Competitive landscape template
A competitive landscape puts your whole market on one page: who plays, who they sell to, what they offer, and who is moving. This template has four parts. The last one, movement, is the part most landscapes leave out, and it is the one that tells you where the market is heading rather than where it was.
4 sections · 9 fields · free, no sign-up
1. Players
Who is in the market
QuarterlyDirect competitors, adjacent ones, and the do-nothing option (a spreadsheet, an agency, an in-house tool).
Where to find it: Your deals, review site categories, analyst lists.
Segment each one targets
QuarterlyCompany size and industry each player sells to.
Where to find it: Their customer stories and plan names.
Category label each uses
QuarterlyThe words each player uses to describe its own category. It reveals how they want to be compared.
Where to find it: Their homepage headlines.
2. Capability matrix
Capabilities by player
QuarterlyEight to twelve capabilities buyers compare as rows, players as columns. Mark full, partial or none, each with a link to where you saw it.
Where to find it: Feature pages and docs.
3. Positioning map
Two axes that split the market
QuarterlyFor example self-serve to sales-led, and point tool to platform. Place every player.
Where to find it: The matrix above, plus pricing pages.
The empty quadrant
QuarterlyWhere nobody plays yet, and whether that is an opening or a place with no buyers.
Where to find it: Your own judgment.
4. Movement
Activity by player
Weekly · trackableFor each player, count of launches, pricing changes, integrations, partnerships and funding in the last 90 days.
Where to find it: Each player’s changelog, pricing page, blog and press page.
Converging themes
MonthlyCapabilities that two or more players shipped in the same quarter. That is where the market is going.
Where to find it: The activity above.
Who is speeding up
MonthlyPlayers shipping more or less than in their own previous quarter.
Where to find it: The activity above, quarter against quarter.
The label on each field is how often its answer changes. Fields marked trackable are dated public changes, so a monitoring tool can collect them for you. Spyingbee watches a competitor’s changelog, pricing page, blog, docs, news feed and product catalogue, checks each source on its own interval (every few hours for pages that keep changing, every few days for quiet ones), and classifies every change it finds. That covers the fields marked Weekly. The judgment fields stay yours: no crawler knows why you win.
The movement layer, filled for every cloud hosting platform tracked publicly, last 90 days
| Company | Product launches | Feature updates | Pricing updates | New integrations | Partnerships | Funding events |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vercel | 29 | 153 | 14 | 70 | 1 | 0 |
| Netlify | 2 | 53 | 9 | 15 | 0 | 0 |
| Qovery | 5 | 45 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| Digitalocean | 13 | 28 | 4 | 4 | 1 | 0 |
| Fly | 7 | 28 | 2 | 7 | 4 | 1 |
| Pantheon | 2 | 40 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 |
| Render | 1 | 32 | 5 | 5 | 0 | 0 |
| Kinsta | 1 | 17 | 15 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Railway | 1 | 14 | 5 | 4 | 1 | 0 |
| AWS | 4 | 19 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Cloudways | 5 | 12 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 |
| Northflank | 1 | 12 | 2 | 4 | 0 | 0 |
| Clever Cloud | 0 | 4 | 1 | 0 | 3 | 0 |
| Heroku | 1 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Zeabur | 0 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Koyeb | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
All 16 companies in this category that Spyingbee tracks publicly, quiet ones included. Each number counts entries of that type on the company’s own timeline over the last 90 days.
- 1
List every option a buyer considers
Include the do-nothing option. Spreadsheets and agencies are real competitors for most products.
- 2
Build the capability matrix from evidence
Every full or partial mark links to the page where you saw it. A matrix without links is an opinion.
- 3
Draw the positioning map
Pick the two axes that best separate the players a buyer actually shortlists, then place each one.
- 4
Add the movement layer
Count each player’s launches, pricing changes, integrations and partnerships over the last 90 days. Static matrices hide who is accelerating.
- 5
Revisit quarterly, update movement weekly
Structure changes slowly. Movement changes every week, and that is the part leadership asks about.
What is a competitive landscape?
A one-page view of every option a buyer in your market considers, how each one is positioned, what each offers, and how each is changing. It is broader than a competitor analysis, which goes deep on one company.
What is the difference between a competitive landscape and a competitor analysis?
A landscape is wide and shallow: the whole market on one page. A competitor analysis is narrow and deep: one company in detail. Most teams keep one landscape and a competitor analysis for each of their three to five main rivals.
How do I show competitive movement, not just a snapshot?
Count what each player published over a fixed window, such as 90 days: launches, pricing changes, integrations, partnerships, funding. Then compare each player to its own previous window, so a quiet quarter from a usually busy player stands out.
Is this template free?
Yes. Copy it as Markdown or download it as a CSV that opens in Excel or Google Sheets. There is no sign-up to use it.
Want the trackable fields kept current without doing it by hand? See how competitor monitoring works.
Keep the fast-moving fields current automatically
Spyingbee watches a competitor’s changelog, pricing page, blog, docs, news feed and product catalogue, checks each source on its own interval (every few hours for pages that keep changing, every few days for quiet ones), and classifies every change it finds. That covers the fields marked Weekly. The judgment fields stay yours: no crawler knows why you win.