# Competitor Research in Claude: Ask Claude what your competitors changed, and get answers from tracked data, not a web search.

> RivalSweeper connects to Claude as a custom connector. Ask "Who went on sale this week and how deep?" or "What did they launch?" and Claude answers from RivalSweeper's dated records of your rivals' storefronts, ads and promotions, instead of guessing from the web.

- Page: https://rotomal.com/claude-competitor-research-connector/
- Category: Competitive intelligence
- Language: en
- Billing: subscription
- From: $39 per month
- Provided by RivalSweeper: https://www.rivalsweeper.com/landing/mcp-competitive-intelligence?utm_source=rotomal&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=rotomal-usecases&utm_content=claude-competitor-research-connector&utm_term=agent

- Plain-language questions, answers built from tracked data with dates
- Covers your own store and the rivals your RivalSweeper account tracks
- Included in every paid RivalSweeper plan, no code and nothing to install

## Claude is great at thinking. It doesn't know what your rival did on Tuesday

Ask Claude about a competitor and, without a data source, it relies on what it learned in training or on a web search. That is fine for a company's history. It cannot tell you that a rival put 300 products on sale on Tuesday, started twelve new Meta ads, or quietly dropped a category.

Your RivalSweeper account already records those things: prices and discount depth from rivals' own storefronts, new and removed products, live ads, promotions, newsletters and homepage changes. The connector lets Claude read them when you ask, so the weekly trading note, the board slide or the reply to your CEO starts from facts with dates on them.

You keep working the way you do now. You ask, Claude picks the right RivalSweeper tools, and you see which data it used.

- Anthropic introduced the Model Context Protocol on 25 November 2024 as an open standard for connecting AI assistants to the systems where data lives; Claude connectors are built on it. (source: https://www.anthropic.com/news/model-context-protocol)
- RivalSweeper surfaces competitor price, promotion and catalog changes within 48 hours, read from competitors' own storefronts. (source: https://www.rivalsweeper.com/use-cases/competitor-price-promotion-tracking)
- Brands often add new products to their catalog before the homepage, ads or emails show them, so a launch can be visible before it is promoted. (source: https://www.rivalsweeper.com/use-cases/product-launch-assortment-radar)

## Two minutes to set up, then just ask

1. **Add the connector.** In Claude, add a custom connector with the URL https://mcp.rivalsweeper.com/mcp.
2. **Sign in with RivalSweeper.** The first time Claude needs your data it opens the RivalSweeper sign-in page. Sign in with your usual RivalSweeper login and accept the terms.
3. **Ask your question.** "Which rivals are on sale right now, and how deep?" Claude calls the matching RivalSweeper tools and answers with the data and its dates.
4. **Turn it into work.** Ask Claude to draft the trading note, a promo response or a slide from the answer. The numbers stay traceable to RivalSweeper.

## Features

- **What changed this week.** A feed of what each rival changed, newest first: prices, ads, marketing messages, new products, shipping, tech and hiring.
- **Who is on sale, and how deep.** Discount frequency and depth per brand, and the products with the deepest current markdowns.
- **New products and pages.** What rivals published recently, often before they promote it in ads or emails.
- **Ads and promotions.** Live ads across channels, active promotions and coupons, and newsletter themes per rival.
- **Dead ads and ended deals.** Live Meta ads that land on a broken page, a sold-out product or an offer that has already ended, for your brand or a rival.
- **Their likely next move.** An indication of what a rival is likely to do next, with a confidence level and the evidence behind it, never a certainty.
- **How AI models describe brands.** How large language models describe and cite your brand and your rivals. RivalSweeper currently samples Google Gemini and OpenAI's open-weight GPT-OSS models.

## Who it's for

- **Ecommerce managers.** Start Monday's trading meeting with "what did rivals do last week?" answered in a minute, with the depth of every sale.
- **Marketing leads and CMOs.** Ask which campaigns and angles rivals are running, then have Claude draft your response brief from the answer.
- **Founders.** One question instead of five competitor tabs, from the same tool you already use for everything else.

## Works with

Claude (custom connector), Claude Code, Codex CLI, Cursor, RivalSweeper app, email alerts and RSS, Sign in with your RivalSweeper account

## Pricing

The connector is included in every paid RivalSweeper plan; questions are counted as tool calls against a monthly plan limit, never billed as credits. The 14-day free trial covers the RivalSweeper app with 1 rival; the connector comes with a paid plan. Billed monthly in USD, cancel any time, 14-day money-back on every plan.

| Plan | Price | Includes |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Basic | $39 per month | Claude connector included: 1,000 tool calls a month; 2 monitored domains plus your store; 1 user; Price, discount and stock tracking on supported websites; Email support within 2 business days |
| Pro | $199 per month | Claude connector included: 10,000 tool calls a month; 15 monitored domains plus your store; 5 users; REST API, 10,000 requests a month; Support within 1 business day |
| Enterprise | Custom set with sales | No fixed monthly tool-call limit; Unlimited monitored domains via sales; 20 users; Dedicated account manager; Monthly strategy calls |

## Compared with the alternatives

- **Asking Claude without a data source.** Good for background on a company. It cannot see what a rival changed this week, and it may sound confident about prices it never saw.
- **Claude with web search.** Finds news and pages that mention a brand. It does not keep a dated record of prices, discounts, launches and ads, so 'what changed' is hard to answer.
- **Opening the dashboard.** Same data, more clicks. Use the RivalSweeper app for the full views and alerts, and the connector for quick questions and drafting.

## Security and data

- You sign in on RivalSweeper's own page (OAuth with PKCE); Claude never sees your RivalSweeper password.
- Access is scoped to your own store and the rivals your account tracks.
- 33 of 35 tools are read-only; the 2 request tools cannot delete or change data.
- Competitor data comes from public pages and public ad libraries; nothing connects to your store, ad account or analytics.

## Your first week

If your rivals are already in RivalSweeper, you can ask your first question within minutes. If not, add them in the app first; new brands can take up to 24 hours before data appears.

- Day 1: add the connector, sign in, and ask "What did my rivals change in the last 7 days?"
- Day 2: ask which rivals are on sale and how deep, and compare with the app.
- Day 7: make it a habit: ask Claude for the weekly competitor note before your trading meeting.

## FAQ

### Do I need to be technical to set it up?

No. You add one URL as a custom connector in Claude and sign in with your RivalSweeper login. There is no code and nothing to install.

### Which brands can Claude see?

Your own store and the rivals your RivalSweeper account tracks. Add more rivals in the app, or ask Claude to request monitoring for a new brand. New brands can take up to 24 hours before data appears.

### Is it in the free trial?

No. The free trial covers the RivalSweeper app with 1 rival. The connector comes with a paid plan: 1,000 tool calls a month on Basic, 10,000 on Pro.

### Can Claude change anything in my account?

No. 33 of the 35 tools only read data. The other two only file a request, to monitor a new brand or add a missing data signal. Nothing deletes or edits data, and no tool takes a payment.

### Does it work outside Claude?

Yes. The same server works in any MCP client, including Claude Code, Codex and Cursor, with the same RivalSweeper sign-in.

### How do I know the answer is real?

Answers come from RivalSweeper's tracked records, which carry the date they were captured. Ask Claude which tool and dates it used, and check the same view in the RivalSweeper app.

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Rotomal · https://rotomal.com/claude-competitor-research-connector/ · hello@rotomal.com