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How to do a competitive teardown

By coExploro · Published · Updated

Reviewed and edited by coExploro · Independent, not affiliated · Public methodology · Corrections: support@coexploro.com

A competitive teardown is a dated reading of a rival product’s public pages, done to answer one question about your market. You name the pages, keep the day you captured them, write each observation with a receipt, and keep what the page shows apart from what you conclude. The steps below run on coExploro’s Crayon sample.

  1. Write the question — name the rival, the decision it serves and the pages it needs.
  2. Capture the pages with their date — keep each page as it was and the day you saw it.
  3. Write each observation with its receipt — the words on the page, its address, the place, the date and the evidence level.
  4. Read like for like — the same question, page type and capture date for every product.
  5. Re-check before you reuse it — open the live page again and date the new reading.

Step 1: Write the question

A competitive teardown starts with a decision, not with a list of pages. Write the decision your team faces, name the rival, and pick only the pages the question needs. Suppose your product is sold against Crayon and the question is how Crayon lets a buyer reach a price. That needs Crayon’s homepage, its pricing address and the path between them; the account area and the sales call stay outside the scope. Writing the question first keeps the reading short and tells you when it is finished: when every page in scope has been read for that one question. A question such as ‘what is Crayon good at’ has no finish line, and it turns a teardown into a feature list.

Step 2: Capture the pages with their date

A public page changes without notice, so a reading is only as good as the copy of the page it was made from. Save each page as it looked, full length, and write the date beside it; a screenshot without a date cannot show when the page looked that way. coExploro captured the Crayon sample on 29 October 2026, and its findings come from the homepage and the pricing page as a visitor without an account sees them. In a teardown you run in coExploro, a finding can open the screenshot it was read from when one is attached. Public samples carry the finding text without the screenshots, and the Crayon sample adds a text receipt to each of its four findings. Whatever tool you use, the date belongs to the page, not to the report you write afterwards.

Step 3: Write each observation with its receipt

An observation is one sentence about one page, and its receipt is what lets someone else check it. A receipt has five parts: the words on the page, the page address, the place on the page, the capture date and an evidence level that says how directly the words support the sentence. The Crayon sample’s pricing finding reads that the pricing page shows a Request an Estimate form and no plan or price, with ten required fields and a Send Inquiry button. Its receipt is the quote ‘Request an Estimate’, the address crayon.co/pricing, the heading of the form, 29 October 2026 and Indirect evidence. Write counts, prices and absences from the page itself, never from memory or from a summary of the page. An outline of steps like these is available from a template or a chat assistant; what makes a teardown checkable is the material behind each sentence. Under See it on a real product below, each sample shows one receipt from its pricing page: the heading of the Crayon form and the heading beside the monday.com quote form. coExploro’s methodology states what a capture can and cannot show.

Step 4: Read like for like

A comparison is easiest to defend when both sides answer the same question from the same kind of page, captured on the same day. The monday.com sample was also captured on 29 October 2026, and its pricing page answers the price question differently: the sample’s FAQ gives per-seat prices for the Basic, Standard and Pro plans, and its pricing finding describes a sales quote form on the same page. Side by side, Crayon’s pricing page offers only a form, while monday.com’s lets a buyer read a price before talking to sales. That sentence rests on both readings sharing the question, the page type and the capture date. Set against another product’s homepage, it would compare different things; set against a capture from another month, it would need both dates stated. Keep the observation and your reading apart: ‘no price on the page’ is an observation, and ‘Crayon sells through sales conversations’ is a reading that needs its own check.

Step 5: Re-check before you reuse it

A finding describes the page as it was on its capture date, so open the live page again before the finding goes into a deck or a decision, and write the new date beside the old one. On 29 October 2026, after the capture, the Crayon pricing finding held, and the homepage answered the question from step 1: it carried no link to the pricing page. The two observations below carry that date and link to the pages they describe. When a re-check finds a change, keep both readings with their dates instead of overwriting the first. Then pass on the answer, its scope and dates, and what stays open; the product teardown framework covers that handoff. Klue vs Crayon applies the same reading to two vendors side by side.

  • Observed by us

    The address crayon.co/pricing redirected to crayon.co/pricing-inquiry, which showed the Request an Estimate form with ten required fields, a Send Inquiry button and no price.

    verified · Source: crayon.co/pricing (opens in a new tab)

  • Observed by us

    Crayon’s homepage carried no link to a pricing page, and its navigation offered Product, Resources, Company, Get a Demo and Log In.

    verified · Source: crayon.co (opens in a new tab)

Run steps 2 and 3 in coExploro

coExploro does step 2 for you and drafts the observations of step 3: paste a rival’s address, and in 2–4 minutes it captures its main public pages with their date, and four AI analysts, PM, Marketing, UX and Designer, write findings from that capture. Step 1 stays with you. You can try one run a day per network without an account, a free account includes 3 teardowns a month, and paid plans start at $16 a month billed yearly.

Limits

What a competitive teardown does not show

  • Public pages show what a rival says and offers to a visitor, not its revenue, its customers’ behavior or its roadmap.
  • When a form or a sales call stands in for a price, a reading of public pages ends with an open question about cost.
  • Screens behind a login, a trial or a demo are outside a public capture.
  • One capture shows one day; a claim that a rival changed direction needs captures from more than one date.

See it on a real product

Crayon

Competitor intel and sales battlecards

Overall score 68 · Captured

Crayon's pricing page is a ten-field estimate form with no price shown, and its homepage opens customer cards with figures and lists two AI features.

monday.com

Work management platform

Overall score 69 · Captured

monday.com lists six AI controls on its homepage, puts a no-credit-card line under its hero button, and asks for nine inputs on its sales quote form.

Questions

What is the difference between a competitive teardown and a product teardown?

The method is the same and the purpose differs. A product teardown reads any product’s public pages. A competitive teardown points that reading at a rival, with a question about your own market. coExploro calls what it makes a product teardown, whichever product you point it at.

Is a software competitive teardown the same as a hardware teardown?

No. In hardware, a teardown means taking a rival’s device apart to see its parts and what they cost. A software competitive teardown reads what the rival shows in public: its pages, its prices or the lack of them, its forms and the path to a first action.

How many pages should a competitive teardown cover?

The pages the question needs and no others. A pricing question needs the pricing page and the page that leads to it. A positioning question needs the homepage hero and the screens under it. Pages added without a question make the reading bigger without answering more.

Can a chat assistant do a competitive teardown?

It can draft the steps and read the pages you give it. What makes the result checkable is the material behind each sentence: the page as it was captured, the date and a receipt for each observation. Keep those whichever tool writes the text.

Run your own

Start with one product.

See how a competitor's homepage and pricing page are built to convert. Paste its address: coExploro captures its public pages, such as the homepage and pricing page, and four AI analysts read them for calls to action, pricing and trust signals. It takes 2–4 minutes.

No account, no card. Your first teardown is on us. Create a free account afterwards to claim the full canvas, every finding, and the sources.

Try an example: