Run a Competitor Analysis for Software
Map your competitive landscape in four kinds, from direct rivals to doing nothing, and see where the gap is.
How It Works
Describe Your Idea
One sentence: who has the problem, and what you'd build.
Name Up to 3 Rivals, If You Know Any
Names only, comma-separated. Add why a buyer would switch, or leave both empty.
Get Your Map, Plus the Gap
Four kinds of alternative, the gap, a category, a call and weak points. Download PDF or JSON.
Where Competitive Analysis Sits in Discovery
What do buyers use instead? Competitive Analysis maps four kinds of alternative and names the gap they leave.
Use this when: You're building into a crowded space, or believe you have no competitors.
Who it's for: Startup founders and product leads. Not for SEO research.
Four Kinds, Including the Spreadsheet
Direct rivals, indirect alternatives, workarounds (a spreadsheet, an intern) and doing nothing. The last two often win the deal. Each line is marked as yours or model suggested.
Refuses 'We Have No Competitors'
Founders who say it often miss the workflow buyers already run for free. The map always fills the workaround and doing-nothing boxes, so "no competitors" is never the answer.
Flags Commodity Wedges Before You Build
"Better UX", "faster" and "cheaper" are easy to copy. Give one as your reason to switch and it gets flagged. The gap has to sit in your core, not in plumbing like login.
Frequently Asked Questions
A comparison of your idea with what a buyer could pick instead: direct rivals, indirect tools, workarounds like a spreadsheet, and doing nothing. This tool names the gap they leave.
List four kinds of alternative, not just direct rivals. Find the gap all four leave. Then check your reason to switch is more than "better" or "cheaper".
A SWOT is a self-check: your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. This looks outward, at what a buyer could pick instead and the gap it leaves.
Made-up example, invoicing for UK freelance designers. Direct: accounting apps. Workaround: PDFs emailed from a spreadsheet. Doing nothing: chasing payments by hand. A "better UX" reason to switch gets flagged.
Yes: this one, for startups, with no signup. It maps alternatives from your answers. There is no search and no SEO, traffic or pricing data. Check what buyers pick yourself.
Not by us. Your answers go to the AI for the run, then live only in this tab; a reload clears them. Download the PDF or JSON to keep the result.
Where To Next
Next discovery step:User Personas
Principles behind it:Find the Core, Consolidation
When you're ready to build:MVP in 6 WeeksPoC in 2 Weeks
Built & Maintained by Varstatt
Varstatt is a one-person product studio run by Jurij Tokarski, product engineer since 2011. These tools are free and open — no signup, no catch.