10 free tools for competitor analysis in IT business

To stay afloat and grow in the IT business, it is important to know what your competitors are doing: which channels they use, which technologies they implement, and what their promotion strategies are. Such analysis allows you not to copy others' steps, but to build your own strategy, avoiding mistakes and strengthening your strengths.

SimilarWeb
SimilarWeb is a web traffic analysis service that helps you understand exactly where users come from on your competitors' websites. You can see their main traffic sources, audience geography, and even average visit duration. It is useful for evaluating which marketing channels bring the best results.

Ubersuggest
Ubersuggest, developed by Neil Patel, helps you gain a deeper understanding of your competitors' SEO strategy. In the free version, you can see which keywords the sites rank for, which pages bring the most traffic, and where the backlinks come from.

SEMrush
SEMrush is one of the most popular SEO and marketing tools. In the free plan, you can make several queries per day and find out which keywords bring traffic to your competitors, what ads they use in paid advertising, and what positions they hold in search results. This helps you "spy" on their strategy and find growth opportunities for yourself.

Ahrefs Webmaster Tools
Ahrefs is a powerful SEO tool that allows you to analyze your competitors' backlinks, find broken links, study top pages, and identify technical errors on websites. This helps you understand how competitors strengthen their reputation in search engines.

BuiltWith
BuiltWith shows which technologies your competitors' websites are built on. You can find out which CMS they use, which analytics services are connected, and which advertising tools are installed. Such analysis helps you choose the right technology stack for your business or understand where the market is heading.

Crunchbase
Crunchbase is a database of startups, companies, and investments. Free access provides information about competitors' funding, news about partnerships and expansion, and key employees. This is a valuable tool for analyzing business dynamics and finding potential partners or investors.

Owler
Owler is a business platform that collects news and analytics about companies around the world. Here you can "subscribe" to competitors and receive fresh reports on their successes, products, and strategies. The free version allows you to track major changes and stay up to date with their moves.

Social Blade
Social Blade is a service for analyzing accounts on social networks and YouTube. It shows statistics on subscribers, likes, views, and growth rates. This is especially important for IT companies that promote themselves through content and want to understand which formats work best for their competitors.

Google Alerts
A simple but very effective tool. You set keywords—for example, a competitor's name or product—and Google sends email notifications when that phrase appears in news, blogs, or other sources. This helps you monitor competitors' reputation and stay informed about any mentions.

Hunter.io
Hunter.io searches for corporate email addresses associated with a specific domain. With its help, you can study the structure of a competitor company, find employee contacts to analyze their LinkedIn profiles, or even establish partnership communication. The free version limits the number of searches but provides a good start.