Your competitor's pricing is your research.

Strategy · 5 min read

During the product research phase of every project, one of the first things I do is pull up competitor pricing pages. Not to copy them. Not to undercut them. But to understand what the market is already telling us for free.

A pricing page is a public document that says "this is what people are willing to pay, this is how we segment our users, and this is what we think the value tiers look like." That's an extraordinary amount of information, and most people skip right past it when they're doing their homework.

I've had clients come in convinced their market wouldn't pay for an app. Then we looked at the competition and found out people were already paying, sometimes a lot.

The education app that proved the market

I worked with a client building an education app. They were nervous about charging for it. "Who's going to pay for study content when there's so much free stuff online?" So we looked at the closest competitor. Flat annual fee. Minimal marketing. And they were making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.

That told us three things. First, people will pay for this kind of content. The market is proven. Second, the price point is already established in users' minds. We didn't have to guess what someone might pay, because someone else had already tested it. Third, there was room to offer something better at a competitive price. The competitor's product was functional but not well designed, and their content hadn't been updated in years.

Without checking that pricing page, my client might have launched with a "freemium" model and left real money on the table. The competitor's pricing wasn't just a number. It was a map of the market.

Pricing models reveal positioning gaps

Another client was entering a space where every competitor used the same subscription model. Monthly fee, cancel anytime, tiered features. Every single one. At first glance, that looks like the "correct" approach. But it also means every user in that market is experiencing subscription fatigue from being charged monthly for yet another tool they might not use every day.

So we explored a different structure. And it worked, precisely because it stood out. When everyone is doing the same thing, doing something different isn't a risk. It's a differentiator. Michael Porter's Five Forces framework, published in Harvard Business Review back in 1979, makes this point clearly. Understanding competitive forces isn't optional. It's foundational. You can't position yourself in a market you haven't studied.

Look at what your competitors charge. Look at how they structure it. Look at what's included in each tier and what's locked behind upgrades. Then ask yourself: where's the gap? Where are users being overcharged, underserved, or forced into a model that doesn't fit how they actually use the product?

How to read a pricing page like a strategist

Don't just look at the dollar amount. Look at the tiers. What do they call them? "Starter," "Pro," "Enterprise" tells you they're segmenting by company size. "Individual," "Team," "Organisation" tells you they're segmenting by user count. Those labels reveal who they think their customers are and how they expect usage to scale.

Then look at what's missing. Is there a tier that should exist but doesn't? Is there a user type that doesn't fit neatly into any of their plans? That gap is your opening. Your competitor's pricing page is telling you everything you need to know. You just have to read it properly.

The best part is that this research is completely free. No surveys, no focus groups, no guesswork. Just someone else's public pricing page and a bit of critical thinking.

Sources
How Competitive Forces Shape Strategy (Michael Porter, 1979, Harvard Business Review) - Understanding the five competitive forces is the foundation for positioning and pricing strategy.

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