Competitor Watchdog — Intelligence Pipeline

Know when your competitors change. This actor continuously monitors competitor websites and alerts you when it detects changes in pricing, tech stack, content strategy, or hiring patterns.

Set it up once on a recurring schedule and get notified when something important changes — no more manual check-ins.

How It Works

Each run profiles your competitors across four dimensions:

📄 Homepage Analysis

• Title, meta description, H1 tags
• Tech stack detection — 60+ technologies (React, Shopify, Stripe, Cloudflare, etc.)
• Internal vs. external link count
• Body text fingerprinting for content change detection

💰 Pricing Intelligence

• Scrapes the /pricing page (or custom URL)
• Extracts plan names, prices, and feature lists
• Detects: new plans, removed plans, price changes, free tier changes
• Flags pricing changes as HIGH / MEDIUM / CRITICAL severity

💼 Hiring Signals

• Scrapes /careers page (or custom URL)
• Counts open positions, tracks departments hiring
• Detects: headcount increases/decreases, new departments, department closures
• Headcount spikes >50% flagged as HIGH severity

🏢 Company Changes

• Scrapes /about and /team pages
• Tracks employee count
• Extracts leadership names
• Detects team growth or shrinkage

Input Parameters

Parameter	Type	Required	Default	Description
competitors	array	✅	—	List of competitors: [{name, url, pricingPage?, jobsPage?}]
monitorPricing	boolean	—	true	Scrape and compare pricing pages
monitorJobs	boolean	—	true	Scrape and compare careers pages
monitorContent	boolean	—	true	Scrape about and team pages
maxPagesPerCompetitor	integer	—	10	Limit pages scraped per competitor

Output

The actor outputs three types of events to the dataset:

1. COMPETITOR_SNAPSHOT — Full profile of each competitor (homepage, pricing, jobs, about)
2. CHANGE_LOG — Detected changes with severity levels (CRITICAL / HIGH / MEDIUM / LOW)
3. MARKDOWN_REPORT — Human-readable summary of the entire run

Change log example:

{
  "event": "CHANGE_LOG",
  "competitor": "Acme Corp",
  "comparison": {
    "changes": [
      {"type": "PRICING", "change": "PRICE_CHANGE", "severity": "HIGH",
       "detail": "Price changed for 'Pro Plan': $99/mo → $129/mo"},
      {"type": "TECH_STACK", "change": "ADDED", "severity": "HIGH",
       "detail": "New technology detected: OpenAI"},
      {"type": "HIRING", "change": "HEADCOUNT_CHANGE", "severity": "HIGH",
       "detail": "Open positions increased: 5 → 12"}
    ],
    "threats": ["⚠ Competitor adopted OpenAI — may indicate new AI capabilities",
                 "📈 Competitor expanding headcount significantly"]
  }
}

Use Cases

• Pricing alerts — Get notified the moment a competitor changes prices
• Tech stack tracking — See when competitors adopt new tools (especially payment, AI, or CRM platforms)
• Hiring intelligence — Spot growth signals before they hit the market
• Market positioning — Track how competitors' messaging evolves over time
• Investment research — Monitor portfolio companies without quarterly updates

Pricing

Pay-per-event:

• $0.90 per competitor snapshot — Full profile scrape
• Additional charges for change-detected events when comparisons find changes

The total per-run cost depends on the number of competitors and pages scraped. A typical run monitoring 5 competitors costs ~$4.50 + change-event charges.

Tips

• Set up a recurring schedule (daily or weekly) for continuous monitoring
• Snapshots are stored in the actor's key-value store — comparisons only work after at least two runs
• Use custom pricing and jobs URLs if your competitors use non-standard paths
• The first run on each competitor establishes the baseline — no comparison is generated