Competitor Benchmarking

Competitor Benchmarking lets you track competitor social profiles and compare their performance against yours – all from within Viraly. Monitor follower growth, engagement rates, posting frequency, and more so you always know where you stand in your market.

What is Competitor Benchmarking

Competitor Benchmarking is a Viraly feature that lets you add competitor social profiles and automatically track their performance over time. Instead of manually checking competitor accounts for changes in followers, engagement, or content strategy, Viraly collects and organizes this data for you and presents it alongside your own metrics so you can make informed decisions about your content strategy.

With Competitor Benchmarking you can identify what content works for competitors in your niche, spot trends before they peak, and understand how your growth and engagement compare to others in your industry.

Supported Platforms

Competitor Benchmarking currently supports the following platforms:

• Instagram – Track Business and Creator accounts.
• YouTube – Track any public YouTube channel.
• Facebook – Track public Facebook Pages.
• X (Twitter) – Track any public account.
• Bluesky – Track any public account.
• Mastodon – Track any public account, on any instance.

The metrics available differ by platform, because each one exposes a different set of data publicly.

Plan Availability

Competitor Benchmarking is available on the following plans. The allowance is per workspace and is shared across all of your connected social profiles:

• Business – Up to 5 competitors.
• Agency – Up to 15 competitors.
• Enterprise – Up to 30 competitors.

This feature is not available on the Free or Influencer plans. To access Competitor Benchmarking, upgrade to a Business plan or higher.

How to Add a Competitor

Follow these steps to add a competitor profile to your workspace:

1. Navigate to the Competitors tab from the main sidebar.
2. Click the Add Competitor button.
3. Select the platform you want to track: Instagram, YouTube, or Facebook.
4. Enter the competitor’s username or paste their full profile URL.
5. Review the profile preview to make sure it is the correct account, then click Confirm to add the competitor.

Once added, Viraly will begin collecting data for the competitor profile immediately. Initial data may take a few minutes to populate.

Requirements for Instagram Competitors

Instagram competitor data comes from Meta’s Business Discovery API, which is only reachable through a Facebook Page that has an Instagram Business or Creator account linked to it. This is a Meta platform requirement, not a Viraly limitation. Three things need to be in place:

1. A Facebook Page connected to your Viraly workspace. Connect one under Social Profiles.
2. An Instagram Business or Creator account linked to that Page on Meta. Link it in Meta Business Suite under Settings → Linked accounts → Instagram.
3. A one-time permission. Meta only lets Viraly read which Instagram account is linked to your Page if you grant an extra permission. Select Instagram in the Add Competitor window and click Authorize with Facebook. A Facebook window opens, you approve the requested permissions, and the window then confirms which Instagram account will supply the data.

Authorizing is a one-time step per workspace. Once it is done you can add as many Instagram competitors as your plan allows without any further configuration.

On the Facebook approval screen, leave the Instagram permissions checked. Facebook allows individual permissions to be deselected, and that is the most common reason the setup does not complete.

If Viraly reports that no Instagram account is linked to your Page, link it in Meta Business Suite and then click Check again. You do not need to reconnect the Facebook Page or repeat the authorization.

What Data is Tracked

For each competitor you add, Viraly tracks a comprehensive set of metrics:

• Follower count and growth over time – See how a competitor’s audience size changes day by day.
• Engagement rate – Calculated from likes and comments relative to follower count. Shares and saves are not published by every platform; Instagram in particular does not expose them for accounts you do not own.
• Posting frequency – How often the competitor publishes new content.
• Content type performance – Compare how different formats perform (Reels vs Posts vs Carousels).
• Top performing posts – The competitor’s highest-engagement content ranked by interactions.
• Posting schedule heatmap – A visual breakdown of when the competitor publishes throughout the week.
• Best posting times – The days and times that consistently drive the most engagement for the competitor.
• Top hashtags – The most frequently used hashtags in the competitor’s recent posts.
• Profile change detection – See when a competitor changes their display name, bio or website link.

Comparison Dashboard

The Comparison Dashboard lets you place your own channel performance side by side with one or more selected competitors. Use the dashboard to quickly spot where you are outperforming the competition and where you have room to grow.

The dashboard includes:

• Overlay charts – Plot your follower growth, engagement rate, or posting frequency on the same timeline as your competitors.
• Engagement bar charts – Compare average engagement metrics across all tracked competitors in a single view.
• Sortable leaderboard – Rank all tracked profiles (including your own) by any metric such as followers, engagement rate, or posting frequency.

You can select which competitors to include in the comparison and adjust the date range to focus on the period that matters most to your analysis.

Data Refresh

Each competitor refreshes automatically about once every 24 hours. Follower count, recent posts and engagement metrics are all collected in the same run, so every figure on the page shares a single timestamp, shown as Last synced in the header.

If you need fresher numbers immediately, click Sync on the competitor’s page. Manual syncs are subject to each platform’s API rate limits and may take a moment to complete.

When you first add a competitor, the initial collection usually takes a couple of minutes. The page updates on its own once the data arrives, so you can navigate away and come back.

Follower growth is calculated from consecutive daily snapshots, so growth and growth-rate figures stay blank until the day after you add a competitor. That is expected, not an error.

FAQ

Why do I need a Facebook Page for Instagram competitors?

Instagram’s Business Discovery API requires a Facebook Page token to retrieve data about other Instagram Business and Creator accounts. This is a Meta platform requirement, not a Viraly limitation. Once you connect a Facebook Page to your workspace, all Instagram competitor lookups will use that token automatically.

Can I track personal (non-business) Instagram accounts?

No. Instagram’s API only provides data for Business and Creator accounts. Personal Instagram accounts cannot be tracked through the Business Discovery API. If a competitor’s account is set to personal, it will not appear in search results when adding a competitor.

How far back does the data go?

Data collection begins from the moment you add a competitor to your workspace. Viraly does not backfill historical data from before the competitor was added. Over time, you will build a complete performance history. Data retention follows your plan’s retention limits.