ChatGPT answers, unedited

If your goal is to understand what competitors are running across Meta, TikTok, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Google, there isn't one perfect tool. The best choice depends on whether you want:

• a free way to see active ads,
• a searchable historical database,
• or a competitive intelligence platform with alerts and analysis.

Here's how I'd rank them.

These tools differ primarily in search depth, historical coverage, collaboration features, and whether they focus on one platform or aggregate many. www.adyntel.comsuperscale.aibacklinko.com

My recommendations by use case

If you're spending under $100/month

• BigSpy
• Foreplay
• Meta Ad Library
• TikTok Creative Center

This combination gives excellent coverage for most ecommerce and SaaS marketers.

If you're an agency

• SocialPeta
• BigSpy
• Foreplay

You'll get alerts, team collaboration, and large creative databases.

If you're scaling paid social aggressively

• AdSpy (Meta)
• PiPiAds (TikTok)
• Foreplay for organizing swipe files

That setup is popular among performance marketing teams because it combines deep search with a structured creative workflow. superscale.ai

Don't overlook the free tools

Many marketers pay for software before exhausting the official transparency libraries:

• Meta Ad Library
• TikTok Creative Center
• Google Ads Transparency Center
• LinkedIn Ad Library

These show the actual active ads from advertisers. Paid tools generally add:

• historical creatives
• better filtering
• keyword and Boolean search
• alerts when competitors launch new ads
• tagging and organization
• export capabilities www.adyntel.comsuperscale.aibacklinko.com

Beyond ad creatives

If you also want to know:

• what tech stack competitors use,
• which pixels they're firing,
• email platforms,
• analytics tools,
• A/B testing tools,
• CMS,
• ecommerce platform,

I'd pair an ad intelligence tool with:

• BuiltWith
• Wappalyzer
• Similarweb
• Semrush
• Ahrefs

Together, these give a much more complete picture of a competitor's acquisition strategy than ad libraries alone.

The stack I'd build

For most growth marketers, I'd recommend:

1. Meta Ad Library (free)
2. TikTok Creative Center (free)
3. BigSpy for cross-platform monitoring
4. Semrush for paid search and competitor traffic
5. BuiltWith for technology detection
6. Foreplay to build a searchable swipe file and tag winning hooks, offers, CTAs, and landing pages

That combination covers creative research, competitive intelligence, and campaign inspiration without paying for multiple overlapping enterprise platforms.

If your goal is “show me what competitors are actually running, let me dissect the creatives, and help me spot patterns”, there are two tiers: free native libraries and paid intelligence tools.

My shortlist

Recent 2026 comparisons consistently put Meta Ad Library/TikTok Creative Center as the free baseline, while tools such as Foreplay, AdSpy, BigSpy, Minea and PiPiADS add searchable databases, historical information, filters, saved collections and other intelligence layers. segwise.aiwww.exposure.com.au

What I'd actually buy

If you're a performance marketer or agency:
Foreplay + native ad libraries. Foreplay is particularly useful because you're not just finding ads—you can build a structured swipe file, organize competitor creatives, and turn research into briefs. segwise.aiadlibrary.comwww.exposure.com.auadlibrary.com

If you're obsessed with Meta competitors:
AdSpy. It's more of a research database: search competitors, copy, keywords, formats, etc. The tradeoff is that it's much more Meta-centric. segwise.ai

If you're doing ecommerce/DTC:
I'd look at Minea + Foreplay. Minea is particularly oriented toward product/ad discovery, while Foreplay is better for actually building your creative intelligence/swipe workflow. segwise.aiadlibrary.comwww.exposure.com.auadlibrary.com

If TikTok is a major acquisition channel:
Add PiPiADS. TikTok Creative Center is free and should be your baseline, but paid TikTok intelligence becomes useful when you want deeper filtering and historical research. segwise.aiwww.exposure.com.au

If you need cross-channel intelligence at enterprise scale:
Look at SocialPeta or GetCrux. These go beyond simply showing ads and attempt to organize things like creative themes, messaging, cadence, geography and competitive patterns. adlibrary.com

One important caveat

None of these can truly tell you “this competitor's ad is their #1 performer” with certainty. Public ad libraries show what is running, but competitors' actual spend, ROAS, conversion rate and audience targeting aren't generally public. Longer run duration can be a useful signal, but it's not proof of performance. segwise.aiadlibrary.comwww.exposure.com.auadlibrary.com

If you tell me what industry you're in (e.g. SaaS, ecommerce, agency, local business) and whether you're mainly interested in Meta, TikTok, or both, I can narrow this to the 2–3 tools I'd actually pay for, including current pricing and what each lets you see.

