TikTok Competitor Analysis: 6 Steps, a Template and Benchmarks From 3,800 Accounts

A TikTok competitor analysis works best video by video: log each competitor's last 30 videos, divide each video's views by that account's median, and study the few that beat it by 3 to 10 times. Averages and follower counts hide what works. Across about 3,800 TikTok accounts that brands and agencies track as competitors in viral.app, the top 10% of an account's videos took 67% of its views, and 1 in 14 videos got at least 10 times the account's median.

You need the TikTok app and a spreadsheet to start. Below are the six steps, a fill-in template, the free TikTok tools that still work, and benchmarks from about 310,000 competitor videos posted between October 2025 and August 2026, so you can tell whether a competitor is actually doing well.

How to do a TikTok competitor analysis in 6 steps

1. 1

   Pick 5 to 10 accounts

   Direct competitors, plus the creators and small accounts that post about your category. Half the accounts brands and agencies track as competitors in viral.app have about 1,000 followers or fewer.

2. 2

   Log their last 30 videos

   Date, format, length, hook, sound, views, shares and saves. Skip pinned videos and anything under 7 days old.

3. 3

   Divide each video by the account's median

   Sort the 30 view counts, take the middle one, and mark every video at 3x and 10x that number.

4. 4

   Study the breakouts

   Watch each 3x and 10x video next to three of the same account's median videos and write down what differs.

5. 5

   Benchmark cadence and formats

   Compare posting rate, length and slideshow share with the typical competitor account.

6. 6

   Turn patterns into tests

   One change per test, five posts each, judged on day 7 against your own median.

The benchmarks behind these steps, from about 310,000 competitor videos:

Step 1: Pick the accounts to analyze

Pick 5 to 10 accounts that compete for the same viewers, not only the same customers. Three groups belong on the list:

• Competitors' brand accounts. Start here, then look at who posts for them.
• Creators and UGC accounts in your category, including the ones your competitors pay. They show which angles work with your buyers, and many post more often than the brand does.
• Category accounts that teach or entertain your audience without selling a rival product. They show the hooks and formats your viewers already watch.

Of the roughly 3,800 TikTok accounts that brands and agencies flag as competitors in viral.app, half have 1,055 followers or fewer, 48% have under 1,000, and only 5% have more than 100,000 (follower counts as of October 2026). Most are small accounts, not famous brand handles.

To find them:

1. Search TikTok for your category, your product type and your competitors' names. Search covers people, posts, sounds and hashtags, and Filters under the More options button narrows the results (TikTok Help Center, checked October 2026). Note the accounts that show up for more than one search.
2. Check who posts for your competitors. TikTok's Commercial Content Library needs no account and lists ads plus "other commercial content", which includes branded content: posts creators make for a brand in exchange for money or other incentives. It covers ads shown in the EEA, the UK, Switzerland and Turkey, and keeps each ad for one year after it was last shown (Library FAQ, checked October 2026).

Step 2: Log each competitor's last 30 videos

Open each profile and log the 30 most recent videos. The profile grid shows every video's views, and the video itself shows likes, comments, saves and shares. Thirty videos give a median that one lucky hit can't move, and for the median competitor they cover about two months.

For each video, write down:

• Date posted, video URL and account
• Format (video or slideshow) and length in seconds
• The hook: the first line of on-screen text or the first spoken sentence
• The sound: "original" or the track name
• Views, likes, comments, shares and saves

Two rules keep the numbers fair. Skip pinned videos: they sit at the top of the grid out of date order. Skip videos under 7 days old: TikToks that went on to pass a million views had a median of only 63% of their 30-day views after one week. Our guide to how many views is viral has the full growth curve.

TikTok competitor analysis template

Log every video in one sheet, one row per video, all competitors together. Download the CSV template and import it into Google Sheets or Excel, or paste this header into row 1 and split it into columns:

date_posted,video_url,account,format,length_s,hook,sound,views,likes,comments,shares,saves,account_median_views,multiple,shares_per_1000,saves_per_1000,notes

Columns A to L hold what you log in Step 2. Columns M to P calculate themselves: put these formulas in row 2 and fill them down. FILTER needs Google Sheets or Excel 365, and rows with blank views stay out of the median.

