Competitor Comparison Matrix

What it does

When your agent uses it

• Comparing named vendors on pricing, features and positioning
• Finding alternatives to a product when you only know the category
• Building a feature matrix or positioning summary of competing tools
• Checking what each competitor's free tier and enterprise plan include

Example prompts

• “Compare Vercel, Netlify and Cloudflare Pages on pricing, edge functions and free tier.”
• “What are the alternatives to Notion for a small team? Build me a comparison matrix.”
• “Compare the top four vector databases for production RAG workloads.”
• “Make a competitor matrix for three CRM tools aimed at startups.”

Requirements

• Web search and page-scraping tools available to the agent

Workflow steps

5 steps, taken from the first numbered list in SKILL.md.

1. 1Identify competitors.
2. 2For each competitor, gather three pages
3. 3Fan out when scale warrants.
4. 4Normalize before formatting.
5. 5Call formatOutput once at the end with the full matrix.

What it can do on your machine

Read from SKILL.md and the folder at commit f023adf. It shows what the files ask for, not the result of running them.

• Tool permissions

  Pre-approves nothing: there is no allowed-tools line, so your agent's usual permission prompts apply.

  From allowed-tools in the SKILL.md frontmatter.

• Runs code

  No scripts in the folder and no shell commands in SKILL.md (its code samples are typescript and json).

  From the folder's file list and the shell code blocks in SKILL.md.

• Network

  Hosts in commands or code, which the agent is likely to contact:

  • vercel.com

  From URLs in SKILL.md, links to its own repository left out.

• Credentials

  Names no API keys, tokens, secrets or passwords.

  From names ending in _API_KEY, _TOKEN, _SECRET, _KEY or _PASSWORD in SKILL.md.

Context cost

Competitor Comparison Matrix loads about 1.1k tokens when it runs. Until then it costs about 127 tokens; SKILL.md has 372 words of instructions outside code blocks.

Always · name and description, kept in context so the agent knows when to use it

~127

When it runs · the whole SKILL.md, loaded when a task matches

~1.1k

Estimates: characters ÷ 4, the usual rule of thumb; real counts depend on the model's tokenizer. Scripts and assets cost tokens only if the agent reads them.

Safety

Automated static check — not a guarantee. Review scripts before installing. It scans the text of SKILL.md for risky patterns (piping downloads into a shell, reading credential files, hidden Unicode, destructive commands); files beside SKILL.md are not scanned.

SKILL.md

The full file from firecrawl/web-agent at commit f023adf, republished under its MIT licence (© firecrawl). 372 words, ~1,120 tokens.

name

competitor-analysis

description

Compare two or more companies, products, or platforms across pricing, features, positioning, and docs. Use this skill whenever the user says "compare X vs Y", "how does X stack up against Y", "alternatives to X", "competitive landscape of …", "X vs Y vs Z", or asks for a competitor matrix. Uses search to discover competitors when the user only names a category, then scrape for each competitor's homepage, pricing page, and features/docs. Returns a normalized comparison matrix as JSON.

category

Research

await agent.run({
  prompt: 'Compare Vercel, Netlify, and Cloudflare Pages on pricing, edge functions, and free tier generosity',
  skills: ['competitor-analysis'],
  format: 'json',
})

// User gave only a category — discover competitors first
await agent.run({
  prompt: 'Compare the top 4 vector databases for production RAG workloads',
  skills: ['competitor-analysis'],
  format: 'json',
})

{
  "category": "Edge hosting platforms",
  "competitors": [
    {
      "name": "Vercel",
      "url": "https://vercel.com",
      "positioning": "Frontend cloud for Next.js and React",
      "pricing": [
        { "tier": "Hobby", "price": 0, "unit": "month", "limits": {} },
        { "tier": "Pro", "price": 20, "unit": "seat/month", "limits": {} }
      ],
      "strengths": [],
      "weaknesses": [],
      "freeTier": true,
      "enterpriseContactOnly": false,
      "sources": []
    }
  ],
  "summary": "One-paragraph takeaway comparing the field.",
  "bestFit": {
    "budgetConscious": "",
    "enterprise": "",
    "developer": ""
  }
}

© firecrawl, MIT. Rendered from Markdown: HTML in the file is shown as text, images as links, and headings moved down two levels. Raw file

Files

Just SKILL.md in agent-core/src/skills/definitions/competitor-analysis of firecrawl/web-agent.

Open the folder on GitHubat commit f023adf