If by “spying” you mean legally researching publicly visible competitor ads and social creative, there are some very good tools. I’d split them into three tiers:

Recent 2026 comparisons put Foreplay, AdSpy, BigSpy, Minea and SocialPeta among the leading options, but the right choice depends heavily on whether you care about Meta, TikTok, e-commerce, or creative workflow. www.adyntel.com

My picks

🥇 Foreplay — best overall

I'd start here if your goal is “show me what my competitors are testing, organize the good stuff, and help my creative team learn from it.” It's more of a competitive-creative workspace than a raw ad database, with saving/organizing and swipe-file workflows.

🥈 AdSpy — best for serious Meta digging

If you're primarily running Facebook/Instagram ads, AdSpy's historical search orientation is particularly useful. You can investigate competitors by copy, creative, advertiser, etc., rather than merely looking at what's currently visible.

🥉 BigSpy — best inexpensive broad search

Good choice when you want a large cross-platform database without paying enterprise-level prices. The tradeoff is generally more noise and less polished creative workflow.

For TikTok specifically: PiPiADS

I'd use a TikTok-focused tool if TikTok is a major acquisition channel. But there's an important wrinkle: TikTok itself provides Creative Center, which is free and includes high-performing ads, filters and performance-oriented creative information. ads-useast2a.tiktok.com

TikTok is also transitioning its Top Ads functionality toward TikTok One, so I'd check the native tooling before paying for a third-party database. ads.tiktok.comads-useast2a.tiktok.com

Don't overlook the free sources

For pure competitor reconnaissance, you can get surprisingly far without buying anything:

• Meta Ad Library — search currently active ads across Meta products. www.facebook.com
• TikTok Creative Center / TikTok One — discover high-performing TikTok creative and analyze creative patterns. ads.tiktok.comads-useast2a.tiktok.com
• Google Ads Transparency Center — useful for competitor Google/YouTube advertising.

The paid tools become valuable when you want historical archives, cross-platform searching, alerts, bulk analysis, saved collections, creative tagging, and performance/run-time signals rather than manually checking each platform. adlibrary.com

If I were building a competitor-intelligence stack

Solo marketer:
Meta Ad Library + TikTok Creative Center → Foreplay

DTC/e-commerce:
Meta Ad Library + TikTok Creative Center → Minea or PiPiADS → Foreplay for organizing winners

Meta-heavy performance marketer:
Meta Ad Library → AdSpy → Foreplay

Agency/large team:
Foreplay + SocialPeta (or another enterprise intelligence platform)

One important caveat: these tools generally show publicly observable advertising, not the competitor's actual Ads Manager data. Treat things like estimated spend, conversion performance, and “winning” labels as estimates/signals rather than ground truth. www.adyntel.comadlibrary.com

If you tell me what you're selling (SaaS, DTC, agency, app, etc.) and which platforms matter (Meta/TikTok/YouTube/LinkedIn), I can narrow this to the 2–3 tools I'd actually pay for, including current pricing and what each lets you see.

If your goal is “show me what competitors are actually running, let me search their creatives, and help me identify what’s worth copying/testing”, I’d split the market into three tiers:

🥇 My pick: Foreplay

If you're primarily trying to understand competitor creative strategy, I'd start with Foreplay. It's more useful than a giant database if your workflow is:

competitor → ads → hooks → angles → offers → landing pages → save winners → brief your own creatives.

The distinction matters because some products are basically searchable databases, while others are designed to monitor named competitors continuously. Current comparisons make that distinction pretty clearly. makometrics.com

🔎 If you want maximum “spy” capability: AdSpy / BigSpy

For “show me thousands of ads and let me filter the hell out of them”, I'd look at AdSpy and BigSpy.

They're particularly useful when you don't know which competitors to investigate yet. You can search by things like:

• niche/product
• ad copy
• keywords
• engagement
• format
• country
• platform
• time running
• advertiser

That's more of a creative-mining workflow than competitor monitoring.

👁️ If you literally want to watch competitors: Mako Metrics

This is the category I'd investigate if by “spying” you mean:

“Tell me whenever Competitor X launches a new ad, changes creative, or stops running something.”

