQ

Q: How accurate is the data? A: Standard pricing pages achieve 80-100% confidence. Check the confidence_score field.

Q: What if a site blocks the scraper? A: Enable use_proxies for residential proxy rotation. Automatic retries handle transient failures.

Q: Is AI required? A: No, disable enable_ai_insights for rule-based analysis only.

Q: Can I use my own API key? A: Yes, provide openai_api_key to use your own. Otherwise uses built-in Gemini.

Q: How is historical data stored? A: In Apify Key-Value Store, persists across runs for change detection.

Legal

This actor extracts publicly available pricing information that companies intentionally publish. We recommend:

• Respecting robots.txt and ToS
• Using reasonable request rates
• Using data for legitimate competitive analysis

Read more: Is web scraping legal?

Support

• Issues: Report via Apify Console Issues tab
• Updates: Check actor version history

---

Powered by Playwright, Crawlee, and Gemini AI