Keeping up with your competitors’ ads on Facebook can feel like a full-time job. But if you want to run better ad campaigns and avoid starting from scratch each time, ad spy tools are your shortcut to smarter marketing.
Also, let's be honest.
Running profitable Facebook ads isn’t about guessing, it’s about knowing what’s already working in your market.
Facebook ad spy tools let you see real competitor ads, creative angles, messaging, and campaign patterns before you spend a dollar. Instead of testing blindly, you can model proven ideas, spot trends early, and avoid costly mistakes. Whether you're in e-commerce, SaaS, or B2B, this offers valuable insight into what’s working in your niche.
In this guide, we break down the best Facebook ad spy tools in 2026 (both free and paid), what each is best for, their key features, how to choose the right one based on your goals, and how you can use them to gain an edge in your ad strategy.
TL;DR: Facebook Ad Spy Tools
Let's make this easy too - we can help you compare options right away, so you can identify which is the best option for you:
What Is a Facebook Ad Spy Tool?
A Facebook ad spy tool (or a Facebook ad tracking tool) is a platform that helps you search for and analyze ads running on Facebook, Instagram, and sometimes other Meta platforms like WhatsApp and Messenger.
It shows you active and historical ads run by other brands on Meta platforms (Facebook, Instagram, Messenger).
Instead of guessing what creatives, hooks, or offers might work, these tools let you:
- See which ads competitors are running right now
- Identify recurring messaging and formats
- Spot scaling patterns before they become saturated
These tools pull data from Meta’s Ad Library API or use proprietary databases to let you search ads by keyword, brand, industry, or ad type.
So, with the right tool, you can:
- Discover top-performing ads from your competitors and leading brands
- Uncover trending creatives and offers
- Find winning ad hooks, visuals, and messaging
- Get inspiration for your next campaign
These tools are a big help and will save you time and resources because instead of guessing what kind of ad will work, you can base your strategy on what’s proven to perform well in your industry.
Key Features to Look For in a Facebook Ad Spy Tool
Not all ad spy tools are created equal. When choosing a platform, here are some useful features to consider:
- Advanced Filters: Search by keyword, CTA, ad type, region, industry, or platform - so you can find ads relevant to your business.
- Ad History & Longevity (Historical Data): View how long an ad has been running or how many times it’s been used. You need this becaus ads that run for weeks or months are rarely accidents - they’re usually profitable.
- Engagement Metrics: Track likes, comments, and shares (if available)
- Creative Previews: See actual ad formats like carousel, video, single image
- Creative Context & Landing Page Access: See where the ad leads for full-funnel insights. Seeing an ad alone isn’t enough. The best tools show where the click goes and how the funnel continues.
- Competitor Alerts: Get notified when specific brands launch new ads
- Multi-Platform Support: Some tools also monitor TikTok, YouTube, or Google ads
- Trend Detection: Top tools help you spot patterns across competitors, not just individual ads.
The Best Facebook Ad Spy Tools in 2026
Here's a more detailed overview of the comparison, with more details.
Then we'll review each platform Pros and Cons.
1. Panoramata, Best for Full-Funnel Competitor Intelligence
Best for: Brands, agencies, and growth teams who want more than just ads.
Panoramata is the Facebook ad spy tool that does it all. It tracks Facebook ads automatically for you in one place, and more.
It goes beyond traditional ad spy tools by showing how competitors connect ads to landing pages, emails, and broader campaigns — all in one place.
But it tracks more than just Facebook because it covers Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Google Display, YouTube, and Search ads too.
With Panoramata, you can view and compare visuals, copy, and the content schedule of your competitors so you get the full scope of their advertising strategy on Facebook.
You can also check your competitor’s previous Facebook ads, including information on when the ad started running and when it stopped running.
All this ad information is centralized into one feed where you get real-time updates whenever your competitor publishes a new ad, as well as summaries of your competitor’s recent activity, so you’re always up to speed.
Here are other useful features of Panoramata’s Facebook ad tracking tool.
Key features:
- Monitor competitor Facebook & Instagram ads
- Track landing pages, messaging changes, and funnels
- See patterns across multiple competitors
- Save and organize winning examples
See the landing page that a Facebook ad leads to
Ads will teach you a lot, but what’s even better is learning from the landing page that each ad directs to.
This element gives a comprehensive look at your competitor’s funnel and the conversion strategies they use.
Ads are just a piece of the puzzle. Landing pages tell you so much more.
Through this feature, you can pick up on common CTAs your competitors use, their discount offers, the value proposition they promote, and the objections they try to address on the page.
All these are free tips you can use in your own ads and landing pages.
Benchmark ad volume, discount average, and percentage of ads with discount
While knowing creatives and the elements of each ad, it’s also worthwhile to monitor how often your competitor publishes an ad on Facebook and other networks to see if you are keeping up with their ad volume.
If your ads are underperforming and you see that your competitor is publishing ads more frequently, you can tackle that problem and see if it changes your ad performance.
Panoramata can also track stats on discounts for you, namely the average percent discount they offer to customers and how often they give out discounts in their ads.
Discover your competitor’s most popular words used, USPs, and emotions in ads
Panoramata can track qualitative data, too, which can be even more useful than ad volume in many ways.
