Generally the tools are not precise enough to understand the competition for a given keyword. Depending on the traffic of the keyword, I may audit the SERP manually or use one of this tools. For example, if it is a longtail keyword with 100 monthly searchs, I will check tools like Semrush that offer this information with a lower degree of precision but enough to filter fast hundreds, of this type of little keywords.
But if I'm analyizing a 1000K+ traffic keyword, I take my time to check each of the competitors in the top 5 (or top 10-20 if we are talking about massive traffic keywords) to see some aspects like their content, their incoming links, they on-page seo, etc... essentially it's like doing a SEO audit for each competitor when you try to access a keyword niche.