M  account_median_views  =IFERROR(MEDIAN(FILTER($H$2:$H$1000,($C$2:$C$1000=C2)*($H$2:$H$1000<>""))),"")
N  multiple              =IFERROR(H2/M2,"")
O  shares_per_1000       =IFERROR(K2/H2*1000,"")
P  saves_per_1000        =IFERROR(L2/H2*1000,"")

For a one-line summary per competitor, add a second tab with the handle in A2 and the video sheet named Videos:

Posts per week        =IFERROR((COUNTIF(Videos!C:C,A2)-1)/((MAXIFS(Videos!A:A,Videos!C:C,A2)-MINIFS(Videos!A:A,Videos!C:C,A2))/7),"")
Median views          =IFERROR(MEDIAN(FILTER(Videos!H:H,(Videos!C:C=A2)*(Videos!H:H<>""))),"")
3x videos per month   =IFERROR(COUNTIFS(Videos!C:C,A2,Videos!N:N,">=3")/((MAXIFS(Videos!A:A,Videos!C:C,A2)-MINIFS(Videos!A:A,Videos!C:C,A2))/30),"")
10x videos per month  =IFERROR(COUNTIFS(Videos!C:C,A2,Videos!N:N,">=10")/((MAXIFS(Videos!A:A,Videos!C:C,A2)-MINIFS(Videos!A:A,Videos!C:C,A2))/30),"")
Slideshow share       =IFERROR(COUNTIFS(Videos!C:C,A2,Videos!D:D,"slideshow")/COUNTIF(Videos!C:C,A2),"")

Then compare each competitor's summary with the median competitor account in the Step 5 table below.

Step 3: Compare every video with the account's own median

Use the median, never the average or the follower count. A competitor's average video got nearly four times the views of its median video, because a few hits carry the account: for the typical competitor, the single best video in the period took 28% of the account's views, and the top 10% took 67%. An average built on those hits makes every normal video look like a flop.

Follower counts mislead too. TikTok says follower count is not a direct factor in what it recommends on the For You feed (TikTok Newsroom, June 2020). A video's views relative to its own account's median tell you far more.

Divide each video's views by the median and mark everything at 3x and 10x. Here is how often that happens:

Competitor accounts break out more often than the average tracked account: 74% had at least one video at 10x their median in the 11 months, against 58% of other accounts.

Step 4: Study the breakouts against the account's normal videos

Format, length, sound and hashtags barely separate breakouts from normal videos. Shares do. We compared the roughly 22,000 competitor videos that reached 10x their account's median with the roughly 290,000 other videos from the same accounts.

• Format, sound and hashtags don't explain breakouts. A competitor's 10x videos had the same slideshow share, nearly the same sound mix and the same hashtag count as its other videos. They ran a little longer.
• Shares nearly double. Breakouts got 2.7 shares per 1,000 views against 1.4, while comments per 1,000 views fell by more than half. Rank a competitor's videos by shares per 1,000 views, not by comments.

Before studying a breakout, check the Commercial Content Library for it: paid views count in the public total, so a boosted post can look like an organic hit. In our Retro case study, every main-account video above 300,000 views carried TikTok's ad flag. Then look at the video itself. For each breakout, note:

• The first two seconds: what is on screen and what is said or written
• Who is on screen: founder, creator, customer, or no face at all
• The promise: what the viewer gets for watching to the end
• The product moment: when the product appears and what it does

Then watch three of the same account's median videos. Whatever the breakout has that those don't is your candidate pattern.

Step 5: Benchmark posting cadence and formats

Use this table to place each competitor next to the median competitor account. One that posts more than 6.4 times a week is in the busiest quarter. Rows marked "all videos" pool every video; the others are medians across accounts.

Posting more did not lower the hit rate much. Among competitor accounts, 6 to 9% of videos reached 10x their median at every posting rate, so the accounts that posted more had more breakouts each month:

The median competitor posting 3 to 7 times a week had one 10x video a month, and those posting 14 or more times a week had about four (fewer than 100 accounts). The overall median in the table above is lower because 4 in 10 competitors post fewer than three times a week.

