See a rival's monthly traffic, its strongest countries, the podcasts running its ads and the complaints buyers raise about its category, all in a Claude chat. With the Firecrawl connector, Claude queries Firecrawl Alexandria and returns figures from Similarweb, Trends, Particle and PeerSpot.
Best for
- Marketers using Claude for market research, from a competitor teardown to a quarterly review.
- Demand generation teams deciding which countries and channels to invest in.
- Copywriters and brand leads gathering real customer phrasing from reviews.
Connector and data providers
Connector: the Firecrawl connector. Claude can then search the web, scrape competitor pages and call marketing data providers in Firecrawl Alexandria, with paid calls drawing on your Firecrawl team's credits, Similarweb at the highest rates.
Data providers in Firecrawl Alexandria
| Provider | Tool | Tells you |
|---|---|---|
| Similarweb | Traffic and engagement | Visit totals and engagement figures for a site over one month; each returned metric is a separate charge. |
| Similarweb | Traffic geography | The countries sending visits to a domain in a given month. |
| Similarweb | Marketing channel shares | The share of a domain's monthly traffic coming from each marketing channel, priced by row. |
| Trends | Interest over time | Search popularity for as many as five terms, plotted together across a period you choose. |
| Particle | Shows carrying a company's ads | Which podcasts run a company's ads, ordered by how many. |
| Particle | Sponsor leaderboard, top ten | This week's biggest podcast advertisers and their rank changes. |
| PeerSpot | Reviews | Complete software reviews with pros, cons, the reviewer's role and their company's size. |
Explore Firecrawl Alexandria data providers across categories
Starter prompt
Use your own competitor and market here:
Use Firecrawl to build a competitive snapshot of notion.so with
Similarweb, Trends and Particle in Firecrawl Alexandria. List each tool's
cost before you call it.
Include:
- Worldwide visits for August 2026.
- The five countries sending the largest share of traffic that month.
- 12 months of US search interest for "notion" against "obsidian".
- Podcasts where notion.so advertises, with ad counts.
Tag every figure with its source and month, and skip anything the tools
didn't return.Before you start
- Connect Firecrawl. Click Connect on the Firecrawl connector page, sign in or start a free Firecrawl account, choose the team to bill and approve. You won't paste an API key or set up an MCP server, and Firecrawl in Claude shows the flow.
- Enable it per chat. Open Connectors from the + menu and switch Firecrawl on.
- Watch Similarweb spend. Similarweb calls run 110 to 550 credits per unit, and your team has a separate monthly Similarweb allowance on top of normal credits.
In Claude, go to Customize → Connectors, pick Firecrawl, and under Tool permissions set the Read-only tools group to Always allow, so Claude can run lookups without asking each time. Some of those lookups use Firecrawl credits, so keep confirmation on if you'd rather approve each paid call yourself.
Limitations of using Claude for marketing without Firecrawl
Good marketing research needs numbers about real audiences and competitors. Without tools, Claude runs into five problems.
- Unsupported numbers. Anthropic acknowledges that Claude can produce incorrect or misleading responses, including authoritative-sounding quotes that aren't grounded in fact (Anthropic). Market stats in a deck are where that bites.
- A dated picture. Anthropic notes that what Claude knows stops at its training cutoff (Anthropic), so a competitor's spring rebrand or a new category may be missing.
- Web search isn't analytics. Claude's web search cites live pages, but its results can depend on the location inferred from your IP address (Anthropic), and a page that quotes a traffic figure only repeats someone else's estimate.
- AI claims face the same law. The FTC's 2024 crackdown on deceptive AI schemes stated plainly that AI gets no exemption from existing law (FTC). Copy Claude drafts still needs substantiated claims.
- Generated reviews are prohibited. Under the FTC's 2024 rule on reviews and testimonials, fake reviews, AI-generated ones included, are banned and can draw civil penalties (FTC).
Where Claude gets competitor traffic and podcast ad counts with Firecrawl
Claude for digital marketing work combines these sources:
- Firecrawl Alexandria: the source of the market data. Similarweb and Particle are two of its 100+ licensed providers, with Firecrawl's own indexes alongside. A blind evaluation over 845 tasks found agents drawing on Firecrawl Alexandria outperformed default-web agents by 21% in answer quality.
