Competitors change prices, plans, positioning and features without announcing it. Product marketers, founders and sales teams want to know when they do, and to have the before and after when someone asks "when did they drop the free plan?". Capture the pages that matter on a schedule and keep the history.
What to track
- Pricing pages: plans, prices, limits, free tiers, annual discounts.
- Homepage hero: headline and subhead are their current positioning.
- Feature and comparison pages, including their pages comparing themselves with you.
- Changelog and docs: what shipped.
- Careers page: the roles they hire for show where they're going.
Capture a pricing page in both billing modes
Pricing pages often hide annual prices behind a toggle. Capture the default view, then click the toggle in a second request:
curl -X POST "https://shotkit.net/api/take" \
-H "X-Access-Key: YOUR_ACCESS_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"url":"https://competitor.example.com/pricing","full_page":true,"format":"jpg","block_cookie_banners":true,"block_chats":true,"response_type":"json","metadata_content":true,"metadata_content_format":"markdown"}' \
--fail-with-body -o shot.jsoncurl -X POST "https://shotkit.net/api/take" \
-H "X-Access-Key: YOUR_ACCESS_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"url":"https://competitor.example.com/pricing","click":"[data-billing=annual], #annual","error_on_click_selector_not_found":false,"selector":"main","format":"jpg","block_cookie_banners":true,"response_type":"json","metadata_content":true,"metadata_content_format":"markdown"}' \
--fail-with-body -o shot.jsonThe Markdown is what you diff; the screenshot is what you show in Slack.
Summarize changes with an LLM
A text diff of a pricing page is readable, but a one-line summary is what people read. Send the old and new Markdown to your LLM of choice:
Here are two versions of a competitor's pricing page, a week apart. List what changed in plans, prices, limits and features, one bullet each. Say "No meaningful changes" if only wording changed.Or ask about the screenshot directly with vision_prompt; see AI website analysis.
Prices by country
Many SaaS and e-commerce sites show different prices by country. Route requests through a proxy in each market to see regional pricing; see geolocation and localization.
Frequently asked questions
Is it legal to monitor competitors' websites?
Capturing public pages, as any visitor sees them, is common practice for market research. Stay on public pages, respect the site's terms, and keep request rates low; a check per day or week is plenty for this.
How do I keep a history?
Download the screenshot and Markdown after each capture and store them with the date, in a database, a bucket or even a Git repository, where the history and diffs come for free.
How often should I check?
Daily for pricing pages, weekly for the rest. Five competitors with five pages each, checked daily, is about 750 screenshots a month.