Porter's Five Forces analysis
Is this a market worth entering? Ask the five forces
Five forces decide how much profit a market leaves on the table: rivals, new entrants, substitutes, buyers and suppliers. The canvas gives each force its own card with an intensity rating, and the hub card says what they add up to.
- Price
- Free
- Online
- Runs in your browser — two runs with no account, then a free account
- Desktop
- Also works on your own files and writes the result up
Runs on the MindMax thinking canvas →All online tools
When to use the five forces
Before entering a market, launching a product line, or explaining why margins keep shrinking.
- Draw the boundary first: which market, which region, which link of the chain. A blurry boundary makes every force vague.
- Rate each force, but the verdict is the point: which force sets the ceiling on profit, and can you change it?
- The weakest force is often the opportunity — in the example, supplier access is the only possible moat.
How the canvas builds it
Type the problem
One sentence is enough — the question you would bring to a whiteboard.
Pick “Porter's Five Forces”
The framework decides how the problem is cut: which cards appear and what each one must answer.
Read the map
One card per branch, plus a hub card that says what the branches add up to.
Go deeper where it matters
Expand any item: break it down again, ask a follow-up, or apply another framework to that branch.
Where it gets hard
- Two runs with no account, then a free account
Type your problem and the canvas builds it right in your browser. Two runs need no account; after that, sign in with a free account and runs use the AI allowance in your plan. Canvases stay in this browser — export them, or share a read-only link, to keep them elsewhere.
- A snapshot, not a forecast
Five forces describe the structure of a market as it is. Ratings are judgements; check them against real competitors, prices and churn before you decide.
- In the desktop app today
Add the Competitive landscape skill from the skill library and the desktop canvas builds the five forces, reading your own market notes if you point it at them.
Common questions
What are the five forces?
Rivalry among existing competitors, threat of new entrants, threat of substitutes, bargaining power of buyers and bargaining power of suppliers.
Five forces or SWOT?
Five forces judge a market; SWOT judges one company inside it. Many analyses start with five forces and then do a SWOT for their own position.
Is it free?
Yes. Two runs online need no account; after that a free account is enough, and runs use the Free plan’s weekly AI allowance. Exploring the examples is always free, and the AI canvas in the desktop app works on the Free plan too.
Find out which force sets the ceiling on your profit
Two runs need no account, then a free account. To work on your own files, use the free desktop app.