Pricing is the part of a competitor’s strategy that is easiest to see and hardest to compare. Every pricing page is public, but one charges per seat, another per project, a third has usage limits in a footnote. A pricing analysis turns those pages into something you can price from.
What a pricing analysis answers
- What does your customer already pay to solve this problem?
- Where are the floor and the ceiling of the market?
- What do competitors charge extra for, and so believe customers value most?
- Is there a price point or a pricing model nobody serves?
Start with your direct competitors. If you have not mapped them yet, the guide on finding competitors comes first.
1. Collect every plan
For each competitor’s pricing page, record:
- Plan names and monthly prices, plus the annual price and the discount it implies.
- The pricing unit: per seat, per project, per usage (messages, credits, contacts), or flat.
- Whether there is a free plan or a free trial, and its limits.
- The headline limits of each plan and which features are held back for higher tiers.
- Anything marked “contact sales”. Record it as undisclosed, not as a guess.
- The URL and the date you read it.
Pricing pages often load prices with JavaScript and hide annual pricing behind a toggle. Check both states of the toggle.
2. Normalize the pricing unit
Plans are only comparable in the same unit. Pick the customer you are building for and price every competitor for that customer. A five-person team comparing a per-seat plan at $12 with a flat plan at $49 is really comparing $60 with $49.
A simple template, one row per competitor plan:
| Competitor | Plan | List price | Unit | Cost for your target customer | Key limits | Source and date |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Competitor A | Team | $12/mo | per seat | $60/mo (5 seats) | 3 projects | pricing page, date read |
| Competitor B | Growth | $49/mo | flat | $49/mo | 1,000 contacts | pricing page, date read |
The rows above are an illustration, not real competitors.
3. Map the range and the packaging
Sort the normalized costs and look at the spread. Then look at packaging: what separates each tier from the one below. Features that only appear in top tiers (single sign-on, audit logs, API access, extra seats) tell you what competitors believe larger customers will pay for.
4. Read what the prices tell you
- Everyone clusters at one price: the market has settled on what the job is worth. Pricing far outside that band needs a clear reason.
- Wide spread: competitors serve different customers. Check which band your customer sits in.
- Nobody has a free plan: either the product is expensive to run, or there is room for a self-serve entry point.
- Everyone has a generous free plan: expect customers to try several products before paying, and to expect the same from you.
- Nothing between cheap self-serve and enterprise: a common gap for small teams that have outgrown the cheap plan.
5. Set your own price
Competitor prices tell you what customers are used to paying, not what you should charge. Price against the value you deliver to a specific customer, then use the comparison to explain the difference. Underpricing by default attracts the most price-sensitive customers and leaves less money for the product.
Choose a pricing unit that grows with the value the customer gets. If your product saves more time as a team grows, per seat can work; if value grows with volume, usage pricing may fit better.
Keeping it current
A pricing analysis goes stale quickly. Competitors change prices, add tiers and trim free plans without announcing it. Review it at least quarterly and after any competitor launch or funding round, or automate it: SignalDart’s competitor pricing analysis reads each pricing page, lays the plans side by side and, with monitoring on, re-checks them daily and shows the before and after values when something changes.