Step 6: Turn patterns into tests

Test one pattern at a time, with enough posts to tell a pattern from luck. Write each one as "if we change X, our videos will beat our median", make five posts that change only X, and judge each on day 7 against your own median.

A fair pass mark is at least 2 of 5 posts at 3x your median. The base rate: about 1 in 7 videos from tracked accounts that aren't competitors reaches 3x their median, and at that rate 2 or more of 5 happens by luck about 15% of the time. At the competitor rate of 17% it is about 20%. Some examples:

If a test video sits at zero views, that is a distribution problem, not a creative one: see why a TikTok has 0 views after an hour. For format ideas beyond your direct competitors, our short-form video trends roundup covers what is moving across TikTok, Reels and Shorts.

How often should you run a TikTok competitor analysis?

Run the full analysis monthly and check for new breakouts once a week. At the median monthly rates in the Step 5 table, eight competitors give you about 17 videos at 3x and 6 at 10x to study each month. The weekly check matters because breakouts grow for days: you see the format while it is still spreading.

Free and paid TikTok competitor analysis tools

Start free. Paid tools save the logging and keep history, but none can see a competitor's retention, traffic sources or audience: TikTok shows those only in the account owner's own analytics (TikTok Creator Academy, updated October 1, 2026).

Free TikTok tools

TikTok's Creative Center now opens as TikTok One Creative Suite; old links to its Top Ads and Trends pages still work.

Paid TikTok competitor analysis tools

Fanpage Karma and Socialinsider suit teams that report on brand profiles across several networks. Exolyt goes deepest on TikTok alone. viral.app is built for brands that run creator programs and want competitors next to their own creators. Our ranking of UGC analytics tools compares more of them.

Competitor tracking in viral.app

viral.app tracks public TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook and Snapchat accounts. For this workflow:

• Separate competitor view. Mark any public account as a Competitor when you add it; the Overview, Accounts and Videos pages switch between internal, competitor and all accounts.
• Breakouts flagged for you. The Virality Factor column divides each video's views by its account's median, and "Most viral" sorts an account's videos by it.
• Full metric history. Videos refresh on a schedule, each video exports its metric history, and tag rules can label every competitor slideshow automatically.
• Outside your list. The viral video library collects app and product videos with 50,000+ views and 10 times more views than the creator has followers, with an AI breakdown of the hook. It is public as the free UGC examples tool.

Each tracked account uses as many tracked-video slots as its limit: ten competitors at 30 videos use 300 of Pro's 1,000.

Frequently asked questions

How we measured

• Competitor accounts: TikTok accounts that brands and agencies marked as Competitor accounts in viral.app. About 5,600 accounts were flagged; about 4,300 posted in the period and about 3,800 posted at least 10 videos. Those are the benchmark.
• Other tracked accounts: the roughly 15,000 tracked TikTok accounts with at least 10 videos that no workspace flagged as a competitor: brands' own accounts, their creators and others.
• Videos: about 310,000 competitor videos and 1.1 million other videos posted between October 1, 2025 and August 31, 2026, with counts as of October 2, 2026. Videos with zero recorded views are left out.
• Medians and multiples: each video is compared with the median views of its own account's videos in the period. Medians across accounts weight every account equally.
• Posting rate: videos between an account's first and last tracked video in the period, for about 3,200 competitor accounts whose videos span at least 28 days. Some accounts are tracked with a limit on their latest videos, so their rate reflects recent posting.
• Concentration: No single workspace's list drives the results; without the largest list, the views and breakout figures hold or rise.
• Followers are as of October 2026, not at the time of posting. Engagement rates use videos with at least 1,000 views.

Track your competitors next to your creators

The steps above work in a spreadsheet. If you want every competitor video measured against its account's median automatically, create a viral.app account, add your competitors as Competitor accounts, and sort their videos by Virality Factor. With the free viral.app Importer Chrome extension you can add a competitor straight from its TikTok profile, with competitor mode on.