Rivalize: SMB-priced competitive intelligence at $29/mo.
SMBs need to know what competitors are shipping. Crayon and Klue charge $20K+/yr for that. Rivalize starts at $29/mo. Same intelligence pipeline, weekly refresh, free entry-point report in 5 minutes.
Live at rivalize.ai.
Screenshot from rivalize.ai, captured 2026-05-06.
The problem
Most SMBs do competitive intelligence as a side task. Internal research polled by the Rivalize team puts it at 88.6% of companies. The "system" is a few bookmarks, a quarterly Google search, and a Slack channel where someone occasionally drops a competitor's pricing change.
The reason is structural. Enterprise CI tools (Crayon, Klue, Contify) start at $20K/yr and assume a dedicated CI analyst. SMBs don't have that. They have a founder who tracks 3 to 5 competitors manually and spends 2 to 4 hours a month falling further behind.
The newer wedge: every AI coding tool now ships a "research competitors" feature with no real CI data source. Agent-shaped buyers need an API, not a per-seat subscription. The CI category has had no SMB-priced answer and no API-first answer. Rivalize is both.
What Downshift built
Productized a battle-tested internal CI pipeline into a SaaS. Nine named surfaces, each tied to a real SMB founder job.
Free 5-minute report
HubSpot Website Grader pattern. Drop a URL, get a one-time competitive intelligence report in 5 minutes. No signup. Per-report cost: $0.07-0.15.
Continuous competitor dashboard
Add competitor URLs and watch 4 signal axes: product, pricing, social, SEO. Weekly refresh, surfaced in a single dashboard.
11+ data sources
Combined output across Rivalize's own scrapers and third-party intelligence signals. Insights are AI-synthesized, not raw scrape dumps.
Per-tier competitor caps
Starter $29 (5 competitors), Pro $79 (15), Agency $199 (50). Per-competitor-tracked model matches how SMBs think about CI spend.
Async pipeline architecture
Async-Boundary Rule: anything taking >200ms goes through BullMQ. API routes return immediately; pipeline progress streams via SSE.
Agent API (per-call)
Same pipeline exposed as a developer API. Per-call pricing $0.05-$0.25 so AI coding tools (Cursor, Claude, v0, Bolt) can call CI at agent scale.
MCP + marketplace distribution
Distribution via MCP registry, Cursor marketplace, and direct AI platform partnerships. Built so an autonomous agent can be the customer.
White-label / multi-brand
Agency tier serves 50 competitors with multi-brand support, sized for agency owners managing CI across multiple clients.
Stripe billing
Standard $29 / $79 / $199 monthly tiers. No annual lock-in, cancel any time. Free entry-point report covers PLG.
Screenshot from rivalize.ai, captured 2026-05-06.
The architecture
Productization of an already-running internal CI pipeline. Queue-first because every step is a 30-90s scrape or AI call.
Pipeline (productized from internal)
- 16 pipeline scripts
- 24 spiders
- 3 analyzers
- Already tracking 80+ competitors across 7+ internal projects before launch
- Per-step duration 30 to 90 seconds (queue-first by design)
Stack
- Bun monorepo with three apps
- Fastify API + BullMQ workers (port 5800)
- Vite + React dashboard (port 5810)
- Astro SSG marketing site (port 5820)
- Neon PostgreSQL + Drizzle ORM
- Redis for queues, BetterAuth for auth, Stripe for billing
Pricing surface
- Free Report tier: 1 URL, one-time, $0
- Starter: $29/mo, 5 competitors, weekly refresh
- Pro: $79/mo, 15 competitors, weekly refresh
- Agency: $199/mo, 50 competitors, weekly refresh
- Agent API: $0.05 to $0.25 per call
Deployment
- Railway: web + worker services
- SSE for streaming pipeline progress to the dashboard
- Async Boundary Rule: anything >200ms enters BullMQ
- API-first so AI agents can be the customer
Real outcomes
Numbers below come from Rivalize's product context (price tiers, pipeline counts) and internal CI infrastructure facts. No fabricated user counts.
Starter tier monthly price. 5 competitors, weekly refresh.
Enterprise CI tools (Crayon, Klue, Contify) that Rivalize undercuts.
Free entry-point report. Drop URL, get CI report. No signup.
Data sources combined behind every AI-synthesized insight.
Spiders behind the productized pipeline.
Competitors already tracked by the internal pipeline before launch.
Of companies do CI as a side task or not at all (Rivalize internal research).
Modeled LTV:CAC at the entry-point free-report flywheel.
Sources: pricing tiers ($29/$79/$199), the 5-minute free report, $0.07-$0.15 per-report cost, $0.05-$0.25 per-call agent pricing, and the 88.6% / 12.6:1 figures all come from ~/Github/Rivalize/.forge/product-context.md. The 16 scripts / 24 spiders / 3 analyzers / 80+ competitors / 7+ projects counts come from the production codebase. Per-customer revenue figures are not published on the marketing site and are shared on request.
Screenshot from rivalize.ai, captured 2026-05-06.
What's in flight
Rivalize is moving past the launch surface. The agent-customer wedge (AI coding tools and autonomous agents calling CI as an API) is the active growth lane: distribution via the MCP registry, Cursor marketplace, and direct AI-platform partnerships. The agency tier ($199/mo for 50 competitors) is where the first whitelabel patterns are landing.
Want this for your venture?
Downshift partners with non-technical founders to ship production-grade AI products in 3 to 6 weeks. Fixed scope, no equity.
See more shipped Downshift ventures on the wins page, or read the RepairSnap and FairStack case studies.