Competitor price tracking: spreadsheet or software?

Most shops start tracking competitor prices in a spreadsheet, and for good reason: it is free, flexible and everyone knows how to use one. The question is not whether a spreadsheet can work but when it stops working. This article shows how to build a competitor price tracking spreadsheet properly, where it tends to break, and how to judge when dedicated software is worth paying for.

How to build a competitor price tracking spreadsheet

A tracking sheet that stays useful has a fixed structure. Resist the urge to add a new column every time you check prices; you will end up with a wide sheet that nobody can read. Instead, use two tabs.

Tab 1: the product map

One row per product and competitor pair:

• Your SKU
• Product name and variant (size, colour, capacity)
• Your current price and your cost price
• Competitor name
• Competitor product URL (the exact product page, not a search result)
• A notes column for anything unusual (bundle, different variant, marketplace seller)

Tab 2: the price log

One row per reading: date, SKU, competitor, price, in stock (yes/no), and who checked. Every time you check, you add rows rather than overwriting. This gives you history, which is what lets you see that a competitor drops prices every Thursday or has been edging upwards for two months.

A summary view

On top of the log, build a summary that takes the latest in-stock reading per competitor and calculates, for each SKU:

• The median competitor price
• Your price index (your price ÷ median × 100)
• The gap to the cheapest in-stock competitor
• Your margin at your current price

If you are unsure how to read the index, see what a competitive price index is.

Keeping the product map accurate

The product map decays quietly. Competitors retire product pages, change URLs when they relaunch a site, or replace a model with its successor on the same page. Once a month, sort the log by the date of the last successful reading for each pair and look at the ones that have not produced a price recently. Fix or remove them, and note new competitors that have started appearing next to you in search or on comparison sites. A map that is reviewed regularly stays small and trustworthy; one that only grows becomes the reason people stop using the sheet.

Can a spreadsheet fetch prices automatically?

Partly. Google Sheets has import functions that can read data from a web page, and Excel has web queries. They work on simple, static pages. They often fail on modern shop pages, for several reasons:

• Many shops load the price with JavaScript after the page opens, so the HTML the formula reads does not contain it.
• Page layouts change, and a formula pointed at a specific element starts returning nothing, or the wrong number.
• Some shops block repeated automated requests, so formulas work for a while and then stop.
• Variant pages often show a default variant's price unless a selection is made, which the formula cannot do.

The most dangerous failure is not an error message but a plausible wrong number. A formula that quietly picks up the "from" price of a product family, or the price of a recommended accessory further down the page, looks fine until you price against it.

Where spreadsheets break down

Time

Manual checks scale with the number of product and competitor pairs. Say you track 80 products against 4 competitors: that is 320 pages. At around 30 seconds per page to open, verify and record, a full check takes over two and a half hours. Weekly, that is a morning per week. Daily, it is a part-time job.

Consistency

Checks get skipped in busy weeks, which in retail are often the weeks when competitors change prices most. The log then has gaps exactly where you need data.

Stock status

People checking prices by hand often record the price but not whether the product can actually be bought. A spreadsheet full of prices for out-of-stock products gives a false picture of the market.

Alerts

A spreadsheet does not tell you when something changes. You only find out when you next open it, which may be days after a competitor undercut you on a best seller.

Acting on the data

Even with a perfect sheet, changing prices still means copying numbers into your shop platform by hand or via CSV, with room for typing errors.

What dedicated software adds

Competitor price monitoring tools do the same job as the spreadsheet, but on a schedule and with the checking built in. The useful differences are:

• Prices and stock read automatically from the competitor URLs you supply.
• A history kept without anyone adding rows.
• Suspicious readings flagged instead of silently accepted.
• Alerts when a competitor undercuts you.
• An index, gap to cheapest and margin calculated for every product.
• In some tools, price recommendations or a direct connection to your shop platform so approved prices can be published.

Software does not remove the need for judgement. You still choose the competitors, check that product matches are correct and decide your pricing rules. It removes the repetitive work and the silent errors.

A simple way to decide

Put a cost on the time. Using the example above, if a weekly manual check takes about 2.5 hours and you value that time at 400 kr per hour, the spreadsheet costs around 1,000 kr a week, or roughly 4,300 kr a month, before counting errors and missed changes. Compare that with the monthly price of a tool that covers the same products and competitors at a higher frequency.

As a rough guide:

• Stay with a spreadsheet if you track fewer than about 20 product and competitor pairs, prices in your category rarely move, and weekly checks are enough.
• Consider software if you track more than that, sell in categories where competitors change prices often, list products on comparison sites, or have already priced against a wrong number.

Whatever you choose, the product map you build for a spreadsheet is not wasted. A clean list of SKUs and competitor URLs is exactly what a monitoring tool needs to get started.

Moving from a spreadsheet to software

1. Clean the product map: remove dead URLs and fix variant mismatches.
2. Export it as CSV with SKU, your price, cost and competitor URLs.
3. Import it into the tool, or connect your shop platform and add the URLs.
4. Run both in parallel for a week or two and compare. Differences are usually wrong matches on one side or the other.
5. Stop updating the spreadsheet once you trust the tool's readings.

Luska's Starter plan (€149 a month) covers monitoring of up to 100 products with 3 competitors each, which is the scale at which most shops outgrow a manual sheet. It reads competitor URLs daily, records stock status and lets you export the price grid to CSV if you still want to work in a spreadsheet. Plan details are on the pricing page.

Frequently asked questions

Is there a free competitor price tracking spreadsheet template?

The structure above is all a template needs: a product map tab, a price log tab and a summary. Building it yourself means it fits your catalogue rather than someone else's.

Is scraping competitor prices legal?

Reading publicly displayed prices is common practice, but terms of use and local law vary. Avoid overloading competitors' sites with requests, and take advice if you are unsure about your jurisdiction.

How often should a spreadsheet be updated?

At least as often as your competitors change prices. For guidance by category, see how often to check competitor prices.