- Similarweb for reach: ahrefs.com logged close to 8.3 million visits globally for August 2026 in our check, and Notion's top desktop markets that month were the US (22.2%), Japan (8.2%) and South Korea (6.9%).
- Particle for podcast advertising: SpinQuest led the sponsor leaderboard with 15,117 ads on 845 podcasts, Vrbo rose five spots to third, and grainger.com showed 158,891 ads with The John Batchelor Show carrying the most.
- Trends and PeerSpot for demand and voice: Trends tracks interest in brands or categories over time, and PeerSpot reviews show how buyers describe what they like and dislike.
Marketing research in Claude with and without Firecrawl Alexandria
| Claude without tools | Claude with Firecrawl Alexandria | |
|---|---|---|
| Competitor size | Guessed | Monthly visits and engagement from Similarweb |
| Where the audience is | Assumed | Share of traffic by country |
| Which channels work | Best practice | Similarweb traffic share by channel |
| Podcast ads | Unknown | Particle's shows and ad counts for a sponsor |
| Demand trends | General impressions | Trends interest across a chosen period and region |
| Source | Not given | Four Firecrawl Alexandria providers (Similarweb, Trends, Particle, PeerSpot) out of more than 100 on offer. Explore the catalog |
| How customers talk | Imagined | Review text from PeerSpot, noting the reviewer's job and employer size |
Build your own marketing workflow
Pick the version for your goal, whether it's Claude competitor analysis or channel planning. For launch positioning:
Use Firecrawl to pull PeerSpot reviews for Asana, list the five most
frequent complaints with quotes and reviewer roles, and compare US Trends
interest in "asana" and "monday.com" over the past year.For channel planning:
With Firecrawl, show the podcasts Particle has grainger.com advertising on,
with ad counts, and the current top-ten podcast sponsors and their rank
changes.Spelling out the companies, sources and output keeps Claude reporting records rather than assumptions.
Take it further
See where a competitor's visitors are
Use Firecrawl to get Similarweb traffic geography for hubspot.com in August
2026 and list the ten biggest countries. Quote the price first.Find the fastest-growing category term
With Firecrawl, compare US Trends interest in "ai note taker", "meeting
notes app" and "transcription app" over 12 months and name the leader.Shortlist podcast sponsors to study
Use Firecrawl to show this week's top podcast sponsors on Particle and mark
the ones that sell B2B software.Break down a pricing page
With Firecrawl, scrape https://www.notion.com/pricing and list each plan,
its price and what it adds over the plan below.Price it out first
Use Firecrawl to list tools for site traffic, search trends, podcast ads
and software reviews, with prices.What it costs
Claude lists marketing tools and prices without charge. Credits go only on calls that run, Similarweb being the priciest, and Firecrawl pricing shows plan sizes.
| Tool | Question | Credits per call |
|---|---|---|
| Interest over time (Trends) | Demand over time | 5 |
| Traffic and engagement (Similarweb) | Competitor traffic | 110 per metric returned |
| Traffic geography (Similarweb) | Visitor countries | 110 |
| Marketing channel shares (Similarweb) | Traffic by channel | 550 per row returned |
| Shows carrying a company's ads (Particle) | A brand's podcast placements | 25 |
| Sponsor leaderboard, top ten (Particle) | Top podcast advertisers | 25 |
| Reviews (PeerSpot) | User opinions | 5 |
Each reply from Claude records the provider it called and what that cost in credits.
Add Firecrawl to Claude and research competitors with real traffic and ad data. Viewing prices costs nothing.
Related use cases
- How to use Claude for SEO keyword research: keyword ideas, rising queries and ranking pages.
- How to find podcast sponsors in Claude: more on Particle's sponsor data.
- How to use Claude at work: research for sales, finance and procurement teams.
Coverage limits
- One month per Similarweb call. Data comes a full month at a time, worldwide requests worked better than country-level ones in our tests, and traffic geography reports desktop visits unless told otherwise.
- Podcast ads only. Particle doesn't cover paid social, search or display advertising.
- Business software focus. PeerSpot reviews enterprise software, so consumer products often have no coverage.