Analyzing competitor pricing is inherently challenging when prices aren’t publicly available. Technology, B2B Goods, Professional Services and various other offerings, unlike consumer products, lack transparent pricing. List prices may not be published, and real pricing is often shaped by variable discounting, bundling, contract terms, and custom packaging. These elements are typically negotiated behind closed doors, making true pricing difficult to uncover. Without a structured approach to gathering and normalizing this information, companies struggle to make accurate, apples-to-apples comparisons, leading to pricing strategies that are either too aggressive or not competitive enough to win deals.
Introduction
This guide outlines a step-by-step approach to help organizations collect, analyze, and benchmark competitor pricing, even in the absence of direct transparency.
Why Competitor Pricing is Important
Understanding how competitors’ price their offerings enables more competitive and strategic pricing decisions. It informs sales enablement, discounting thresholds, contract negotiation strategy, and value messaging. Without this insight, companies risk underpricing and leaving value on the table, or overpricing and losing deals. Competitor pricing analysis empowers companies to position more effectively, justify premium pricing, and identify opportunities for margin optimization.
How to Collect Competitor Pricing
Step 1: Secondary Research
Start by scouring open-source materials. Leverage AI tools (see end of article for helpful prompts), advanced search techniques, and traditional search engines to extract pricing clues from:
- Competitor websites (including pricing pages, if available)
- Public financial filings and investor presentations
- Analyst reports and third-party comparisons
- Product reviews (e.g., G2, Capterra)
- Social media comments or Reddit threads
- Company blogs, customer stories, and case studies
While explicit pricing details are rare, clues about tiers, discounting, or packaging structures often emerge through these channels.
Step 2: Primary Research with Customer and Competitor Sources
Engage directly with those who have experience on either side of competitor deals:
- Win/Loss Interviews: Interview your own prospects and customers post-sale to uncover what pricing they were offered by competitors.
- Customer Interviews: Talk to current and former users of competitor products to understand pricing levels, how prices were negotiated, and what discounts were applied.
- Source Interviews: Engage with former or current employees from competitor sales, finance, or product teams (legally and ethically) to gather insight into pricing strategy, discount levers, and sales behaviors.
These conversations provide critical intelligence that’s impossible to uncover through desk research alone. Having human conversations with both Customers and Competitors can ensure you get a well-rounded and complete perspective of competitor pricing. To learn more about how to collect insights from customers, read Sedulo’s Voice of Customer article.
Step 3: Competitor Mystery Shopping Research
When possible and ethical, participate in a competitor’s sales process. This provides real-world exposure to:
- How pricing is presented in different deal scenarios
- What discounts are offered for different volumes or contract lengths
- The messages and value justifications used during negotiation
Staying compliant with applicable laws and your own ethical standards is crucial. This typically means avoiding misrepresentation (e.g., claiming to be a prospective buyer when you are not), steering clear of bribery (e.g., offering compensation in exchange for non-public information), and refraining from other unethical practices (e.g., gaining unauthorized access to confidential spaces). When executed correctly, competitor pricing analysis can be one of the most revealing tactics in your pricing intelligence toolkit.
How to Analyze Enterprise Pricing
Once you’ve gathered inputs, standardize the data to enable valid comparisons:
- Normalize pricing to common units (e.g., per user, per transaction, per location)
- Compare pricing structures: usage-based, flat-rate, tiered, modular
- Identify discounting patterns by deal size, industry, or customer type
- Assess value-added components (e.g., onboarding, support, integrations)
- Build pricing ladders and comparison matrices to visualize positioning
Use frameworks such as willingness-to-pay, price-performance curves, or value-based pricing maps to extract strategic implications.
Risks of DIY Research
While internal teams can collect and analyze pricing data, DIY approaches can often fall short. Key risks include:
- Missing nuanced insights only accessible through targeted interviews
- Drawing inaccurate conclusions from small or biased datasets
- Ethical or legal missteps in mystery shopping
- Lack of strategic synthesis, focusing on data instead of implications
Partnering with experts who adhere to SCIP’s Code of Ethics ensures the research is credible, actionable, and compliant.
