Porter Five Forces Analyzer
Score each of Porter's five competitive forces against structured sub factors to get an overall industry attractiveness rating and see which force is compressing your margins.
Last reviewed by the Radiatus Cloud team
Want this done for your business?
Radiatus delivers cloud, security & automation for growing teams.
Structure explains profitability better than execution
Michael Porter's 1979 argument was that average profitability differs enormously between industries for structural reasons, and that those reasons reduce to five forces: rivalry among existing competitors, the threat of new entrants, the threat of substitutes, the bargaining power of suppliers and the bargaining power of buyers. A well run company in a structurally poor industry frequently earns less than a mediocre one in a good industry, which is uncomfortable and well supported by the data.
Each force has specific determinants
The framework is often used as five headings for a discussion, which loses most of its value. Each force has known determinants: entry barriers include capital requirements, economies of scale, switching costs, regulatory licensing and access to distribution. Buyer power rises with concentration, with low switching costs, with price transparency and with the buyer's ability to integrate backwards. Scoring the determinants rather than the force is what turns the framework from a vocabulary into an analysis.
The force that binds is the one to act on
An industry is only as attractive as its worst force. A business with weak rivalry and no substitute threat can still be unprofitable because one supplier controls a critical input, and no amount of competitive positioning fixes that. Identifying which single force is compressing returns tells you where strategy has to work, whether that is building switching costs, integrating vertically or choosing a segment where the force is weaker.
Related tools
- Incident Impact Calculator — Estimate the cost of a security incident from severity, affected users and downtime hours, with a compliance and trust rating and the response actions each severity level demands.
- Third-Party Risk Assessor — Assess vendor risk based on data access and type.
- Data Breach Cost Estimator — Estimate what a data breach would cost from records exposed, cost per record, days to detect and hours of downtime, split into direct and indirect costs.
- SaaS Risk Heatmap — Pick the SaaS apps your company runs, add your own, and get a heatmap ranking each by data criticality times access scope, with the risk each carries.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Porter’s framework still relevant?
For understanding structural profitability, yes, and it is still taught and used for exactly that. Its acknowledged limits are that it is a snapshot rather than a dynamic model, and that it does not handle complements and platform effects well, which matters in software.
What score means an attractive industry?
Lower force scores mean a more attractive industry, since each force reduces the profit available. What matters more than the total is the distribution: one severe force is worse than five moderate ones, because the severe one sets the ceiling.
How does this apply to software?
Entry barriers are usually low and substitutes plentiful, so rivalry is high by default. What differentiates profitable software businesses is switching cost and network effects, which show up here as reduced buyer power and raised entry barriers.
Should I score my company or my industry?
The industry. The framework explains why the average competitor earns what it earns. Your position relative to that average is a separate question, best answered with a value chain or competitive positioning analysis.
How often should this be redone?
When something structural changes: a major entrant, a regulatory shift, a technology that creates a substitute, or consolidation among suppliers or buyers. Annually is a reasonable default, but the trigger should be an event rather than a calendar.
Privacy & Security
Everything runs in your browser; nothing is uploaded.
How to Use
Rate each sub factor for your industry to get force scores and an overall attractiveness assessment.
Disclaimer: This tool is provided "as is" without warranty of any kind. Results are for educational and utility purposes.
Related Tools
Incident Impact Calculator
BusinessEstimate the cost of a security incident from severity, affected users and downtime hours, with a compliance and trust rating and the response actions each severity level demands.
Third-Party Risk Assessor
BusinessAssess vendor risk based on data access and type.
Data Breach Cost Estimator
BusinessEstimate what a data breach would cost from records exposed, cost per record, days to detect and hours of downtime, split into direct and indirect costs.