How to Use Pinterest Pin Stats for Competitor Analysis (and What's Still Missing)

Why Competitor Analysis on Pinterest Is Hard

If you're running a Pinterest strategy — whether for a brand, a niche blog, or an e-commerce store — you've probably wondered what's actually working for your competitors. Which pins are getting saved? What kind of content drives engagement? Are they running ads, and if so, which ones perform best?

Pinterest doesn't make this easy. The platform keeps most engagement data hidden, and native analytics only cover your own account. That's where tools like Pinterest Pin Stats (available at insightpins.com) come in — a Chrome extension that reveals hidden metrics on any pin you browse.

But can you actually use it for proper competitor analysis? Let's break down what you can do today, walk through a practical workflow, and be honest about where the tool falls short.

What Pinterest Pin Stats Actually Does

Before diving into competitor analysis tactics, here's a quick overview of what the extension offers. When you browse Pinterest with Pin Stats installed, you can see hidden engagement metrics on every pin — saves, repins, likes, comments, and more. The Pro version adds advanced filtering, sorting by multiple criteria, CSV/JSON export, and the ability to analyze promoted pins (ads).

The key features relevant to competitor research are:

• Revealing hidden stats on any pin (not just your own)
• Sorting and filtering pins by engagement metrics
• Analyzing Pinterest ads and promoted content
• Exporting data to CSV for further analysis
• Autoscrolling to quickly gather data from large boards or search results

Step-by-Step Competitor Analysis Workflow

Here's a practical workflow for analyzing a competitor's Pinterest presence using the extension.

Step 1: Identify Your Competitors on Pinterest

Start by finding 3–5 competitors or accounts in your niche. Search Pinterest for your main keywords and note which accounts consistently appear. Look at who pins content similar to yours and who ranks for the keywords you're targeting.

Step 2: Browse Their Profile with Pin Stats Enabled

Visit a competitor's Pinterest profile or specific boards. With Pin Stats active, the extension automatically reveals engagement data on every pin you see. You'll immediately notice which pins have significantly more saves, repins, or comments than others — data that Pinterest normally hides from public view.

Step 3: Sort and Filter to Find Top-Performing Content

This is where the Pro version shines. Use the data table to sort all visible pins by saves, likes, or comments. Apply filters to narrow down results — for example, show only pins with more than 100 saves, or filter by date range to see what's worked recently. This quickly surfaces the competitor's best-performing content without you having to scroll through hundreds of pins manually.

Step 4: Analyze Their Ad Strategy

Pin Stats can identify promoted pins (ads) in your feed. When browsing search results or the home feed, the extension flags which content is paid. This lets you see what competitors are spending money to promote, which is a strong signal of what they consider their most commercially valuable content.

Step 5: Export and Compare

Export the data to CSV and pull it into a spreadsheet. Now you can compare multiple competitors side by side — average engagement rates, content themes that perform best, posting frequency patterns, and which pin formats (static images, videos, idea pins) drive the most interaction.

What Insights You Can Extract

Using the workflow above, here's what you can realistically learn about your competitors:

Content strategy patterns. By sorting a competitor's pins by engagement, you'll quickly see which topics, formats, and visual styles resonate with their audience. Maybe their infographics get 10x more saves than their product photos. Maybe certain color schemes or text overlay styles consistently outperform.

Engagement benchmarks. What does "good" look like in your niche? If the top pins from five competitors average 500 saves, that gives you a concrete target. If your pins are hitting 50, you know there's a significant gap to close.

Ad intelligence. Seeing which pins a competitor promotes reveals their commercial priorities. If they're consistently running ads on a specific product category or content type, that tells you where they see the highest ROI.

Keyword and topic gaps. By analyzing which topics generate the most engagement across competitors, you can spot areas where demand exists but competition is thin — perfect for planning your own content calendar.

Where Pin Stats Falls Short

Now for the honest part. While Pin Stats is genuinely useful for the tasks above, there are significant gaps if you're trying to do a thorough, professional-grade competitor analysis. Here's what's currently missing:

No Competitor Tracking Over Time

Pin Stats shows you a snapshot of what's happening right now. You can't track how a competitor's engagement changes week over week or month over month. There's no way to set up ongoing monitoring — you'd have to manually visit their profile, export data, and compare spreadsheets yourself. A proper competitor analysis tool would let you add competitor accounts and automatically track their metrics over time, with trend charts showing growth or decline.

No Account-Level Metrics

You can see individual pin performance, but there's no aggregated view of a competitor's overall account health — total followers, follower growth rate, average engagement per pin, posting frequency, or board-level analytics. These account-level metrics are critical for understanding the bigger picture of a competitor's Pinterest strategy.

No Side-by-Side Comparison Dashboard

There's no built-in way to compare multiple competitors against each other or against your own account. You can export CSVs and build your own spreadsheet, but a dedicated comparison dashboard with visual charts would make this dramatically faster and more insightful.

No Content Categorization or Tagging

The tool shows raw engagement numbers, but it doesn't help you categorize content by type, topic, or format. Ideally, you'd want automatic or manual tagging — "product pin," "tutorial," "infographic," "lifestyle" — so you could see which content categories perform best for each competitor.

No Keyword and SEO Analysis

Pinterest is fundamentally a search engine, and competitor analysis should include understanding what keywords competitors target in their pin titles, descriptions, and board names. Pin Stats doesn't extract or analyze this text data, so you can't see which keywords drive their visibility.

No Historical Data

You can only analyze pins that are currently visible. There's no way to see a competitor's full historical performance, identify seasonal trends, or understand how their strategy has evolved over time. Tools like Panoramata or PinClicks address some of these gaps for Pinterest-specific competitor intelligence.

No Automated Reports

For agencies or teams managing multiple clients, there's no way to generate automated competitor analysis reports. Everything has to be done manually — browsing, filtering, exporting, and then assembling findings into a presentable format.

No Follower and Audience Overlap Analysis

Understanding who follows your competitors — and whether those audiences overlap with yours — is a key part of competitive intelligence. Pin Stats focuses purely on pin-level engagement and doesn't provide any audience demographic or overlap data.

The Bottom Line

That said, the fact that Pin Stats can reveal hidden engagement metrics on any pin makes it a uniquely valuable starting point. No competitor analysis is complete without understanding what actually performs, and that's exactly where this extension delivers.