How to Find Competitors for Your Startup (Before They Find You)

"We don't really have competitors."

We've heard this from founders who submitted their idea to our validation scanner. Then the scan came back with 12 competitors they'd never heard of.

Competitive analysis is the process of identifying and evaluating every business that competes for the same customers or solves the same problem as your startup. Every idea has competitors. If nobody is solving the problem, that's not an opportunity. It's a warning sign that the problem might not be worth solving.

Here's how to find them all.

Why Do Most Founders Miss Their Competitors?

The typical founder does this: opens Google, types their idea, scans page 1, and concludes "nothing out there." That's not research. That's a confirmation bias ritual.

Competitors don't always look like you. They fall into three categories:

• 1.Direct competitors do the same thing for the same audience. If you're building a project management tool for freelancers, so is someone else.
• 2.Indirect competitors solve the same problem differently. Your freelancer PM tool competes with spreadsheets, Notion templates, and pen-and-paper systems.
• 3.Adjacent competitors serve a different audience with similar tech. An enterprise PM tool could launch a freelancer tier tomorrow.

You need to find all three. Here's where to look.

What Are the Best Free Methods to Find Competitors?

Google (But Do It Right)

Don't search your product name. Search the problem.

If you're building an invoice tool for freelancers, don't search "freelance invoice app." Search what your customer would search:

• •"how to send invoices as a freelancer"
• •"freelance invoice template"
• •"getting paid as a freelancer"
• •"best way to track freelance income"

The results won't just show competitors. They'll show you how your market actually talks about the problem. That's gold for positioning later.

Also check Google's "People also ask" and "Related searches" sections. They surface competitors you'd never think to look for.

Product Hunt

Go to producthunt.com and search your category. Sort by newest and by most upvoted.

Product Hunt shows you two things Google doesn't: what's been launched recently (timing) and how many people cared (demand signal). If 5 competitors launched in the last 3 months, the market is heating up.

Crunchbase

Search your category on Crunchbase. Filter by funding stage, location, and founding date.

This tells you who has money behind them. A bootstrapped competitor with 2 users is different from one that just raised $5M. Both matter, but for different reasons.

Reddit and Hacker News

Search your problem keyword on Reddit (use Google: site:reddit.com [your problem]). Look for threads where people recommend solutions. The tools mentioned in comments are your competitors, and the complaints about those tools are your opportunity.

Same on Hacker News. Search "Ask HN" and "Show HN" threads in your space. Founders post their launches there, and the comments are brutally honest market research.

G2 and Capterra

If your category exists on G2 or Capterra, you'll find a ranked list of every competitor with real user reviews. Read the 2-star and 3-star reviews. That's where customers describe exactly what's missing. Those gaps are your positioning.

YouTube

Search your problem on YouTube. The videos with 50K+ views on "best [your category] tools" are free competitor research someone already compiled for you. Watch the first 3 minutes of each. You'll have a list of 8-10 competitors in 15 minutes.

What Paid Tools Help Find Hidden Competitors?

Exa.ai

Exa is a search engine built for research. It finds companies and products that traditional Google searches miss, especially newer startups that don't rank yet. Good for finding stealth competitors.

SimilarWeb

Once you know your competitors, SimilarWeb shows their traffic, where it comes from, and how big they actually are. A competitor with a pretty website but 200 monthly visitors is different from one with 200K.

App Store and Google Play

If your product has a mobile component, search both app stores. The app store search algorithm surfaces competitors Google doesn't. Read the reviews. Same logic as G2: the complaints are your opportunity.

How Should You Organize Your Competitor Research?

Don't just make a list. Build a comparison table with these columns:

10-15 competitors in this format gives you more clarity than 50 hours of "thinking about it." For a deeper framework on what to do with this data, read our guide on competitor analysis for startups.

What Are the Biggest Competitor Research Mistakes?

• ✗Stopping at page 1. Google shows you the best-marketed competitors, not all of them. The dangerous ones might be on page 3, or not on Google at all.
• ✗Ignoring indirect competitors. "We don't compete with spreadsheets" is what founders say before losing customers to spreadsheets.
• ✗Seeing competitors as threats instead of data. Competitors prove demand exists. They show you what pricing works. They reveal gaps through their bad reviews. A market with zero competitors is scarier than one with 20.
• ✗Doing it once. Competitor research isn't a checkbox. New startups launch every week. Set a monthly reminder to re-scan your space.

"If you can't name at least 3 competitors, you haven't done enough research. And if you think you have no competition, you definitely haven't."

Want This Done in 60 Seconds Instead of 6 Hours?

That's what we built TestYourIdea for. Enter your idea, and the scanner pulls competitors from Crunchbase, Product Hunt, G2, Exa, and 15+ other sources automatically. Names, pricing, funding, weaknesses. All sourced. See how it works in our validation tools comparison.

But whether you use a tool or do it manually, the point is the same: know your market before you build for it.

Frequently Asked Questions