Guides for running analyses, managing competitors, and turning results into action
Click Start Analysis from your dashboard or go to /analyze.
A real-time progress bar shows each stage as it completes — data collection, market intelligence, competitor analysis, and recommendations.
Explore market overview, SWOT analysis, competitor profiles with confidence indicators, and strategic recommendations split into quick wins, long-term plays, differentiation tactics, and market gaps.
Save reports to your history, star the important ones, export data, and add key competitors to your Competitor Base for ongoing monitoring.
The dashboard surfaces your most recent activity: latest reports, favorite analyses, usage stats, quick-access shortcuts to Analyze, Reports, Competitor Base, and Analytics.
We discover competitors from Google Maps, business directories, and public sources based on your industry, location, and size filter.
For each competitor, we look up social profiles and follower counts across LinkedIn, X (Twitter), YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram.
AI analyzes market size, growth trends, saturation levels, opportunities, and challenges specific to your niche and location.
Each competitor is scored on innovation, online strength, and threat level. Estimated attributes like revenue, employees, market reach, and pricing tier are flagged with confidence indicators.
Market-level SWOT is generated alongside recommendations: quick wins (0–3 months), long-term plays, differentiation tactics, market gaps, and focus areas.
Past reports power trend tracking and side-by-side competitor comparison so you can see how your competitive landscape shifts over time.
The Competitor Base is your personal CRM for competitors. Instead of re-running analyses to find the same businesses, you build a curated library of competitors you care about — organized into lists, enriched with deep research, and monitored over time.
Competitors you want to keep a close eye on. Use this for high-threat businesses that could directly impact your market position.
Best-in-class competitors to measure yourself against. Useful for setting performance targets and inspiration for differentiation.
Businesses that should not appear in future analyses (e.g. your own business, franchisees, or irrelevant matches the AI picks up).
Create unlimited custom lists to organize competitors your way. Examples:
Custom lists support the same quick-action buttons (Track, Untrack, Benchmark, Include/Exclude) as system lists.
For any competitor in your base, you can trigger a deep research scan that analyzes their website and surfaces structured intelligence: their value proposition, key messaging, content strategy, and more.
Run Deep Research on your top 3–5 benchmark competitors to understand what messaging and positioning is working in your market. Use the findings to differentiate your own positioning.
InsightScan uses an analysis credit system. Each analysis run deducts credits based on the number of competitors analyzed. Credits are reserved before the analysis starts and released if it fails.
Purchase credit packages from the Billing page. Payments are processed securely via Stripe. After a successful payment you receive a receipt email and your balance updates instantly.
Navigate to Settings → Billing or click “Top Up” from the dashboard.
Choose from available credit bundles. Larger bundles offer better value per credit.
You are redirected to a secure Stripe checkout page. Enter your card details and confirm.
After successful payment, credits are added to your account and you receive a receipt email from support@insightscan.io.
Credits work alongside your subscription tier. Your plan determines feature access while credits fuel the analyses themselves.
See the Pricing page for a full plan comparison.
Measures how innovative a competitor is based on:
Assesses digital presence and online marketing effectiveness, incorporating social media follower counts from LinkedIn, X, YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram:
Evaluates how much of a competitive threat they pose to your business. The distribution of threat levels is also influenced by your business size filter — a solo startup faces different competitive dynamics than a medium-sized business.
Estimated fields — revenue range, employee count, market reach, target audience, USP, and pricing tier — carry confidence badges showing how well the AI estimate is supported by available data:
Measures how crowded the market is:
The Analytics page charts how your key market metrics change across saved reports over time. You can filter by industry, sub-niche, and location, and use side-by-side competitor comparison to track individual businesses across reports.
Use Portland, OR instead of just Portland for better targeting. Include city, state, and country if needed.
Adding a niche (e.g. Organic Coffee or Luxury Spa) helps filter competitors to those most relevant to your market segment.
If you are a solo founder or small startup, filter to Solo/Startup (1–10 employees) to see how you stack up against businesses at your scale, not enterprise-grade competitors.
Look for trends across competitors. Are most innovating in a certain area? Is online presence generally weak? These patterns reveal structural gaps you can exploit.
Start with recommendations in the Quick Wins section (0–3 months). These are high-impact, low-effort opportunities based on gaps in the current competitive landscape.
After each analysis, add the most relevant competitors to your Competitor Base. Over time, your base becomes a curated intelligence layer that makes each new analysis more actionable.
Use Deep Research on your Benchmark Set competitors to understand what messaging, positioning, and content is working in your market. Use the findings to sharpen your differentiation strategy.
Run analyses quarterly and use the Analytics trend charts to detect shifts in market saturation, competitive intensity, and online strength before they become problems.
Timing depends on how many competitors are found and how deep the analysis goes. A real-time progress bar shows you exactly which stage is running.
We source data from Google Maps, public directories, social media APIs, and web content. Primary scores (innovation, online strength, threat level) combine observed signals with AI inference. Estimated fields (revenue, employees, etc.) carry confidence indicators showing how well they are supported. Always use insights as directional intelligence alongside your own validation.
The business size filter lets you focus the analysis on competitors that match your scale. Options are: All Sizes, Solo/Startup (1–10), Small (11–50), Medium (51–250), and Large (250+). The filter shapes the search queries, LLM prompts, and threat level distribution to reflect your actual competitive context.
The Competitor Base is your personal competitor library. Add businesses from any analysis or manually, organize them into system lists (Watchlist, Benchmark Set, Exclude from Search) and custom lists, and trigger Deep Research on any competitor to get structured intelligence about their website and positioning.
Each analysis deducts credits based on the number of competitors analyzed (1 credit = 1 competitor). Credits are reserved before analysis starts and released if analysis fails. You can top up from the Billing page using Stripe; a receipt email is sent after every successful purchase.
Yes. Run separate analyses for each location. Each analysis is specific to the location you provide. Use the Analytics page to compare trends across locations over time.
Yes. Export options are available in the analysis results view. Available formats depend on your plan.
This can happen if your industry/location combination is very specific or uses unusual terminology. Try:
Yes. Reports are saved to your account and accessible from Reports, Favorites, Dashboard shortcuts, and the Analytics view. Reports support search, sort, and grid/list display modes.
Need help? Use these support paths: