If you sell on Shopify, you already know the problem: a competitor quietly drops their price, steals your sales, and you don't notice until your numbers dip a week later. By then, the damage is done.
This guide walks through exactly how to track competitor prices on Shopify — from manual methods to full automation — so you can react in minutes, not days.
Why competitor price tracking matters
Online shoppers compare prices constantly. Price is consistently the #1 factor in purchase decisions for most product categories. If a competitor undercuts you and you don't respond, you lose the sale — and often the customer for good.
For Shopify sellers specifically, the challenge is:
- Prices change frequently — competitors run flash sales, seasonal discounts, and dynamic pricing
- You can't watch 24/7 — manually checking dozens of competitor pages every day doesn't scale
- Timing is everything — reacting a day late means lost orders
Method 1: Manual tracking (free, but painful)
The simplest approach is a spreadsheet:
- List your competitors' product URLs
- Every morning, open each one and note the price
- Compare against your own prices
- Adjust where you're being undercut
Pros: Free, no tools needed.
Cons: Time-consuming, error-prone, and you only catch changes once a day. For more than 5-10 products, this becomes a part-time job.
Method 2: Browser extensions (limited)
Some browser extensions show price history for individual products. Handy for spot checks, but limited:
- You have to manually open each page
- No proactive alerts — you only see data when you look
- Most focus on Amazon, not Shopify stores
- No way to monitor at scale
Good for research, not for ongoing monitoring.
Method 3: Automated price monitoring (recommended)
The scalable solution is a dedicated tool that:
- Watches competitor pages automatically on a schedule
- Alerts you instantly via email or Slack the moment a price changes
- Tracks history so you can spot pricing patterns
- Handles many products — monitor 5, 50, or 500 competitors effortlessly
How automated tracking works
Modern tools read the publicly available price on a competitor's product page — the same price any shopper sees. For Shopify stores this is especially reliable, since Shopify exposes structured product data that makes the price easy to read accurately.
You paste a URL once, set an alert threshold (e.g. "notify me if the price drops more than 5%"), and the tool does the rest.
Setting up automated tracking
I built PriceHawk — a lightweight competitor price tracker for Shopify and Amazon sellers. Setup takes under 2 minutes:
- Sign up free — no credit card, track up to 5 products
- Paste a competitor's product URL — it auto-detects the platform and pulls the current price
- Set your alert rule — price drop / price rise, and your threshold
- Pick your channel — email or Slack
- Done — it checks the price on your schedule and pings you on any change
You get a price history chart per product, so you can see when competitors typically discount and plan around it.
Pricing strategy tips once you're tracking
Tracking is only useful if you act on it:
- Match, don't always undercut — a race to the bottom kills margins. Matching often keeps the sale.
- React to drops, ignore noise — set a sensible threshold so you're not chasing every $0.10 change.
- Watch for stock-outs — when a competitor goes out of stock, you can often raise your price temporarily.
- Plan around their sale cycles — price history reveals when competitors discount.
Is competitor price tracking legal?
Yes — monitoring publicly available prices is legal and standard practice. Good tools only read the price any visitor can see on a public product page. They don't access private data, log in, or bypass anything.
Conclusion
Manual tracking doesn't scale past a handful of products. Automated monitoring lets you watch dozens of competitors, get instant alerts, and react before you lose sales.
If you want to start free, PriceHawk tracks up to 5 competitor products at no cost — paste a URL and you're monitoring in two minutes.
Building this in public. Would love feedback from other sellers — what would make competitor tracking a must-have for you?
