Get top competitor posts ranked by performance

Pull top-performing posts from tracked competitors. Use the data to identify winning content formats and inform your creative strategy.

Use cases

Manually reviewing competitor content across platforms wastes hours each week. Competitive content reports surface top posts instantly.

Creative inspiration

Surface top-performing competitor posts to inspire your creative team with proven formats and themes

Competitive benchmarking

Benchmark your brand’s best posts against what’s resonating with competitor audiences

Format analysis

Identify which post formats or topics drive results for competitors to inform your strategy

Before you start

Prerequisites:

API Key - Your authentication token - Get your API key from the API Quickstart.
Brand ID - Your brand’s unique ID
Tracked Competitors - Competitors added in Dash Social

Supported platforms:

Instagram
Facebook
YouTube
X

Add competitors first: Report on competitors tracked in Dash Social only. Add competitors in Dash Social → Settings → Competitor Management before using this API.

Test in the dashboard first

Preview competitive content in the Dash Social Dashboard to understand the data structure before pulling via API.

Implementation

Step 1: Get competitor account IDs

Get source account IDs for your tracked competitors. Each competitor has a unique ID per platform. Send a POST request:

POST https://library-backend.dashsocial.com/competitors/search
body = {
  "source": "FACEBOOK"
}

Key query parameters

source: Platform to search:
- Instagram: INSTAGRAM
- Facebook: FACEBOOK
- YouTube: YOUTUBE
- Twitter (X): TWITTER

Sample response:

[
    {
        "avatar_url": "https://cdn.dashsocial.com/avatars/2306810931.jpeg",
        "brand_details": [
            {
                "brand_id": 144,
                "created_at": "2019-10-22T21:02:14+00:00"
            }
        ],
        "handle": "sunny.today",
        "source": "FACEBOOK",
        "source_account_id": "2306810931"
    },
    {
        "avatar_url": "https://cdn.dashsocial.com/avatars/230344968.jpeg",
        "brand_details": [
            {
                "brand_id": 144,
                "created_at": "2020-03-15T10:22:33+00:00"
            }
        ],
        "handle": "scaniagroup",
        "source": "FACEBOOK",
        "source_account_id": "230344968"
    }
]

Collect each source_account_id value. Format as comma-separated: 2306810931,230344968,232342925.

Track multiple platforms

To analyze competitor content across Instagram and Facebook, call /competitors/search separately for each platform.

Step 2: Map your report parameters

Map the available parameters before making the API call:

Step 3: Request the content report

Send a GET request using the parameters from Step 2. This example gets top Facebook posts from tracked competitors during October 2025, ranked by likes:

GET https://dashboard.dashsocial.com/reports/data?brand_ids=144&
		channels=FACEBOOK_COMPETITIVE&
		metrics=LIKES&
		start_date=2025-10-01T07:00:00Z&
		end_date=2025-10-30T07:00:00Z&
		context_start_date=2025-09-01T07:00:00Z&
		context_end_date=2025-09-30T07:00:00Z&
		report_type=COMPETITIVE_CONTENT&
		competitor_source_account_ids=2306810931,230344968,232342925

Rank by multiple metrics

Request multiple metrics by separating with commas (e.g., LIKES,TOTAL_ENGAGEMENTS,REACH). Posts will be ranked by each metric separately.

Sample response:

{
    "data": {
        "2306810931": {
            "avatar": "https://cdn.dashsocial.com/avatars/2306810931.jpeg",
            "content": [
                {
                    "id": "18123456789012345",
                    "caption": "New fall collection drops tomorrow!",
                    "created_at": "2025-10-15T14:22:00+00:00",
                    "media_type": "IMAGE",
                    "media_url": "https://cdn.dashsocial.com/media/12345.jpg",
                    "permalink": "https://www.facebook.com/sunny.today/posts/123456",
                    "metrics": {
                        "LIKES": 1247,
                        "COMMENTS": 89,
                        "SHARES": 34,
                        "TOTAL_ENGAGEMENTS": 1370
                    }
                }
            ],
            "data_type": "COMPETITOR",
            "name": "sunny.today",
            "user_has_access": false
        },
        "230344968": {
            "avatar": "https://cdn.dashsocial.com/avatars/230344968.jpeg",
            "content": [
                {
                    "id": "18345678901234567",
                    "caption": "Monday motivation: Your journey starts with a single step",
                    "created_at": "2025-10-21T09:30:00+00:00",
                    "media_type": "IMAGE",
                    "media_url": "https://cdn.dashsocial.com/media/34567.jpg",
                    "permalink": "https://www.facebook.com/scaniagroup/posts/345678",
                    "metrics": {
                        "LIKES": 2103,
                        "COMMENTS": 156,
                        "SHARES": 78,
                        "TOTAL_ENGAGEMENTS": 2337
                    }
                }
            ],
            "data_type": "COMPETITOR",
            "name": "scaniagroup",
            "user_has_access": false
        }
    },
    "product_category": "COMPETITIVE"
}

Step 4: Interpret the response

The response includes top-performing posts for each competitor, sorted by your chosen metric.

