Guide
A price you saw once isn't always a price change. How price tests, regional pricing and half-finished updates can fool you, and how to tell a real change from noise.
Someone on your team spots that a competitor's Pro plan has gone from $49 to $59. Before you rework your own pricing or brief the sales team, it's worth asking a simple question: is that actually their new price, or just the price that one person happened to see? More often than you'd think, it's the second.
Quick answer
A competitor is probably testing prices if you see a new price once and then the old one again, if different people see different prices on the same page, or if the price flips back and forth over a few weeks. The simple rule: don't trust a new price until you've seen it at least twice in a row from the same location, and treat a price that goes back to the old one within a few weeks as a test rather than a decision.
None of these proves a test on its own, but two or three together are a strong hint.
If you check from your office one day and your phone on holiday the next, or through a VPN, you can end up comparing two countries' prices and calling it a change. Whatever you use to check, keep it pointed at the same country every time. It's a small thing that removes a whole class of false alarms.
Twice in a row, from the same location, is a good rule. One sighting can be a test variant, a regional price, or a page caught mid-update. Two consecutive sightings means that's what they're charging now. It costs you a day or so of delay, which almost never matters for a pricing decision, and saves you from reacting to something that was never real.
It's also worth noting when a price goes back to what it was within a few weeks. That's a strong sign they tested it and didn't like the result, which is useful to know in itself.
Mostly, wait and watch. Don't reprice or brief sales on the back of a test. But do write down what they tested: the prices a competitor tries are a clue to where they think their value is. A company testing higher prices on its main plan believes it's underpriced. One testing a cheaper entry plan is worried about losing smaller customers.
Rival Radar checks every page from the same country each time, reads the plans and prices off the pricing page, and only reports a price change once it's seen the new price on two checks in a row. If prices go back to what they were shortly after, it says so and points out that this can mean they're testing, rather than presenting it as a fresh decision. You still hear about the page changing straight away; the confirmed price change follows once it's been seen twice. For more on reading pricing pages well, see how to track competitor pricing changes.
Only hear about price changes that are real.
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Weighing up tools? See how Rival Radar compares: Rival Radar vs Visualping.