TikTok competitor analysis: organic, ads and Shop

TikTok competitor analysis means working out how often a rival posts, what a normal video of theirs does as opposed to their one hit, which creators they pay, whether they sell through TikTok Shop, and which ads they run. For a small brand the honest answer is usually reassuring: most competitors' TikTok numbers look far bigger than they are once you stop averaging.

This is the TikTok-specific method. For what to track across platforms, see how to monitor competitor social media.

What TikTok makes public

TikTok's Research API documentation lists the account and video numbers researchers can query, and they are the ones worth recording for a competitor. For an account: follower count, following count, total likes and number of videos. For each video: views, likes, comments, shares and favourites, which is TikTok's word for saves (TikTok Research API, videos).

What you do not get: watch time, completion rate, where views came from, follower growth history and anything about spend. Liked videos have been private by default since 2019, so you usually cannot see what a competitor's team likes either.

Two things distort the public numbers.

Total likes is a lifetime figure. An account with 2 million likes may have earned 1.8 million of them from three videos two years ago.

Views are hit-driven. On TikTok a single video can reach many times an account's usual audience. Any number you calculate needs to survive that.

Step 1: count the cadence

Open the competitor's profile and count videos posted in the last 30 days. Ignore pinned videos at the top of the grid; they are usually older hits chosen to make a first impression.

Record videos per week and the posting pattern: daily, in bursts, or weekly. A brand that posts in bursts of five videos and then goes quiet for a fortnight is batch-producing, which often means a freelancer or agency working to a fixed schedule.

Step 2: use medians, then TikTok's engagement formula

Take their last ten videos and write down views, likes, comments and shares.

A worked example

Say a made-up coffee pod brand, Fieldcup, has 61,000 followers. Its last ten videos, sorted by views:

Median views: the middle two are 7,900 and 9,400, so 8,650.

Average views: 342,800 ÷ 10 = 34,280. Four times the median, because of one video. Anyone reporting Fieldcup's "average views" is reporting video 10.

Views per follower: 8,650 ÷ 61,000 = 0.14. A typical Fieldcup video reaches a number of people equal to about a seventh of its following.

Hit rate: two videos out of ten beat twice the median. That is the number to watch next month. A rising hit rate means they have found a format.

Now engagement. TikTok's own definition, in its campaign reporting, divides interactions (likes, comments and shares) by total video views (TikTok One reporting help). Saves are not part of it.

• Video 10: 21,000 likes, 640 comments and 2,900 shares is 24,540 interactions on 240,000 views, so 10.2%.
• Video 6: 410 likes, 22 comments and 15 shares is 447 interactions on 9,400 views, so 4.8%.

The hit did not only travel further; people cared more about it. Watch video 10 three times and write down what happens in its first two seconds, because that is the part their audience rewarded.

Step 3: hooks, formats and sounds

For the top three videos by median multiple, note:

• The first line or on-screen text. Problem, result, "POV", list, or a question.
• The format. Talking head, voiceover with b-roll, a skit, a product demonstration, a duet or stitch.
• The sound. Their own voice or original audio, or a trending sound. Brands that only win with trending sounds are renting reach; brands that win with original audio have a repeatable format.

Then check whether the format is theirs. TikTok's Creative Center, now branded TikTok One Creative Suite, has a Trends section with Hashtag and Video tabs across 27 countries and 7, 30 or 90 day windows; its older Songs tab and Keyword Insights tool are gone. If their best format is a trend everyone used last month, it is not a strategy you need to answer.

Step 4: creators and branded content

Count the creator videos that tag the competitor in the last 90 days, and look for the disclosure. TikTok's "Disclose commercial content" setting adds a Commercial content label, which reads Paid partnership when a creator is promoting a third party (TikTok's disclosure help).

A competitor whose own videos average 8,000 views but whose creator partners regularly reach 100,000 has moved its TikTok budget to creators, and its own profile is the least important part of its TikTok presence. TikTok's own route for this is TikTok One Creator Marketplace, where brands find and work with creators.

Step 5: TikTok Shop

If the competitor sells physical products, check whether their profile has a product showcase, which lets viewers buy straight from a brand's profile. TikTok Shop has been expanding; in Europe it added Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands and Poland in June 2026, joining France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Spain and the UK (TikTok newsroom).

A competitor selling through Shop is measured on sales, not views, and its videos will look different: more demonstrations, more prices on screen, more live selling. If you are not in Shop and they are, compare their prices there with their website prices; a gap tells you how they use the channel.

Step 6: their ads, in both libraries

TikTok has two places to look, and they cover different things.

The Commercial Content Library is the complete record for Europe and the UK, and its unique users range is a rough proxy for how hard a competitor is pushing an ad. Its name search is fuzzy, so check the advertiser on each result. Updates can take up to 48 hours to appear. The TikTok ad library guide walks through both, and the TikTok ad spy tools roundup covers paid options for markets outside Europe.

TikTok competitor analysis for a small brand

Three numbers per competitor, monthly: videos per week, median views, and hit rate. Add engagement rate on their top video and their median one. That is a five-minute job per competitor once you have done it twice.

Then one question: are they winning on their own profile, through creators, or through ads? Most small brands only need to match one of the three, and it is usually the cheapest.

Ours, Figo, reads competitors' TikTok ads from the TikTok Ad Library every week, alongside their Google and Meta ads, website changes, pricing and reviews. It does not track organic TikTok videos, creators or TikTok Shop, so the method above is the way to cover those, and it costs nothing. If the same competitor also posts Reels, the Instagram competitor analysis guide covers that half.