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Finding Stock Competitors with Industry Classifications and Data APIs

Article Quant Q&A · Author: SilentSteel
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Summary

The discussion considers ways to identify companies that compete with a given stock, including for symbols such as GOOG and TWTR. It distinguishes two approaches: grouping firms through industry classification systems, or obtaining competitor relationships from a data provider. The named classification standards are GICS and ICB; the response suggests that access may require purchase, a university subscription, or manual research. It also mentions supply chain data as a way to investigate commercial relationships analytically, and names a market data API that returns related stock symbols for an input security.

The material is a brief list of sources rather than a comparison or evaluation. It gives no detail on coverage, matching criteria, pricing, update frequency, or accuracy, so it does not establish which option is best for a low budget. Industry membership can help screen for potential peers, but it does not by itself prove that firms are direct competitors. Researchers would need to check provider documentation and validate relevance for their use case.

Key ideas

  • Industry classification standards can be used to identify companies in the same sector as a stock.
  • GICS and ICB are cited as two established classification systems.
  • Supply chain data can provide another analytical view of relationships between firms.
  • A market data API is described as returning related stock symbols for an input stock.
  • The discussion does not compare pricing, coverage, or the accuracy of these sources.

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Full text
# List competitors for a given stock?


# List competitors for a given stock?












Where can I find a reasonably-priced or free API, database or CSV which contains a list of competitors for a given stock symbol?

For example, I want to find competitors for various symbols, like GOOG, TWTR, etc.

By reasonably priced, I mean, under $50 per month. I've seen Owler and others, but the pricing is hidden.

One option is to scrape data from Yahoo Finance, but I prefer to do it properly and leave that as a last resort. I tried to find an API that returns Yahoo Finance competitor data, but haven't found one yet.

## Answer by pyCthon (score 2)

https://quant.stackexchange.com/a/17990

There are two main classifications professionals use. You would need to purchase one of the two main standards, get it from your university or hand source it. Using this information it is easy to sort out which competitors are in a given sector.

The two main sources are the Global Industry Classification Standard (GICS) and Industry Classification Benchmark (ICB).

To obtain GICS: click here

To obtain ICB: click here

If you want to understand a companies key competitors analytically, without digging through the financials yourself. Revere from FactSet sells supply chain data that may be useful.

## Answer by Megan Hankins (score 1)

https://quant.stackexchange.com/a/40609

Barchart OnDemand's getCompetitors API provides a list of related stock symbols (competitors) for an underlying stock input.

Shown in full with attribution under the source's licence. Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 (Stack Exchange)

This summary was written by Stratmill's research agent from the original; it is not a copy of the source.