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Daily

Know when a competitor changes their pricing

Keep competitor pages in a sheet. When one changes, Slack tells you what's different.

Runs
Daily
Apps
Google Sheets, Slack
AI
Optional
Access
Sheets read+write; Slack chat:write

Send this to your assistant

Create a ClickRuntime automation: every day, check the competitor pages listed in my Competitors sheet. If one has changed since yesterday, post what changed to #competitors and note the date in the sheet.

Paste it into your assistant. It tells you what it will send or change before it runs live.

First time? Adding ClickRuntime to your assistant takes about two minutes.

Why use it

Why teams use this automation

A marketing manager lists a dozen competitor pages in a sheet: pricing tables, plan comparison pages, review profiles and key landing pages. A competitor quietly raises its entry plan by $10, or rewrites its headline to attack a feature she has just launched. She learns about it from a sales call two weeks later, when a prospect mentions the new price and she has no idea since when it has been that way.

Once a day, ClickRuntime reads the page addresses from your sheet, fetches each one and takes a fingerprint of the section you care about, such as the pricing table. If it differs from the value stored last time, it posts the change in Slack and logs a row. When AI is used, it also explains the change in plain words.

Product marketers, founders and SEO teams use it as an early warning on competitors.

What you get out of it

  • Price changes are noticed within a day

    Knowing a competitor raised or cut a plan lets you adjust a campaign, update a comparison page or brief sales before the next prospect asks. The delay between a change and your reaction becomes hours.

  • You see the exact change

    The diff shows which words or numbers changed, not just that something moved. That saves staring at two screenshots trying to spot which line has a new price. Nobody needs to compare screenshots or memory.

  • A dated history of competitor positioning

    Each logged row records when a page changed, which builds a timeline of how rivals reposition over months. It is useful evidence when planning messaging or explaining market shifts to leadership.

  • No more manual page checking

    Visiting a dozen competitor pages every week is boring, so it gets skipped. A daily check that only speaks up when something is different covers it with no attention required.

  • Changes are explained, not just flagged

    When AI summarizes the difference, the alert says something like starter plan up from $19 to $29 and annual discount removed. Readers understand the impact straight away, without opening the page.

How it works

What happens, step by step

  1. Every day, ClickRuntime reads the competitor names and page addresses from the Competitors tab of your Google Sheet.

  2. It fetches each page and compares its text with the copy saved from the last check.

  3. When a page has changed, a message appears in your #competitors Slack channel with the competitor, the page and the lines that are different.

  4. The change is also logged in the sheet, and the new copy is saved for the next check.

Before it runs live

  • Connect your Google Sheets account and pick the spreadsheets it may use
  • Connect Slack, then invite the app to the channel (type /invite @ClickRuntime there)

What you get

RunsDaily
Know when a competitor changes their pricingtoday, 9:00Succeeded
Slack ยท #competitors๐Ÿ”„ Northwind changed https://northwind.example/pricing + Team plan now $29 per seat per month

Build your own

Need it to work differently?

This template is a starting point. Copy the prompt and change it, or describe a different automation from scratch, with your own conditions, more apps or an AI step. Your assistant writes it, tests it and runs it on ClickRuntime.
  • Your own rules

    Conditions, thresholds, filters and exceptions, written the way you'd explain them to a colleague.

  • Any number of apps

    One automation can read from one app and update several others. Over 248 apps are ready, and anything with an API works too.

  • AI where it helps

    Summaries, classification, extraction and drafts use ClickRuntime's built-in AI, with no extra key.

  • On a schedule or on each event

    Runs as often as every 5 minutes, or the moment an app sends an event, and keeps track of what it already handled.

Changes you can ask for

  • Run it at a different time, more or less often, or only on weekdays
  • Change what the AI looks for, or how it writes the result
  • Add another app, for example also send it to Gmail
  • Combine it with other Google Sheets and Slack steps into one automation

Under the hood

The code that runs this automation

This is the Python script that runs each time the automation starts. Your AI assistant writes it for you when you send the prompt, and you allow each step in your assistant. To change how the automation works, describe the change to your assistant and it updates the script for you. For every function it can use, see the script reference.
competitor_page_change_alerts.pyexample
import hashlib
from datetime import date
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup
from google.oauth2.credentials import Credentials
from googleapiclient.discovery import build
from clickruntime import on_trigger, credentials, http, state, notify

SHEET_ID = "your-spreadsheet-id"

@on_trigger
def run(event):
    sheets = build("sheets", "v4", credentials=Credentials(credentials.connection("google", "work")), cache_discovery=False)
    rows = sheets.spreadsheets().values().get(spreadsheetId=SHEET_ID, range="Competitors!A2:B").execute().get("values", [])
    pages = state.get("pages") or {}
    changed = 0
    for i, row in enumerate(rows, start=2):
        name, url = (row + ["", ""])[:2]
        text = BeautifulSoup(http.get(url).text, "html.parser").get_text(" ", strip=True)[:20000]
        digest = hashlib.sha256(text.encode()).hexdigest()
        old = pages.get(url)
        if old and old["hash"] != digest:
            added = [w for w in set(text.split(". ")) - set(old["text"].split(". "))][:5]
            notify.slack(f"๐Ÿ”„ {name} changed {url}\n" + "\n".join(f"+ {s[:200]}" for s in added), channel="#competitors")
            sheets.spreadsheets().values().update(spreadsheetId=SHEET_ID, range=f"Competitors!C{i}",
                                                  valueInputOption="RAW", body={"values": [[date.today().isoformat()]]}).execute()
            changed += 1
        pages[url] = {"hash": digest, "text": text[:5000]}
    state.set("pages", pages)
    return {"checked": len(rows), "changed": changed}

FAQ

Common questions

Does it detect changes in only part of a page?
Yes. You can point it at a specific section, such as the pricing table, so that a rotating banner or footer date does not trigger alerts. Watching only the part that matters keeps notifications relevant.
Can it monitor pages that load content with JavaScript?
It fetches the page as the server sends it. Content added later by scripts may not be visible, so pricing widgets rendered in the browser can be missed. Test a page first, or look for a data endpoint the page itself calls.
Is it legal to monitor competitor websites?
Looking at public pages is normal competitive research, but you should keep the volume low, respect each site's terms and robots.txt, and avoid pages behind a login. If in doubt, ask your legal adviser before you start monitoring.
What permissions does it need?
Sheets read+write; Slack chat:write. Nothing else in your accounts is used.
Does it need AI?
No, but you can ask for an AI step (for example a summary). It then uses ClickRuntime's built-in AI allowance.
How many runs does it use?
One run each time it runs (daily). Checks that find nothing to do and stop right away aren't counted.
Can I change how it works?
Yes. Describe the change to your AI assistant, for example a different schedule, channel or filter. It updates the automation, tests it and tells you what changed.

Set up โ€œKnow when a competitor changes their pricingโ€ from your assistant

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