Competitor analysis report: a real example, annotated

Most "competitor analysis report" examples online are templates with the boxes left empty, or AI-generated summaries with no sources. This walks through what a report looks like when every claim has to survive scrutiny — section by section, with the standard each part is held to.

What a competitor analysis report should contain

A report you can hand to a client, board, or investor needs more than a list of competitors. At minimum:

• Scope — which market, which competitors, and which questions the report answers. Stated up front so the reader knows the boundaries.
• Executive summary — the three to five things that actually matter, each one traceable to a finding below.
• Per-competitor profiles — positioning, pricing posture, recent moves, and notable risks.
• Comparison — the set viewed side by side on the dimensions that matter to the decision.
• Sources and appendix — the numbered citations behind every factual claim.

The part most examples skip: claim typing

The difference between content and intelligence is whether you can tell a fact from a guess. In a defensible report, every claim is labeled by what kind of claim it is:

• A verified fact is supported by a primary public source — a filing, a pricing page, a press release. It gets a numbered citation.
• A public statement is something a company said. It's attributed as a statement, never restated as fact.
• Analysis is our interpretation of sourced facts; it's labeled as analysis, with the facts cited.
• An allegation — an unproven third-party claim — is high-risk. It's excluded by default, and only included when reviewed and clearly attributed.

If a report blends these together, you can't defend any single line of it. See the full claim taxonomy →

How to read the citations

In a sourced report, every factual claim ends with a numbered reference. The test you should apply: pick any claim at random, follow its citation, and confirm the source says what the report says it says. If you can't, the report hasn't earned the claim.

This is exactly why we publish full sample reports with no email wall — so you can run that test yourself before you trust us with anything.

See it in a finished report

The annotated walkthrough above describes the standard. The fastest way to judge it is to read an actual report and check the citations.