Competitor analysis Excel template (free download)

This competitor analysis Excel template is a free workbook with six tabs: instructions, competitor profiles, a pricing history, channel tracking for ads, SEO, social and reviews, weighted scoring with working formulas, and a change log. It opens in Excel and imports into Google Sheets with the formulas and dropdowns intact.

Download the competitor analysis template (.xlsx, 45 KB)

Each tab has one filled example row for a made-up plumbing firm, shaded yellow and labelled EXAMPLE, so you can see the standard before you overwrite it. For a whole analysis taken from question to dated actions, see the competitor analysis example.

What is in the competitor analysis spreadsheet

The structure is deliberate. Four tabs collect facts, Scoring turns them into a judgement, and the Change log turns them into actions. If you only keep one tab alive, keep the Change log.

The competitor analysis Excel template, tab by tab

Competitors

Columns: competitor, website, their one-line pitch, who they sell to, entry price, main channels, strengths, weaknesses, threat level, owner, last reviewed.

Copy their homepage headline word for word into the pitch column. Paraphrasing it loses the thing you are trying to compare. Take weaknesses from their three star reviews, not from your own opinion of them. Threat level is a dropdown (High, Medium, Low) that colours itself.

Keep this tab to the three to eight rivals you actually lose customers to. If you are not sure who they are, work through finding your real competitors first.

Pricing

Columns: date checked, competitor, plan, price, billing, what is included, limits, discount or offer, change?, what changed, source URL, screenshot saved?

Never overwrite a row. Add a new one each time you check, with the new date. After six months the tab is a price history you cannot buy anywhere.

Mark "Change?" as Yes when anything moves, not only the headline number. A feature moving up a tier, a limit halving, a new annual discount: all of these are price changes, as monitoring competitor pricing explains. To backfill the history before you started, use the Wayback Machine on their pricing page.

Channels

One row per competitor per check, with columns grouped under four headings.

• Ads: the number of live ads in the Google Ads Transparency Center, the Meta Ad Library and the TikTok Ad Library, plus the start date of their oldest live ad. An ad that has run for months is one that works.
• SEO: organic keywords, estimated monthly visits and their most important new page. The first two come from whichever SEO tool you use and are estimates, so compare the same tool month to month rather than trusting the number itself. How accurate traffic estimates are covers why.
• Social: posts per week over the last four weeks on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and LinkedIn. Posting frequency predicts investment better than follower counts.
• Reviews: Google rating and review count, Trustpilot rating and review count. Ratings are validated to stay between 1 and 5.

A final "What stands out" column holds the one sentence that matters, which usually becomes a Change log entry.

Scoring

This is the tab with the formulas. Rows are buying criteria, column B holds the weights, and columns C to H hold the scores for you and up to five rivals, each from 1 (weak) to 5 (strong).

The weighted score for each column is:

=IF(COUNT(C5:C12)=0,"",
  SUMPRODUCT($B$5:$B$12,C5:C12)
  /SUM($B$5:$B$12))

SUMPRODUCT multiplies each weight by its score and adds the results. Dividing by the total weight keeps the answer on the 1 to 5 scale even if the weights drift off 100%. The IF leaves the cell blank for a column you have not scored yet, so empty columns do not show as zero.

Below that, a RANK row orders everyone automatically, and a "Difference from you" row subtracts your score from each rival's, shaded red where they beat you. A check cell totals the weights and turns red if they do not add up to 100%.

In the example, "You" scores 3.20 and the example competitor 3.95, a difference of 0.75. The biggest single contributor is ad presence, where you score 1 and they score 4 on a 10% weight.

The eight starting criteria and weights are suggestions. Replace them with what your buyers actually say they choose on, from sales calls and reviews. Two rules make the tab honest: score yourself before anyone else, and have someone from sales score you too. It is the same logic as a competitive profile matrix, which explains the method in more depth.

Change log

Columns: date spotted, competitor, channel, what changed, evidence link, so what, action, owner, due, status.

"What changed" is a fact with no opinion in it. "So what" is the opinion. Keeping them in separate columns is what lets someone else check your reasoning. Status is a dropdown (Open, Doing, Done, Ignored), and Open rows are shaded so nothing sits unnoticed.

This tab is the spreadsheet version of field 9 in the one-page competitor analysis template: the bit that turns research into a decision.

Using it as a Google Sheets template

Google Sheets can import the file directly. The steps, from Google's own help page:

1. Download the .xlsx file above.
2. Open Google Sheets and start a blank spreadsheet.
3. Click File, then Import, and upload the file.
4. Choose Create new spreadsheet, or Insert new sheet(s) to add the tabs to a spreadsheet you already use.
5. Click Import, then open the new spreadsheet.

The other route is to upload the file to Google Drive and double-click it, which opens it in Sheets. Either way, SUMPRODUCT, RANK and the dropdowns work in Sheets as they do in Excel. In Excel itself, a downloaded file may open in Protected View; click Enable Editing to start typing.

A routine that keeps it alive

Weekly, 15 minutes: add Change log rows for anything you noticed.

Monthly, 30 minutes per competitor: a new row on Pricing and Channels for each rival, then update Competitors.

Quarterly, an hour: rescore the Scoring tab and compare the ranks with last quarter.

The monthly collection is the part that slips, usually by month three. If that is your problem, our own Figo checks each competitor's ads, pages, pricing, rankings, social posts and reviews every week and sends what changed in a Monday briefing, which you can then copy into the Change log. Ours, so judge accordingly. For three rivals and a disciplined monthly hour, the spreadsheet alone is enough.