That's different from an ad library. Mako Metrics specifically positions itself around automated ongoing monitoring, rather than merely letting you search a database. makometrics.com

🏢 If you're running a serious multi-channel operation: GetCrux

GetCrux is interesting for an enterprise setup because it covers Meta, TikTok, Google, YouTube, LinkedIn, X, Snapchat and other channels, and goes beyond individual creatives into hooks, offers, CTAs, formats, messaging, cadence, active days and share-of-voice type analysis. www.getcrux.ai

I'd consider this if you're an agency or have a substantial paid-media/creative team.

🆓 Don't overlook the free sources

For Meta, start with the Meta Ad Library before paying for anything. Paid tools are essentially adding indexing, search, history, monitoring, organization and analysis on top of publicly available ad data.

For TikTok, TikTok Creative Center is particularly good. Its Top Ads database lets you filter by region, industry and campaign objective and, importantly, provides performance-oriented analysis down to second-by-second/frame-by-frame engagement for qualifying ads. ads.tiktok.com

TikTok Creative Center

What I'd buy depending on your situation

Solo founder / small brand:
Meta Ad Library + TikTok Creative Center + Foreplay

Performance marketer:
AdSpy + Foreplay

Agency doing competitor research for clients:
Foreplay + AdSpy/BigSpy

Need automatic competitor alerts:
Mako Metrics

Large enterprise / multiple channels:
GetCrux

One important caveat: these tools cannot actually tell you a competitor's true ROAS, CPA, or spend with certainty. Those are generally proprietary campaign data; “estimated spend” from spy tools should be treated as directional. What you can observe very effectively is creative longevity, messaging, offers, formats, frequency of new creative, landing pages and changes over time. adextract.co

If you tell me your industry + which platforms (Meta/TikTok/LinkedIn/X/YouTube) + roughly how much you'd spend per month, I can narrow this to the 2–3 tools I'd actually pay for.

If by “spying” you mean legitimately monitoring publicly visible competitor ads and reverse-engineering their creative strategy, there are some very good options.

My shortlist for 2026

Recent 2026 comparisons similarly put Foreplay toward swipe-file/creative workflows, AdSpy toward deep Meta research, and tools such as GetCrux toward broader competitive monitoring. www.getcrux.ai

The free tools you should absolutely use

Meta Ad Library is the starting point. It lets you search currently active ads across Meta products, so you can inspect a competitor's actual creative, copy, formats, and offers. www.facebook.com

Meta Ad Library

For TikTok, TikTok Creative Center / TikTok One Inspiration is the equivalent. TikTok's current tooling lets you investigate high-performing creative and analyze things like creative approaches and selling points. ads.us.tiktok.com

TikTok Creative Center

What I'd actually buy

If you're running a DTC/ecommerce brand, I'd probably build the stack like this:

Meta Ad Library + TikTok Creative Center → Foreplay → Motion

Use the first two for raw competitor intelligence, Foreplay to build a searchable swipe library and organize hooks/offers/angles, and Motion to determine which creative principles actually translate into performance on your account.

If you want something more like “tell me what my top 50 competitors have launched, when they launched it, which creatives they're repeating, what hooks/offers they're using, and alert me when something changes”, I'd look harder at GetCrux/Hawky-style competitive intelligence rather than a traditional swipe-file tool. www.getcrux.ai

One important caveat: these tools generally expose publicly observable advertising information; they don't give you the competitor's private Ads Manager data, targeting settings, actual ROAS, or other confidential account information.

If you tell me what you're selling + your competitors + which platforms (Meta/TikTok/YouTube/etc.), I can narrow this down to the 2–3 tools I'd actually pay for and explain exactly what each would let you uncover.

If by “spying” you mean legitimately monitoring publicly visible competitor ads and reverse-engineering their creative strategy, there are some very good options in 2026.

My picks

Recent 2026 comparisons also put AdSpy, BigSpy, Minea, Foreplay and similar tools among the main options, with the important caveat that database coverage and pricing change frequently. www.adyntel.comwww.getcrux.ai

But don't overlook the free sources

For Meta, start with the official Meta Ad Library. For Google, Google's Ads Transparency Center lets you search by advertiser or website and see ads currently published through Google. adstransparency.google.com

For TikTok, TikTok Creative Center is surprisingly powerful. Its Top Ads system lets you filter by region, industry and objective and inspect performance signals, including second-by-second engagement patterns on eligible ads. ads.tiktok.com

What I'd actually buy

If you're a DTC/ecommerce operator:
Minea + Foreplay. Minea helps discover what's being advertised; Foreplay is better for turning the discoveries into a structured creative intelligence/swipe system.

