Where to find competitor reviews worth reading, without scraping
Competitor reviews are public wherever their products are sold: marketplace listings such as Amazon and Etsy, app store pages for software, Trustpilot and Google for the store itself, and forums where buyers compare options. Read them by hand, a sample at a time, and follow each site’s terms; Amazon, for one, prohibits scraping its pages. Thirty well-chosen reviews tell you more than three thousand collected blindly.
What this comes down to
- Look wherever the competitor sells: marketplace listings, app store pages, Trustpilot or Google for the store, and buyer forums.
- Copy a small, chosen sample by hand; automated scraping breaks the terms of sites such as Amazon.
- Three-star reviews are the most useful to read, because the writer liked something and still names what fell short.
- A complaint that recurs across competitors is a gap in the whole market, and a line your product page can answer.
Where competitor reviews are public
| Place | Best for |
|---|---|
| Marketplace listings (Amazon, Etsy) | Product-level complaints: size, materials, what broke and when |
| Google Play and the App Store | Software: missing features, bugs, pricing complaints |
| Trustpilot and Google business reviews | The store experience: shipping, returns, customer service |
| Forums and community threads | Buyers comparing options, often naming the brand they chose instead |
Your competitors’ unhappy customers are writing your product brief for free.
Why the export tools you already have will not help
Sellers who have exported their own reviews sometimes expect the same button for a rival’s listing. Every official route we have checked covers only your own account:
| Platform | Official route | Covers competitors? |
|---|---|---|
| Amazon | No product review export at all; Voice of the Customer and Seller Feedback downloads cover your own listings | No |
| Google Play | Monthly review CSVs under Download reports in Play Console | No, your own apps only |
| App Store | The App Store Connect API; no export button | No, your own apps only |
| Etsy | Download Your Reviews, as JSON, under Settings | No, your own shop only |
So competitor reviews come from the public pages, read the way any shopper reads them. The steps for your own exports are in how to export product reviews.
Read by hand, and follow the site’s terms
The tempting move is a scraper that pulls every review a competitor has. Do not. Amazon’s terms prohibit scraping its pages, and other sites set their own rules, so read the terms of the site you are on. There is also a practical reason: a blind download of three thousand reviews is mostly five-star praise you will not learn from.
A sample chosen by hand works better. Open the listing, sort or filter by rating where the site allows it, and copy the reviews you want to study into a document, with the rating next to each.
Which competitor reviews are worth your time
- Three stars first. The writer liked enough to stay moderate, and usually says exactly what kept it from five. That sentence is your opportunity.
- Recent over old. A complaint from three years ago may have been fixed. Look at the last few months.
- Specific over emotional.
The strap broke after two weeks
tells you something.Worst purchase ever
does not. - Mentions of alternatives.
I returned it and bought X
tells you who the customer thinks the real competitor is.
Turning what you read into changes
Sort each copied review into a topic: fit, durability, shipping, instructions, price. Count the topics across two or three competitors. Three kinds of result are worth acting on:
- A complaint shared by every competitor. The whole market has the gap. If your product does not, say so plainly on the product page.
- A complaint one competitor gets and you do not. A real difference worth stating, in plain terms, without naming them.
- A complaint they get that you also get. Not a selling point. A problem to fix first.
For the sorting step, paste up to 30 copied reviews into the Review Analyzer, free and without an account. It returns topics, sentiment and severity for each one, so two competitors can be compared on the same topics.
Two things not to do with them
Do not quote a competitor’s reviewers in your marketing, and do not post reviews of a competitor’s product. The first borrows words you have no permission to use; the second passes you off as an ordinary customer, the deception that rules on fake reviews, such as the FTC’s, exist to stop.
Use what you read to change your product, your page and your answers. That is where the value is.
Questions
Is it legal to scrape competitor reviews?
That depends on the site and where you are, and this is not legal advice. Many sites prohibit scraping in their terms; Amazon does. Reading and copying a small sample by hand avoids the question and usually gives better insight.
Which competitor reviews should I read first?
Recent three-star reviews. They come from customers who liked the product enough to stay moderate and usually explain exactly what fell short.
How many competitor reviews do I need to read?
A focused sample of 20 to 30 recent, specific reviews per competitor is usually enough to see the recurring topics. Past that, you mostly read the same complaints again.
Read next
Which customer reviews matter most? It depends on the decision
Safety reviews first, common complaints over loud ones, and the overlooked three-star and specific five-star reviews. Which reviews to read for each decision.
What is customer review analysis? What it finds that star ratings hide
Review analysis turns reviews into counts: topics, sentiment, severity and which need a reply. What it produces, and what a star average cannot tell you.
Where to find customer feedback beyond reviews: tickets, returns and questions
Support tickets, return reasons, pre-purchase questions and surveys hold more feedback than reviews do. Where each source lives and how to read them together.