Compare Competitors
Put your domain next to up to four competitors using the link graph: authority, referring domains and shared linking domains.
https://api.rankparse.com/v1/competitor-compare10 creditsAPI keyCompares your domain with 1 to 4 named competitors in one call, from the link graph only: each domain's authority score and referring domains, the gap to you, and how many referring domains each competitor shares with you.
This compares links, not search rankings. No data source here knows a competitor's rankings: Search Console, Bing and Yandex report only your own website. Use Competitor Gap to find the domains that link to a competitor but not to you.
Query parameters
domainstringrequiredYour own domain, for example acme.com. No scheme or path.
vsstringrequired1 to 4 competitor domains, comma separated, other than domain. Repeats are counted once. More than four returns 400 too_many_competitors; none valid returns 400 invalid_competitors.
Response
dataobjectdomain is your own entry and competitors has one entry per competitor, in the order sent. Each entry has domain, authority (score, referring_domains, total_host_count, popularity_rank, registered_at; score is null when unknown, never 0), shared_referring_domains (referring domains that link to both that domain and yours; null for your own entry), shared_is_lower_bound (true when the count reached the 1000 cap), authority_gap and referring_domains_gap (competitor minus you, so a positive number means the competitor is ahead; null when either side is unknown) and, when a lookup for it failed, an error.
partialbooleanOnly present, and always true, when a lookup failed or an authority score is unknown. The affected entries say which. A partial answer is billed normally and is not cached.
notestringReminder that this is link graph data, not rankings.
credits_usedintegerAlways 10.
Behavior and limits
- Credits: a flat 10 per call, charged before the lookup. If every lookup fails, the credits are refunded. Invalid requests (
invalid_domain,invalid_competitors,too_many_competitors) are refused before any charge. - Caching: complete results are cached for 30 days per crawl release. A cache hit is billed the same as a fresh lookup.
- Coverage: link data comes from one release of public web data, a sample of the web, so counts are a lower bound.
- Rate limit: 60 requests per minute per key. See Rate limiting.
Errors
| HTTP | Code | When |
|---|---|---|
| 400 | invalid_domain | domain is missing or not a valid domain. Nothing is charged. |
| 400 | invalid_competitors | vs has no valid competitor domain other than domain. Nothing is charged. |
| 400 | too_many_competitors | vs has more than 4 domains. Nothing is charged. |
| 401 | invalid_api_key | Missing, invalid or revoked API key. |
| 402 | insufficient_credits | Balance is lower than 10 credits. |
| 429 | rate_limited | More than 60 requests in a minute. |
| 503 | query_timeout, upstream_error | Every lookup failed. Retry after the Retry-After header. Credits are refunded. |
See Errors for the error body format.
Related
MCP tool: compare_competitors (accepts domain and vs, an array of 1 to 4 domains).