If you're a performance marketer:
AdSpy + Foreplay. Use AdSpy for broad competitor discovery and Foreplay to analyze the creative patterns.

If TikTok is your main channel:
PiPiADS + TikTok Creative Center. The latter is free and gives you a useful benchmark for genuinely high-performing TikTok creatives rather than merely ads that happen to exist. adstransparency.google.comads.us.tiktok.com

If you want one dashboard across everything:
Look at GetCrux or newer cross-platform intelligence products. GetCrux, for example, covers Meta, TikTok, Google, YouTube, LinkedIn, X and other channels and focuses on things like hooks, offers, CTAs, creative themes, cadence and active days. www.adyntel.comwww.getcrux.ai

The important distinction

Don't overvalue the biggest “ad database.”

What you really want to answer is:

What creative concepts are competitors repeatedly investing in, and which ones appear to have survived long enough to matter?

I'd track each competitor's:

• Hook / opening 3 seconds
• Core promise
• Offer
• Creative format
• UGC vs. polished production
• CTA
• Landing page
• New creative launches
• Creative iterations
• How long an ad remains active
• Frequency with which the same angle gets reworked
• Platform-specific differences

That gives you considerably more intelligence than simply downloading 500 competitor ads.

If you tell me your industry + whether you're mainly Meta, TikTok, YouTube, or all three, I can narrow this to the 3 best tools for your exact use case and compare their current pricing/features.

If you mean competitor ad research (“ad spying”) for Meta, TikTok, YouTube, LinkedIn, etc., the best tool depends on whether you want a swipe file, deep ad database, ecommerce product research, or enterprise intelligence. The strongest teams usually combine a free source + one paid tool. www.adyntel.comadeye.ai

Best overall picks

My shortlist by use case

If you run Meta/Facebook ads

1. Foreplay → best workflow for a creative team
2. AdSpy → best for digging through historical Meta creatives
3. Meta Ad Library (free) → must-use baseline; it shows active ads, copy, formats, and start dates. www.exposure.com.aupercuity.ai

If you run TikTok ads

1. PiPiADS → best dedicated TikTok spy tool
2. TikTok Creative Center (free) → great for discovering trending ads and formats. superscale.ai

If you are a DTC/ecommerce brand

1. Minea
2. BigSpy
3. Foreplay

If you are an agency managing many clients

1. Foreplay
2. Sensor Tower
3. enterprise ad intelligence platforms (for reporting, monitoring, and large competitor sets). adlibrary.com

Free stack that gets you surprisingly far

Before paying, use:

• Meta Ad Library — competitor Facebook/Instagram ads www.exposure.com.aupercuity.ai
• TikTok Creative Center — TikTok trends and top creatives superscale.ai
• Google Ads Transparency Center — Google/YouTube ads superscale.ai

What I’d buy for most marketers

• Solo marketer / small brand: Foreplay + free ad libraries
• Ecommerce growth team: Minea + Foreplay
• Media buyer obsessed with finding winning hooks: AdSpy + Foreplay
• Agency: Foreplay first, then add enterprise intelligence if needed

One thing to remember: these tools generally show public competitor ads and help organize/analyze them; they do not reveal private targeting data or exact spend for normal commercial ads. www.adyntel.comadeye.ai

If you tell me your niche (e.g., SaaS, ecommerce, local business, info products) and platforms (Meta/TikTok/YouTube/LinkedIn), I can narrow this to the 2–3 tools worth paying for.

If by “spying” you mean legally researching competitors’ publicly visible ads and creative, there are some very good options. I’d split them into official/free sources and paid intelligence tools.

My shortlist

A recent 2026 comparison similarly puts Foreplay, AdSpy, BigSpy, PiPiADS, Minea and enterprise tools such as GetCrux into different niches rather than having one universal winner. superscale.ai

🥇 If I had to pick one: Foreplay

Foreplay is particularly useful if your real goal isn't merely “show me competitor ads” but:

“Help me build a constantly updated swipe file of what competitors are testing.”

You can organize competitor creatives, save ads, tag hooks/offers/formats, and use them as references for your own creative research.

That's substantially more useful for a marketing team than endlessly scrolling an ad database.

🕵️ Best for deep Meta research: AdSpy

If you're heavily focused on Facebook + Instagram, I'd look at AdSpy.

