How to Do Competitor Analysis with ChatGPT (and Its Limits)

By Rijad Mujić · Published 2026-10-01

AI chatbots like ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini can speed up competitor research a lot. They can also confidently tell you about competitors that don't exist or prices that changed a year ago. Here's how to get the useful part without the mistakes.

Where AI chatbots help

• Brainstorming the kinds of competitors you might have, including indirect ones.
• Turning messy notes into a clean comparison table.
• Summarizing a long page of reviews into themes, once you've pasted them in.
• Drafting a first version of your positioning against what you've found.

Where they get it wrong

• Made-up competitors. Without web access, a chatbot may invent plausible business names, especially for local businesses.
• Old information. Prices, opening hours and offers change, and a model's training data can be months or years out of date.
• Generic advice. Ask a vague question and you'll get "focus on quality and customer service", which applies to everyone.

The fix for all three is the same: give it specifics, ask for sources, and check anything important yourself.

Prompts that work

Be specific about the business, the location and the customer. For example:

• "I run a bakery in [neighbourhood, city] selling bread and pastries to people on their way to work. List the types of businesses my customers could buy from instead, including indirect options."
• "Here are the reviews of three competing bakeries: [paste]. Group the complaints into themes and tell me which themes appear for more than one business."
• "Here's a table of competitor prices: [paste]. Where is there room to price above the market, and what would I need to offer to justify it?"
• "Search the web for [competitor name] and list your sources for each claim." (Only useful if the tool you're using actually has web search turned on.)

How to check the answers

For every competitor it names, search for the business yourself on Google Maps or its website. For every price, find it on their site, menu or a recent review. If you can't verify something in a couple of minutes, treat it as a guess. The free sources to check against are in how to research competitors for free.

How ScoutBrief handles this

Made-up competitors are the reason ScoutBrief searches the web live, links each competitor to the page it was found on, and marks anything it couldn't confirm. You can compare it with your chatbot's answer using the free snapshot.

Rijad Mujić builds and runs ScoutBrief, a competitor research tool for small businesses. How ScoutBrief researches competitors →

Keep reading

• How to Do a SWOT Analysis on a Competitor
  SWOT analysis is usually pointed at your own business. Pointed at a competitor instead, it's one of the fastest ways to find a real gap.
• How to Do a Social Media Competitor Analysis
  Which platforms to check, what to measure and how to turn competitors' social media into your own plan.
• Competitive Pricing: How to Price Against Competitors
  Knowing competitors' prices is step one. Deciding whether to go below, match, or charge more is the part that matters.

Looking for advice for your trade? Competitor analysis by industry →