Free competitor price monitoring for an online store: what a free plan covers

You can monitor your competitors' prices for free in three ways: the free plan of a price monitoring tool, a spreadsheet you keep by hand, or price comparison sites. Only the free plan reads your competitors' own shops and checks the prices again by itself. Free plans usually cover a few competitors and a few dozen products, check less often than paid plans, and leave part of the pairing work to you. For a small shop that watches three to five competitors on its best sellers, that is often enough.

Below: what each free option gives you, what a free plan has to cover to be useful, where free plans stop, and when it is worth paying.

Three ways to watch competitor prices without paying

• The free plan of a price monitoring tool. It reads the shops of the competitors you add, pairs their products with yours and checks the prices again on a schedule. The limits are in the number of competitors, products and checks.
• A spreadsheet. Your products, the matching product at each competitor, both prices and the day you looked. It costs nothing but time, and it is only as fresh as your last round of checking.
• Price comparison sites and Google Shopping. They show, for free, the prices shops send them. They show only the shops listed there, they do not pair your catalogue with anything, and many specialist shops are not listed at all.

What a free plan has to cover to be useful

• The competitors that matter. Three to five shops you really win or lose customers to is a good start.
• Your best sellers. You rarely need the whole catalogue at first: the products that bring most of your revenue, and the ones customers compare most.
• Checks it runs by itself. A free plan that only checks when you press a button is a spreadsheet with extra clicks. Look at how often it checks without you.
• How it pairs products. If your competitors sell the same branded products as you, pairing is simple. If they sell other makers' products, the tool has to find the closest comparable product and say that it is comparable, not the same.
• Pack sizes. If you sell by the pack or the case, it has to read the pack size and compare the price per item. Otherwise a case of 24 looks more expensive than a pack of 6 even when it is cheaper per item.
• An alert when a price moves. At least one rule, such as a drop of more than 5 percent.
• No card and no end date. A free plan that ends after 14 days is a trial. Both are useful, but they are not the same thing.
• Read access only. Watching prices needs no access to your own prices. A tool that changes your prices for you needs write access to your shop, and that is a separate decision.

Where free plans stop

Free plans are cut in the same few places: how many competitors and products, how often they check by themselves, whether AI helps with the pairing, how many people can log in, and which exports you get. When you compare free plans, put those numbers side by side rather than stopping at the word "free".

When a spreadsheet is enough, and when to pay

For a handful of products and a couple of competitors, a spreadsheet is fine. From about twenty products and three competitors, checking by hand takes longer than the decisions it is meant to inform, and a free plan is the better place to start. If you hit the free plan's limits every week, because you want daily checks, more competitors or help with the pairing, a paid plan costs less than your time.

Where VantageDash fits

VantageDash is free for 3 competitors and 50 products, with no time limit and no credit card. You add a competitor's web address and VantageDash reads their shop, on most shop systems. It finds the same product where the competitor sells it and the closest comparable one where they do not, and it always says which it is; a comparable product counts in your figures only once you approve it. It reads the pack size in product names, such as "12 x 330 ml", and compares the price per item. On the free plan it checks prices by itself once a week and pairs products by name; AI matching starts on the $19 plan, which also checks every 48 hours. You get an alert when a price you watch moves past your threshold, and VantageDash never changes your prices. It does not match by EAN and does not read marketplaces like Amazon or eBay, only your competitors' own shops. See the plans.