Case Study: Sedulo’s Support for a Leading SaaS Provider
A Fortune 500 company partnered with Sedulo to uncover how competitor pricing strategies compared to public pricing. Through primary research and mystery shopping, Sedulo revealed that published prices were, on average, 20% higher than actual prices quoted during RFP negotiations. This insight helped the client recalibrate their pricing to reflect true market conditions. Sedulo delivered an executive-ready pricing analysis using its 4-I Framework, enabling the client to better position in competitive deals and significantly increase win rates. The findings empowered smarter discounting strategies and helped the client align pricing more closely with real-world competitor behavior.
Case Study – Competitor Pricing Analysis
In Conclusion
Yes, you can access and benchmark competitor pricing. It takes a structured approach, expert research techniques, and disciplined analysis.
Want a partner who knows how to do it? Work with our pricing intelligence experts today.
Helpful Guide to Get Started: AI Prompts for Competitor Pricing Analysis
Here are some strong AI prompts which can expedite your search for unpublished competitor pricing (using the Role – Task – Format prompt framework):
Competitor Website Pricing Extraction
- Role: Web Research Analyst
- Task: Extract and compare pricing structures from competitor websites
- Format: Bulleted comparison list with pricing tiers, custom quotes, and URLs/screenshots
- Instructions:
- Visit the official websites of [Competitor A], [Competitor B], and [Competitor C].
- Identify all pricing tiers, subscription plans, enterprise offerings, and add-ons.
- Note any volume discounts, usage-based pricing, or “contact us” custom quote sections.
- Capture URLs and screenshots (or archive links if dynamic).
- Present findings in a bulleted comparison, highlighting pricing logic (e.g., per-seat vs usage-based).
Financial Filings and Investor Materials
- Role: Financial Analyst
- Task: Analyze public filings for pricing strategy insights
- Format: Summary table by company + bullet point insights
- Instructions:
- Review the latest 10-K, 10-Q, and investor presentations for [Competitor A] and [Competitor B].
- Extract data on pricing strategy, ARPU, discounting, bundling, and churn drivers.
- Note any mentions of pricing experiments, roadmap shifts, or monetization changes.
- Summarize how pricing contributes to revenue and competitive positioning.
- Format as a summary table (by company) with supporting bullet points.
Analyst and Market Research Reports
- Role: Market Researcher
- Task: Summarize third-party pricing intelligence
- Format: Table of sources + bullet takeaways
- Instructions:
- Search for analyst reports, industry whitepapers, or market summaries discussing pricing for [Competitor A], [Competitor B], and [Competitor C].
- Focus on comparative pricing models, segmentation strategies, and discounting patterns.
- Capture publisher name, report title, and publication date.
- Provide key takeaways in bullets under each source.
- Format as a table of sources with bulleted insights.
Public Forums and Reddit Threads
- Role: Community Listener
- Task: Extract user sentiment and pricing anecdotes from forums
- Format: Quote list with links + sentiment summary
- Instructions:
- Search Reddit (e.g., r/SaaS, r/startups, r/Entrepreneur) and other forums for pricing discussions about [Competitor A] and [Competitor B].
- Identify user-reported experiences with discounts, negotiations, or pricing confusion.
- Copy direct quotes and include thread URLs.
- Summarize sentiment patterns (e.g., frustration, satisfaction, confusion).
- Format as: Direct quotes with URLs and Summary bullet points on sentiment and recurring themes
Social Media Intelligence
- Role: Social Listening Analyst
- Task: Monitor and extract pricing-related social posts
- Format: Quote highlights + engagement metrics + summary
- Instructions:
- Search Twitter/X, LinkedIn, and public groups for mentions of pricing for [Competitor A] and [Competitor B].
- Prioritize posts from customers, influencers, or employees.
- Focus on pricing tiers, negotiation experiences, and promotional offers.
- Capture quotes, post URLs, and engagement metrics (likes, comments, shares).
- Summarize insights in bullets (e.g., “Referral discounts frequently shared on Twitter”).
Third-Party Review Sites and Aggregators
- Role: Review Analyst
- Task: Extract pricing sentiment from review platforms
- Format: Thematic summary with direct quotes
- Instructions:
- Visit G2, Capterra, and Trustpilot for [Competitor A] and [Competitor B].
- Filter reviews that mention pricing.
- Identify themes such as transparency, fairness, hidden fees, and value.
- Copy direct quotes supporting each theme.
- Format as: Theme → Quote(s) and Overall takeaway per competitor