How to Use Similarweb to Benchmark Competitor Traffic

The short answer: look up your own domain first and compare it with GA4 for the same month, devices and metric, then open Website Analysis, add up to four competitors with +Compare, keep the time, country and traffic filters identical, read rank, marketing channels and engagement side by side, find the keywords that send rivals traffic and not you, and save the set as a Project so a weekly benchmark email and competitor alerts keep it current.

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A board asks how you compare with the competition, and the plain answer is that nobody outside a company sees its analytics. Similarweb's answer is a model built from many data sources. Used carefully, it tells you who is growing and through which channel. Used carelessly, it turns an estimate into a fact on a slide. This guide is mostly about the careful part. For packages and prices, see the Similarweb glossary entry.

Before you compare anyone:

1. Measure the error on a site you know. For example, if Similarweb shows 52,000 monthly visits for your site and GA4 shows 40,000 sessions for the same month, the estimate reads 52,000 / 40,000 = 1.3 times your own figure. Carry that ratio in your head when you read a rival's number, and note that visits and sessions are close but not identical metrics.
2. Use the competitor list you already have. The rivals that come up in sales calls and lost deals are the first four, not the ones a tool suggests.
3. Fix the three numbers you will track. Share of traffic, channel mix and organic search share. Write down this month's values; next month's are only useful against them.

What you need

• A self-serve package or the trial. Competitive Intelligence is $199 a month on monthly billing or $125 billed annually, and keyword gaps need the SEO package at $399 or $333 (pricing page, checked on 24 October 2026). The trial lasts 7 days and bills the card afterwards unless you cancel, per the trial article.
• GA4 access for your own site, for step 1.
• Four competitor domains.

Step 1: Calibrate on your own site

Similarweb's GA comparison article gives three reasons its numbers differ from direct measurement: different methodologies, tracking code that is missing or over-counting, and comparisons that do not match. So match them: same time frame, same devices, same metric. If you want Similarweb to show your real figures to your own team, connect GA privately; a public connection shows them to everyone, per the GA connection article.

Step 2: Put the five sites side by side

In the Website Research module, enter your site under Website Analysis, then on the Website Performance page click +Compare to add up to four competitors, as the benchmarking guide describes. Set time, geography and traffic type in the upper right before you read anything, and keep them the same for every page that follows. A rival that looks larger worldwide can be smaller in the one country you sell in.

Step 3: Read the rank

Rank insights show each site's position globally, in its lead country and in its industry. Similarweb bases rank on monthly unique visitors and pageviews, which the guide describes as engaged audience rather than raw visits. Rank moves slowly; treat a jump of a few places as noise and a steady climb as a signal.

Step 4: Find the channel a rival is winning

Open Marketing Channels. The channels article defines ten: direct, organic search, paid search, Gen AI, social organic, social paid, referrals, affiliates, display and email. Two caveats from the same article: email opened in a desktop app is counted as direct, and app traffic is excluded. With two or more sites, the heatmap shows growth drivers in visits and marketing focus in percentages, year on year. Look for the channel where a rival grows and you do not.

Step 5: Check the quality of the traffic

The engagement table compares visit duration, pages per visit and bounce rate across the set. Read them together, as the benchmarking guide suggests: a rival with fewer visits and much longer ones may be winning the customers who matter.

Step 6: List the keywords you are losing

On the SEO package, go to Search, Overview, click Explore search keywords, then in the Keywords report select Losses and keep non-branded terms. The result is the searches that send rivals traffic and send you none, per the benchmarking guide. Hand that list to whoever writes your content.

Step 7: Save it as a Project

Projects live on the Similarweb homepage and send an automatic weekly benchmarking email, with optional competitor email alerts weekly or monthly, per the Projects article. On the lower packages you get one Project with up to 10 competitors. Choose the primary website carefully: it cannot be changed afterwards, only deleted and rebuilt.

Step 8: Hand the summary to an agent, on a business package

Similarweb's business packages include an MCP server for feeding its data into your own AI systems, and AI agents such as a trend analyzer, per the packages article. The self-serve packages do not list them. If you have one, let an assistant draft the monthly benchmark note from the same five domains and filters, and have a person check every figure in the note against the platform before it goes to the board. An agent that quotes the wrong country or device gives you a confident sentence about the wrong market.

What Similarweb's own pages warn about

• Small sites. Low-traffic sites show "Not enough data", per the data note.
• History that changed. On 25 April 2026, Similarweb recalculated marketing channel data, rerunning 37 months of history, so channel shares exported before then will not match today's, per the channels article.
• Mismatched comparisons. Different months, devices or metrics produce differences that are not real.

Reading it month to month

Run the same five domains with the same filters on the same day each month and record your three numbers. A competitive intelligence vendor sells confidence about other companies' traffic, yet its own methodology page calls its output estimations. Report trends and rankings, which an estimate handles well, and avoid quoting a rival's exact visit count as if it were measured.

FAQ

How many competitors can I compare at once?

Four besides your own site in Website Analysis, and up to 10 in a Project on the lower packages, per the Projects article.

Can I export the data?

Yes. The Channel Traffic chart exports to Excel, per the channels article, and Projects send a weekly benchmarking email.

Why does a competitor show no data?

Its traffic is too low for a reliable estimate, so Similarweb hides it rather than show a weak number.