It's designed around searching a large historical ad database, making it useful for questions like:

• What hooks are competitors repeatedly using?
• Which offers keep showing up?
• What creatives have apparently been running for months?
• What copy/CTA combinations are common?
• What are competitors doing in a particular niche?

The important caveat: “running for a long time” isn't proof that an ad is profitable. Treat longevity as a useful signal, not a performance metric.

🎵 Best for TikTok: TikTok Creative Center

Before paying for anything, use TikTok's own TikTok Creative Center.

Its Top Ads database contains high-performing TikTok creatives and lets you filter by things such as region, industry and campaign objective. TikTok also provides second-by-second/frame-by-frame performance analysis for Top Ads. ads.us.tiktok.com

That's unusually valuable because you're not just looking at what the creative looks like; you're getting clues about where engagement happens within the video.

💰 Best cheap/free stack

You can actually get surprisingly far without buying an “ad spy” subscription:

Meta: Meta Ad Library
Meta says the library lets you search currently active ads across its products. www.facebook.com

TikTok: TikTok Creative Center

LinkedIn: LinkedIn Ad Library — searchable by advertiser, payer, keyword, country and date range. www.linkedin.com

Google/YouTube: Google Ads Transparency Center.

Then pay for a database only when you need historical search, monitoring, alerts, organization, or cross-platform analysis.

What I'd buy based on your situation

• DTC/e-commerce: Foreplay + PiPiADS/Minea
• Meta-heavy performance marketing: Foreplay + AdSpy
• TikTok-heavy brand: TikTok Creative Center + PiPiADS
• Agency managing lots of clients: Foreplay
• Enterprise competitive intelligence: GetCrux
• Just starting / don't want to pay: official Meta + TikTok + LinkedIn + Google libraries
• Want the cheapest broad database: BigSpy

One important distinction: these tools generally expose public advertising information; they don't give you access to competitors' private Ads Manager data, targeting settings, conversion data, or actual ROAS. Claims of knowing a competitor's exact spend/ROAS should be treated skeptically—many such figures are estimates. www.adyntel.com

If you tell me your industry + whether you're mainly Meta, TikTok, LinkedIn, or all three, I can narrow this to the 2–3 tools I'd actually pay for and compare their current pricing/features.

If by “spying” you mean legitimate competitive-intelligence research on publicly visible ads and social content, there are some very good tools. You generally won't see a competitor's private targeting, exact spend, or account-level performance—but you can get surprisingly far with public ad libraries plus an intelligence layer.

My picks

Current 2026 comparisons also put Foreplay, AdSpy, BigSpy, Minea, SocialPeta and PiPiADS among the main options, but database size and coverage claims are worth treating cautiously because these services change frequently. spytrend.com

Don't overlook the free sources

For actual ground truth, I'd start with the platforms themselves:

• Meta Ad Library — search a competitor and see their currently running Facebook/Instagram ads.
• TikTok Creative Center — particularly good for creative analysis. TikTok's Top Ads dashboard lets you filter by region, industry, objective, etc., and provides relative performance analysis down to individual moments in a video. ads.tiktok.com
• Google Ads Transparency Center — useful for seeing a company's Google/YouTube advertising.
• LinkedIn Ad Library — especially useful for B2B competitors.

TikTok's Creative Center is unusually valuable because it isn't just a gallery: its Top Ads can expose engagement/performance patterns and frame-by-frame moments, although only qualifying/authorized ads are included in that particular collection. ads.tiktok.com

What I'd actually buy

If you're a DTC/e-commerce marketer:
Foreplay + Minea. Foreplay becomes your organized creative intelligence/swipe file, while Minea is useful for product/ad discovery.

If you're primarily running Meta ads:
AdSpy + Meta Ad Library. The latter gives you the source-of-truth lookup; AdSpy gives you a much more research-oriented interface and historical discovery.

If TikTok is important:
PiPiADS + TikTok Creative Center. The native Creative Center is free and already provides substantial creative intelligence. spytrend.comads.us.tiktok.comsuperscale.ai

If you're running an agency:
I'd lean Foreplay because the workflow—collecting, organizing, tagging and sharing winning creative examples—is arguably more valuable than simply having the biggest database.

If you want maximum breadth:
Look at SocialPeta or BigSpy, depending on budget and how deep you need the intelligence.

