Is Competitor Monitoring Legal?

Yes — monitoring publicly available web pages is legal in most jurisdictions, including the US and EU. KompWatch is built to operate within established legal and ethical boundaries.

The Short Answer

Accessing publicly visible content from a competitor's website is the same activity a human would perform by opening a browser. Courts in the US and EU have consistently treated public web scraping as legal when the content is publicly accessible and the scraper respects the site's terms and crawl rules.

What KompWatch Does

Only monitors public-facing pages — pricing, features, blog, job listings. Nothing behind login or paywalls.
Respects robots.txt — If a competitor's site disallows crawling via robots.txt, KompWatch does not scrape those pages.
Uses responsible crawl rates — KompWatch never requests a page more frequently than once per hour per competitor (even on the Team plan). This is well within normal traffic patterns for any website.
Does not store personal data — Competitor websites are business entities. KompWatch captures product and pricing information, not personal data about individuals.

Key Legal Precedents

hiQ Labs v. LinkedIn (9th Circuit, 2022): Scraping publicly accessible data is not a violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA). LinkedIn's attempt to block hiQ from scraping public profiles was rejected.
EU Web Scraping (GDPR): GDPR applies to personal data. Scraping business-facing content (pricing, features, job listings) from company websites does not implicate GDPR, as this data does not relate to identifiable individuals.

What You Should Know

Terms of Service: Some websites prohibit scraping in their ToS. Violating a site's ToS is a civil matter between you and that company — it is not criminal. KompWatch operates in good faith as a monitoring service.
Password-protected content: KompWatch does not and cannot access content that requires authentication. This is technically enforced, not just a policy.
Aggressive scraping: KompWatch's built-in rate limiting ensures you never accidentally over-request a competitor's site.

Bottom Line

If you're monitoring your competitors' public pricing and feature pages to stay informed, that is standard competitive intelligence practice — the same thing salespeople and analysts do manually every week. KompWatch automates that process.

If you have a specific legal concern for your jurisdiction or industry, consult your legal counsel. This FAQ is informational and not legal advice.

Questions? Email support@kompwatch.com and we'll respond within 24 hours.