Response structure

Each competitor includes:

content: Array of posts, ranked highest to lowest by the selected metric
id: Unique post identifier from the social platform
caption: The post text/caption
created_at: When the post was published
media_type: Type of content (IMAGE, VIDEO, CAROUSEL, etc.)
media_url: URL to the media file
permalink: Direct link to the post on the social platform
metrics: Performance data for each post
name: The competitor’s social media handle
avatar: URL to their profile picture
data_type: Always COMPETITOR for tracked competitor accounts

Common errors:

Invalid channel name - Use FACEBOOK_COMPETITIVE, not FACEBOOK. Competitive channels require the _COMPETITIVE suffix.
Invalid source account ID - Verify IDs match the /competitors/search response from Step 1.
Missing context dates - Include context_start_date and context_end_date for trend analysis.

Metrics

Instagram
Facebook
Youtube
X

Metric Name	Description	Metric API Name
Engagement Rate	The percentage of people who engaged with your competitors’ posts, based on their follower count	`ENGAGEMENT_RATE`
Comments	The number of comments your competitors’ posts received	`ORGANIC_COMMENTS`
Likes	The number of likes your competitors’ posts received	`ORGANIC_LIKES`
Estimated Reach	The estimated number of unique accounts that saw your competitors’ posts	`REACH`

Metric Name	Description	Metric API Name
Comments	The number of comments your competitors’ posts received	`COMMENTS`
Engagement Rate	The percentage of people who engaged with your competitors’ posts, based on their Page Fans	`ENGAGEMENT_RATE_PUBLIC`
Likes	The number of likes your competitors’ posts received	`LIKES`
Reactions	The number of reactions your competitors’ posts received. Reactions include Like, Love, Care, Haha, Wow, Sad and Angry.	`REACTIONS`
Shares	The number of times your competitors’ posts were shared	`SHARES`
Engagements	The total number of engagements your competitors’ posts received	`TOTAL_ENGAGEMENTS_PUBLIC`

Metric Name	Description	Metric API Name
Comments	The number of comments your competitors’ posts received	`COMMENTS`
Likes	The number of likes your competitors’ posts received	`LIKES`
Video Views	The number of times the videos on your competitors’ channels were viewed	`VIDEO_VIEWS`

Metric Name	Description	Metric API Name
Engagements	The total number of engagements your competitors’ posts received	`ENGAGEMENTS`
Likes	The number of likes your competitors’ posts received	`LIKES`
Quote Posts	The total number of times your competitors’ posts were reposted with a quote	`QUOTE_POSTS`
Replies	The total number of times your competitors’ posts were replied to	`REPLIES`
Reposts	The total number of times your competitors’ posts were reposted	`REPOSTS`
Total Reposts	The total number of times your competitors’ posts were reposted	`TOTAL_REPOSTS`
Video Views	The number of times your competitors’ videos were viewed	`VIDEO_VIEWS`

Next steps

With your competitive content data, you can:

Inspire creative strategy - Share top posts with your content team to identify successful themes and formats
Benchmark performance - Compare your best posts against competitor performance to set realistic engagement goals
Track content trends - Query weekly or monthly to spot emerging content trends in your industry
Inform content calendar - Analyze which post types and topics resonate to guide your publishing strategy

Related guides:

Documentation Index

​Use cases

Creative inspiration

Competitive benchmarking

Format analysis

​Before you start

​Test in the dashboard first

​Implementation

​Step 1: Get competitor account IDs

​Key query parameters

​Track multiple platforms

​Step 2: Map your report parameters

​Step 3: Request the content report

​Rank by multiple metrics

​Step 4: Interpret the response

​Response structure

​Metrics

​Next steps

Use cases

Before you start

Test in the dashboard first

Implementation

Step 1: Get competitor account IDs

Key query parameters

Track multiple platforms

Step 2: Map your report parameters

Step 3: Request the content report

Rank by multiple metrics

Step 4: Interpret the response

Response structure

Metrics

Next steps