One important caveat: don't choose based on “number of ads in the database.” A giant database that's stale isn't nearly as useful as knowing which ads are still running, how long they've been running, what hooks/offers they're using, and how the creative changes over time. Independent 2026 comparisons make the same distinction between raw ad libraries and tools that add historical indexing, filtering, alerts, and workflow features. superscale.ai

If you tell me what you're selling + whether you're focused on Meta, TikTok, YouTube, or all three + your monthly tool budget, I can narrow this to the 2–3 tools I'd actually pay for.

If your goal is “show me what competitors are actually running, let me filter by platform/brand, see the creative, copy, landing page, longevity, and ideally identify what’s working”, I’d shortlist these:

Recent comparisons also put tools like BigSpy, Foreplay, Minea, PiPiADS and SocialPeta among the major options, while enterprise-focused tools are increasingly adding creative-change monitoring and cross-channel analysis. www.admapix.comwww.getcrux.ai

What I'd actually use

For Meta/Instagram:
Start with Meta Ad Library for the authoritative source, then use Foreplay or BigSpy to make the research workflow much faster.

For TikTok:
Use TikTok Creative Center first. Its Top Ads database lets you filter by region, industry, objective, language and format, and inspect performance-oriented metrics and frame-by-frame engagement. ads.us.tiktok.com

TikTok Creative Center — Top Ads

For a DTC/ecommerce brand:
I'd lean Minea + Foreplay. Minea is useful for discovering competitors/products/ads, while Foreplay is better for turning interesting ads into an organized creative research library.

For an agency or larger growth team:
Look seriously at SocialPeta or GetCrux. GetCrux, for example, focuses on monitoring competitors' hooks, offers, CTAs, creative themes, cadence, geography and share of voice across channels. www.admapix.comwww.getcrux.ai

One important caveat

“Ad spy” tools generally cannot tell you competitors' exact spend, targeting, ROAS, or conversion numbers. Those are usually estimates/inferences. The genuinely observable stuff—creative, copy, advertiser, placement/library presence, landing page, and sometimes duration—is much more reliable. conversion.studio

If you tell me what you're selling + whether you care more about Meta, TikTok, YouTube, Google, or all of them, I can narrow this to the best 2–3 tools and compare their current pricing/features.

If by “spying” you mean legitimate competitive-intelligence research on publicly visible ads, there are some very good tools. You generally won’t get competitors’ private targeting, budgets, audiences, or account data—but you can see their public creatives, copy, offers, landing pages, and campaign longevity.

My shortlist for 2026

Recent comparisons similarly distinguish between tools for discovering ads and tools for continuously monitoring named competitors. makometrics.com

🥇 If I were buying one

Foreplay would be my first choice if your goal is:

• Follow specific competitors
• Save their ads into organized swipe files
• Compare hooks, formats, offers and angles
• Build creative briefs from competitor research
• Give a creative team a searchable library

If you're more of a media buyer who wants massive ad-database search, I'd lean toward AdSpy instead.

If you're ecommerce/DTC, I'd look particularly hard at Minea + Foreplay.

Don't overlook the free sources

Meta Ad Library is the actual source of truth for currently active Meta ads. Meta says it lets you search ads running across its products; political/issue ads have additional historical information. www.facebook.com

Meta Ad Library

For TikTok, Creative Center provides public creative research, including high-performing examples and filters by region, industry, objective, etc. TikTok is currently transitioning the old Top Ads experience toward TikTok One Inspiration. ads.us.tiktok.com

TikTok Creative Center / Inspiration

The important distinction

I'd divide these products into three categories:

1. “Show me what competitors are running”
Meta Ad Library, AdSpy, BigSpy, Minea, Pipiads.

2. “Watch these competitors and tell me what changed”
Foreplay and dedicated competitor-monitoring platforms are more useful. The difference is important: discovery tools make you search; monitoring tools continuously watch specific advertisers. makometrics.com

3. “Tell me why a creative is probably working”
Atria, TikTok's own creative analytics/inspiration tools, and your own performance platforms are more relevant.

One caveat: don't treat longevity as proof of profitability. A competitor keeping an ad live for 90 days is a useful signal, but you don't actually know their ROAS or contribution margin from the public ad alone.

If you tell me whether you're DTC/ecommerce, SaaS, agency, info products, or local business, and whether you care most about Meta, TikTok, YouTube, or all of them, I can narrow this to the 3 tools I'd actually pay for, including approximate current pricing and what each gives you.

