✦ Task type · Research and checks
Competitor price checks from inside the market
Pricing pages geolocate, currencies convert badly, and the offer shown to a visitor in Warsaw is not the one you see. This buys the actual screen.
Everything about a modern pricing page is contingent on who is looking at it. That is what makes desk research unreliable and a person in the market cheap by comparison.
What to put in the public brief
- The country or countries
- That screenshots are required
- Roughly how many pages
- Device, if it matters
- That only publicly visible pages are in scope
Keep the competitor names and the exact URLs private. A public brief naming who you are watching is a brief your competitor can read.
What to put in the private instructions
Give exact URLs, not names
"Their pricing page" invites a search, and search results differ by market too, so you would be measuring two variables at once.
Say logged out, no VPN, own connection
And ask them to confirm they did. The condition is the whole methodology.
Ask for the full page, currency included
Not a typed number. A screenshot showing the currency, the tax line and any regional banner carries context a transcribed figure loses.
Set the boundary explicitly
No account creation, no trials, no contact forms, no quote requests. Say it in the brief so nobody has to guess where enthusiasm stops.
Proof worth requiring
Ask for
Full-page screenshots with the timestamp visible, the city, and the currency as displayed.
Do not ask for
Anything behind a login or a form. If the price is only available on request, this task type cannot reach it, and pretending otherwise means asking somebody to misrepresent themselves on your behalf.
When this task type is the wrong tool
If you need continuous monitoring, a scraping service is cheaper and more consistent. Use this for the markets where automation fails or where you need to see the page as a person does.
If what you need is the experience of buying rather than the price of it, that is a checkout test run against your own funnel, not a competitor's.
Common questions
Is this legitimate?
Collecting publicly displayed prices is ordinary competitive research and always has been. What is not ordinary, and what this marketplace refuses, is asking a worker to create an account under false pretences, sign up for a trial they will not use, or misrepresent who they are to obtain a quote. Public pages only.
Why not just use a VPN?
A VPN changes apparent location and nothing else. Currency, tax display, local payment methods and regional offers respond to a mix of signals, and a VPN result is a fourth thing that matches neither market. It also breaks on sites that block datacentre ranges, which is most commerce sites now.
What reward is fair?
Five to twelve dollars for a handful of pages with screenshots. Price up sharply for markets where few workers are registered, because availability rather than effort sets the cost of geographic tasks.
How current will it be?
As of the timestamp, and nothing more. Prices move, promotions run on local calendars, and a check from three weeks ago is a historical record. If you need continuity, re-run it on a schedule rather than treating one pass as the answer.
Thinking of taking this task?
The same job, from the other side. Rewards are set by the poster, so treat these as the range this task type usually sits in rather than a promise.
- Usually pays
- $5 to $12
- You need
- To live in the market being checked
- Proof expected
- Full-page screenshots with the currency and timestamp visible
Public pages only. Never create an account, start a trial or request a quote, and a brief asking you to is one to decline and report.
Create a worker accountCheck a market
Set the reward and the countries you need covered. Workers in those markets reserve a spot; the competitor and search terms stay private until they do.
Post this task