---
title: "Watch your competitors and stay a step ahead"
description: "BackTalk monitors what developers say about your competitors on Hacker News, Reddit and more, and tracks whether AI models recommend them over you, so you see the gripes, the switching threads, and the AI shortlists while the decision is still live."
source: https://backtalk.sh/use-cases/competitor-monitoring
tag: "Competitors"
---

# Watch your competitors and stay a step ahead

BackTalk monitors what developers say about your competitors on Hacker News, Reddit and more, and tracks whether AI models recommend them over you, so you see the gripes, the switching threads, and the AI shortlists while the decision is still live.

Flat plans from $19/mo · 7-day free trial · runs on your own API keys, no markup. Start a free trial: https://backtalk.sh/login

## Their complaints are your roadmap

Competitor names are just keywords to BackTalk: track them like your own, and their negative threads, missing features and "alternative to" questions land in your inbox scored and sorted. A thread asking for an alternative to a rival is the warmest lead developer marketing ever gets, and it expires in hours.

## The other leaderboard: AI answers

Every share-of-voice topic names the competitors to watch, so you see who AI models actually recommend for your category, who is gaining, and the moment a new name starts appearing in answers. Rank changes and new competitors file into the inbox as events, with the sampled answers as receipts.

## Frequently asked questions

### How many competitors can I track?

For listening, competitor names are ordinary keywords, so your plan's keyword scope is the only limit. For AI share of voice, each topic tracks up to six competitors alongside your own brand.

### Will competitors know I am monitoring them?

No. Listening reads public posts, and AI probes ask neutral buyer-style questions on your own API keys. Nothing posts anywhere on your behalf.

### Can I see when AI starts recommending a new rival?

Yes: newly recommended names surface as new-competitor events in your inbox, and one click adds them to the tracked set for the topic.

## Learn more

- [Keywords and watchers](https://backtalk.sh/docs/keywords.md): Phrases, variants, exclude terms, and grouping keywords into watchers.
- [AI visibility](https://backtalk.sh/docs/ai-visibility.md): Topics, prompts, probe cadence, and how to read the share-of-voice standings.
- [Inbox and triage](https://backtalk.sh/docs/inbox.md): Views, filters, search, star, bulk actions, and ignore reasons.

More use cases: [AI share of voice](https://backtalk.sh/use-cases/ai-share-of-voice.md), [Question](https://backtalk.sh/use-cases/answer-developers.md), [Bug · Complaint](https://backtalk.sh/use-cases/catch-churn-signals.md), [Praise](https://backtalk.sh/use-cases/developer-advocates.md), [Digest reports](https://backtalk.sh/use-cases/devrel-reporting.md), [Shareable recap](https://backtalk.sh/use-cases/shareable-recap.md), [Agent-native](https://backtalk.sh/use-cases/ai-agent-access.md)