If by “spying” you mean competitive ad intelligence using publicly visible ads, there are some very good options. The key distinction is whether you want creative discovery, ongoing competitor monitoring, or cross-platform intelligence.

My picks

Recent 2026 comparisons similarly put Foreplay, AdSpy, BigSpy, PiPiADS, Atria and SocialPeta among the major options, although capabilities and pricing change frequently. www.adyntel.comsuperscale.ai

If I were doing this myself

1. Start free with the native libraries.
You can get surprisingly far without paying:

• Meta Ad Library — Facebook + Instagram ads
• TikTok Creative Center — TikTok ads and top-performing creative
• Google Ads Transparency Center — Google/YouTube advertiser ads
• LinkedIn Ad Library — particularly useful for B2B

Google's official transparency center lets you search ads by advertiser or website and filter by platform. adstransparency.google.com

2. Add Foreplay if your primary objective is creative intelligence.
It's particularly useful when you want to build a swipe library, organize competitor ads, and turn observations into creative briefs rather than simply browse thousands of ads. Current comparisons put it around the $49+/month range depending on plan. superscale.ai

3. Add AdSpy if you're doing serious Meta archaeology.
It's more about searching a large historical database: “Show me ads in this niche using this angle, format, CTA, country, etc.” That's different from a creative-management workflow. hawky.ai

4. Use PiPiADS if you're heavily TikTok/DTC/e-commerce focused.
That's where I'd look first if your competitors are product brands relying heavily on TikTok creative.

5. Look at GetCrux/SocialPeta if this is for an agency or large marketing operation.
GetCrux, for example, is aimed at ongoing competitor monitoring across Meta, TikTok, Google, YouTube, LinkedIn and other channels, including creative themes, hooks, offers, cadence and share-of-voice type analysis. www.getcrux.ai

One important caveat

No legitimate tool can generally tell you a competitor's exact ad spend, targeting audiences, conversion rate, ROAS, or private campaign data. Commercial ad transparency systems expose the public-facing creative and advertiser information; third-party tools infer things such as “this has probably been successful” from signals like longevity, number of variations, frequency, etc. adeye.ai

So I'd rank the workflow:

Native ad libraries → Foreplay/AdSpy → automated monitoring → your own analysis of hooks/offers/creative patterns.

If you tell me what you're selling and which platforms matter most (Meta, TikTok, YouTube, Google, LinkedIn), I can narrow this down to the 2–3 tools I'd actually pay for, including current pricing and what each can uncover about competitors.

If by “spying” you mean legally researching publicly visible competitor ads, there are some very good options. The big distinction is between tools that merely show you ads and tools that help you understand what competitors are repeatedly testing, how long creatives stay live, and which angles are worth investigating.

My shortlist for 2026

Independent 2026 comparisons broadly put BigSpy/Minea/AdPlexity in the specialist ad-spy category, while Similarweb/Semrush are better when you want competitive intelligence beyond individual creatives. adlibrary.com

The free stack I'd start with

1. Meta Ad Library — absolutely use this first.

Meta's own library lets you search currently active ads across Meta products. It's much more authoritative than a third-party database for answering the basic question, “Is this competitor actually running this ad right now?” www.facebook.com

Meta Ad Library

2. TikTok Creative Center — excellent for creative intelligence.

TikTok's current Creative Center has high-performing ad examples and lets you filter by region, industry, objective, etc. TikTok is also transitioning the old Top Ads experience toward TikTok One, with AI-powered analysis of creative approaches and selling points. ads.us.tiktok.com

TikTok Creative Center

If you're willing to pay

I'd choose based on your business:

E-commerce / DTC → Minea or BigSpy

Good when you want to answer:

• What products are competitors advertising?
• Which hooks/offers are appearing repeatedly?
• Which creatives have been running for a long time?
• What landing pages are they sending traffic to?
• What formats are competitors using?

Paid-social agency / serious media buyer → AdPlexity Social

More appropriate if you're doing systematic competitor research rather than occasionally looking for inspiration. A 2026 comparison specifically identifies it as a strong overall AdSpy alternative for performance marketers. adlibrary.comadplexity.io

Creative team → Foreplay

I'd favor this if the actual workflow is find → bookmark → categorize → analyze → turn into briefs. You don't necessarily need the largest ad database if you're building a swipe file and creative-testing process.

