SaaS Competitor Monitor: Pricing, Changelog & Positioning

SaaS Competitor Monitor: see when a rival's pricing, changelog or homepage changes

Give it your competitors' pricing, changelog, homepage and docs URLs, run it on a schedule, and it tells you what moved since last time: a price that went up, a plan that appeared, a new release, a rewritten headline. Each change comes back as a typed signal with its before and after, ready for a brief or a Slack or Discord alert. Know two things first: the first run only records a baseline, so changes start on the second, and the page reading is heuristic, so a page that shows different prices on different loads can read as a change that never happened.

🔍 What SaaS Competitor Monitor does

It reads four kinds of page for each competitor:

Every page is compared with the copy saved from the last run. That copy lives in a key-value store called saas-competitor-change-monitor-state, in your own Apify account, one record per competitor and page. Records are keyed by the competitor's name, so two tasks using the same name share one history, and renaming a competitor starts its history again.

A page that cannot be read comes back failed and is not charged, and the last good copy stays the baseline. Pages that only fill in after scripts run are drawn in a browser, which waits until the text stops growing; a page still drawing after 30 seconds fails, unbilled.

The "why it matters" line on each signal is written by built-in rules. The Generate AI insights switch is meant to have a language model sharpen it, but it needs a model key this actor does not have and you cannot supply, so the rules write it every time. A signal the rules wrote is not charged.

When page reading is improved, a page saved by the older reader shows as new once, so a better reading is never billed as a change.

📥 What you give it

{
  "competitors": [
    {
      "name": "Acme",
      "pricingUrl": "https://acme.com/pricing",
      "changelogUrl": "https://acme.com/changelog",
      "homepageUrl": "https://acme.com",
      "docsUrl": ""
    }
  ],
  "watch": ["pricing", "changelog", "positioning", "integrations"],
  "onlyNewSinceLastRun": true,
  "weeklyBrief": true
}

📤 What you get back

A real row from a test run on 30 September 2026. Before that run the saved Growth price had been edited to $12, so Plausible's live $14 came back as a rise. The two text values are cut short:

{
  "target_key": "zz-fix-test-plausible::pricing",
  "competitor": "ZZ Fix Test Plausible",
  "page_type": "pricing",
  "url": "https://plausible.io/#pricing",
  "status": "changed",
  "sync_status": "ok",
  "signals": [
    {
      "competitor": "ZZ Fix Test Plausible",
      "signal_type": "price_change",
      "detail": "Growth: $12/month ...",
      "before": "$12",
      "after": "$14",
      "why_it_matters": "ZZ Fix Test Plausible raised Growth by +17% ...",
      "page_type": "pricing",
      "url": "https://plausible.io/#pricing",
      "detected_at": "2026-09-30T04:58:17.608841+00:00",
      "is_new": false,
      "is_changed": true,
      "ai_written": false
    }
  ],
  "change_records": [
    {
      "target": "zz-fix-test-plausible::pricing",
      "change_type": "modified",
      "path": "tiers.Growth.price",
      "before": "$12",
      "after": "$14",
      "detected_at": "2026-09-30T04:58:17.609156+00:00"
    },
    {
      "target": "zz-fix-test-plausible::pricing",
      "change_type": "modified",
      "path": "tiers.Growth.price_amount",
      "before": 12,
      "after": 14,
      "detected_at": "2026-09-30T04:58:17.609156+00:00"
    }
  ]
}

And the brief row from a run on 30 September, with its link cut short:

{
  "type": "weekly_brief",
  "generated_at": "2026-09-30T02:33:59.840901+00:00",
  "signal_count": 0,
  "brief_kv_key": "weekly-brief-html",
  "brief_url": "https://api.apify.com/v2/key-value-stores/.../records/weekly-brief-html?signature=..."
}

🧾 Reading the output

There is no sample row and no error code. Every row is either a page or the brief:

Not every change becomes a signal. A field that moved without matching a rule shows up in change_records only, and still counts as a change. For news you would act on, keep the rows where status is changed.

▶️ How to run it

1. Open SaaS Competitor Monitor and click Try for free. 2. In Competitors, replace the Acme example with your own: a name and the URLs to watch. 3. Choose What to watch, and untick Generate weekly competitive brief on runs where you do not want the $0.30 brief. 4. Paste a Slack or Discord address into Webhook URL (optional) if you want alerts. 5. Click Start once to record the baseline, then put the same input on a schedule.

💰 How much does it cost?

$0.01 per page checked, $0.015 per page that changed and $0.30 per brief, flat on every Apify plan.

Signals cost nothing while the built-in rules write them, and today they write every one. A signal is only charged, at $0.035, when a language model wrote its "why it matters" line, and that signal carries ai_written: true.

Every page read is charged, changed or not; a failed page is not. The brief is billed on every run it is on for, so a daily schedule with the brief on is $2.10 a week in briefs alone. Switch it on for one run a week instead.

If you set a maximum charge for a run, it checks only the pages it can still pay for, leaves the rest for the next run, and skips the brief if it no longer fits.

💡 What people use it for

• Knowing the week a rival raises a plan, before a customer brings it up on a sales call.
• Keeping a battlecard's pricing column honest without anyone opening five pricing pages on Monday.
• Reading a competitor's releases in one weekly brief instead of following four changelogs.
• Catching a homepage rewrite, which can be the first public sign they are chasing a different buyer.

🚧 What it does not do

• No AI. The "why it matters" line comes from rules, whatever the switch says.
• No pages behind a login. A page that answers with an error or a holding screen instead of

content comes back failed too.

• No screenshots or visual diff. It compares the text and structure it reads.
• No perfect reading of pricing pages. Plans are found by rules. Scored on 40 real pricing pages,

it found 135 of 144 plans; it can mistake a menu item or a calculator for a plan, miss a free plan shown only as the word "Free", and read part of a tabbed plan layout.

• No defence against A/B tests. A page that shows a price on some loads and not on others reads

as a change, and the change is billed.

• No archive. Only the latest good copy of each page is kept. The dataset of each run holds

what changed on that run.

🧭 Which competitor monitor do you need?

❓ Questions people ask

Why did the first run report everything as new? There was nothing to compare against yet. The first run saves a copy of each page; from the second run on you get real changes.

Where does it keep last week's pages? In the saas-competitor-change-monitor-state store in your own account. Delete it to start over, and the next run builds a fresh baseline.

Will I be charged when nothing changes? For the page checks, yes, and for the brief if it is on. A change is only charged when a page reads differently from last time.

How do I get alerts in Slack? Put your Slack incoming-webhook address in webhookUrl. Discord and other webhooks work the same way. Nothing is sent on a run that found no signal.

🆘 If something breaks

Open the Issues tab on the actor page. Send the run ID and the competitor URL that misbehaved, and say what the page showed that the row did not.