Enterprise / multi-channel → Similarweb + a dedicated ad-intelligence tool

Similarweb is useful because the question becomes bigger than “what ads are they running?” — you can investigate traffic sources, paid search, display, audience/market activity, etc. The ad-spy databases themselves generally focus much more heavily on the actual creatives. adlibrary.comadlibrary.com

One important caveat

Don't treat an “ad spy” database's estimated spend, reach, or performance numbers as ground truth. Third-party tools often build their databases by crawling/indexing publicly available advertising data, and coverage can differ from the platforms' own libraries. adlibrary.com

For creative research, I'd actually prioritize:

creative longevity + repeated messaging angle + offer + hook + landing page + iteration history

over an alleged “$47,000 spent” estimate.

What I'd personally buy

If you're doing competitor creative research for a serious marketing operation, my stack would be:

Meta Ad Library + TikTok Creative Center → free baseline
BigSpy/Minea → broad discovery
Foreplay → organize the winning examples
Similarweb → understand the competitor's broader acquisition strategy

That gives you substantially more signal than paying for a single “spy” database and assuming its estimates are accurate.

If you tell me your niche (e.g. SaaS, DTC, agency, local business, info products) and whether you care more about Meta, TikTok, YouTube, or all of them, I can narrow this to the 3 best tools and tell you exactly what each one lets you see about a competitor. superscale.ai

If by “spy” you mean legally analyze publicly visible competitor ads, there are some very good options. The best choice depends on whether you care more about finding creatives, tracking competitors over time, or understanding what appears to be working.

My picks for 2026

Independent 2026 comparisons broadly put AdSpy toward deep Meta research, PiPiADS toward TikTok, Foreplay toward creative workflow, and SocialPeta toward enterprise intelligence. adlibrary.com

🥇 If I were spending my own money

1. Foreplay — best overall for a creative team

I'd pick this if your actual goal is:

“Show me what competitors are running, let me save the good stuff, categorize the hooks/offers/formats, and turn it into our own creative research.”

It's more useful as a creative intelligence/swipe-file workflow than simply dumping thousands of ads in front of you. Current comparisons specifically highlight its capture, organization and team workflow. www.shuttergen.com

2. AdSpy — best for digging into Meta competitors

If you're primarily running Facebook/Instagram and want to search deeply through competitor creatives, this is one of the more established choices. Current comparisons characterize it as particularly strong for Facebook/Instagram deep dives and historical searching. adlibrary.comsuperscale.ai

3. BigSpy — best inexpensive multi-platform option

Good if you don't want to pay for several specialized tools and mainly need a broad database/search interface across multiple ad networks. adlibrary.comsuperscale.ai

4. Minea — particularly good for ecommerce

I'd look at this if you're researching DTC brands, products, offers, dropshipping/ecommerce angles, rather than purely doing brand/creative strategy. adlibrary.com

5. SocialPeta — enterprise

If you're a large agency, app-growth team, or enterprise marketer and need substantially broader competitive intelligence, SocialPeta is worth investigating. It's overkill for most individual advertisers.

Don't overlook the free sources

For Meta, the official Meta Ad Library is the ground truth for currently active Meta ads. You can search advertisers and see the ads they're currently running. adlibrary.comsuperscale.aiwww.facebook.comads.tiktok.com

For TikTok, TikTok Creative Center provides public creative research, including high-performing ads, trends and creative examples. TikTok's current documentation says its Top Ads can be filtered by things such as region, industry and objective, with performance-oriented analysis. ads.tiktok.com

One important 2026 wrinkle: TikTok says Top Ads is being upgraded to TikTok One, and the old Top Ads collection will no longer be updated. ads.tiktok.com

The stack I'd actually use

If you're doing serious competitor research, I'd use:

Meta Ad Library + TikTok One/Creative Center → Foreplay → your own creative database

Then track for each competitor:

• New ads appearing
• Ads that stay live for weeks/months
• Repeated hooks
• Offers/discounts
• UGC vs. polished creative
• Opening 1–3 seconds
• Primary headline
• CTA
• Landing page
• Creative variations
• Which concepts they keep refreshing

The key insight: don't assume that an ad being visible means it's a “winning ad.” Most spy tools can tell you what exists; they generally cannot tell you a competitor's actual ROAS, CAC, profit, or spend with certainty. Treat estimated spend/performance as intelligence, not ground truth.

If you tell me what you're selling + which platforms you're interested in (Meta/TikTok/YouTube/LinkedIn), I can narrow this down to the 2–3 tools I'd actually pay for, including current pricing and what each one lets you see.