Without having to go through all their ads, you can learn the following information:
- Most popular words: the words they use more often to entice their audience
- USPs (unique selling points): how they differentiate themselves in their ads
- Emotions: Do they highlight confidence, joy, satisfaction, or other emotions the most?
- Themes: Features, benefits, testimonials, problem-solution, and other themes
- Angles: Angles include fun, surprise, FOMO, and cost saving
- Arguments: High quality, durable, award-winning, new colors, etc.
- Personas: Millennials, Gen Z, fashionistas, health-conscious people, etc.
- Hooks: Product showcase, benefits, discount, special offer, fun, etc.
- Style: UGC, product shot, lifestyle, in use, collage, etc.
- Discount types: free delivery, discount, discount with threshold, etc.
Search through their ads using keywords
Need inspiration for Mother’s Day or your next buy-one-get-one sale?
You can search through your competitor’s ads to locate a given keyword to find the right creative inspiration faster.
Ads are just a piece of the puzzle. Landing pages tell you so much more.
Filter ads by date, asset, network, and active status
Organize your competitor analysis better by using filters to separate ads by:
- Date range (the period you want to look at)
- Status (active right now or the past 16 days or more)
- Asset type (Text, video, image, carousel)
- Network (Meta, Display, Search, YouTube)
Sort ads by most popular and most detected
Do you want to see your competitor’s most effective and widely used ads?
You can sort ads by popularity and frequency of publishing to quickly identify the ads that are worth looking into and analyzing.
Best for: People interested in a competitor analysis tool that’s comprehensive, always updated, and with a full scope of data not limited to Facebook ads alone
Price: Free version available. Paid plans start from $99/month
Why Panoramata Wins: Most tools show what ads look like. Panoramata shows how competitors actually market, end to end.
Pros
- In-depth analysis of each Facebook ad
- Not limited to ads on Facebook
- Comprehensive tracking that includes landing pages, emails, SMS, and websites
- Benchmarking features for competitor analysis
Cons
- Pricing for premium version is higher than the Free Meta Ad Library, but it has way more features to track competitors.
2. Facebook Ad Library (Best Free Option)
The Facebook Ad Library is a free tool that serves as a digital repository of active ads on Meta’s networks, including Instagram and Facebook. It's Meta’s official, free database of active ads.
You can look up your competitor on this ad library using their publisher name and check their ad campaigns right away.
Check key information like:
- Types of ads
- Versions of an ad
- Copy and visuals
- How long the ad was running
- Markets and locales your competitor targets
You can use filters to narrow your search further by time period, language, platform, media type, active status and more.
Key Feature:
Access all active Facebook and Instagram ads directly from Meta’s database.
Best For:
Manual ad research and finding competitors’ current ads.
Pricing:
Free
Pros:
- 100% free
- Reliable
- Direct from Meta
- No login required
Cons:
- No engagement data
- No historical context
- No saved folders or historical data
- No alerts or deep filters
- No filtering for strategy or trends
When the Facebook Ad Library Wins: You want quick checks - but pair it with a competitive intelligence platform for real insights
3. MagicBrief
Spy on your competitor’s Facebook ad campaigns with MagicBrief, an ad spy tool with AI recommendations and integrations with Slack.
Source inspiration from top brands and your industry competitors and discover trending ad hooks, headlines, and other copy.
Key Feature:
- Generate reports with actionable insights from ad data
- Automated summaries of competitor activity
- Has AI benchmarking features
- Track brands over time
Best For: Agencies and marketers who need collaborative tools for client briefs
Pricing:
7-day free trial. Paid plans start from $249/month
Pros
- Modern interface that’s easy to navigate
- Syncs with Slack, TikTok, Meta, YouTube, and LinkedIn
- Collects creative inspiration automatically
Cons
- High cost
- The price is based on ad spend
4. AdSpy
AdSpy is an ad search engine with ads from all over the world and by over 27M advertisers. AdSpy offers one of the largest searchable ad databases with granular filters.
Best for: Media buyers who want to slice data by keyword, CTA, or engagement.
You can look for your competitors by page name or URL. Then, it lets you filter ads by age, gender, location, ad text, domain, CTA, and even tech. Its large historical database makes it ideal for digging into what worked well over time.
Key Feature:
Massive ad database with detailed targeting and demographic filters.
Best For:
Affiliate marketers, marketers who want to track customer sentiment, and high-volume advertisers.
Pricing:
$199/month
Pros:
- Granular search filters
- Tracks engagement (likes, comments, etc.)
- Supports multiple languages
Cons:
- No free plan
- High starting price for small teams
5. Minea
Minea is an ideal Facebook ad tracking tool specializing in product discovery and ad inspiration.
It helps you find high-performing Facebook ads (as well as ads on TikTok and Pinterest), track trending products, and even write copy and visuals for your store using AI. It’s especially useful if you’re in dropshipping or consumer goods because Minea allows you to spot product trends before they go viral.
Key Feature:
Tracks Facebook, TikTok, and Pinterest ads plus influencer product placements and has a reverse image search function to track down specific products
Best For:
Ecommerce brands, dropshippers, and those selling trending products.
Pricing:
Free trial available. Starts from $49/month
Pros:
- Multi-platform tracking
- AI-powered product and trend detection
- Influencer spying features
Cons:
- Geared more toward ecommerce, not SaaS or B2B
- UI can be overwhelming at first
6. BigSpy
BigSpy is a versatile ad spy platform with a huge library covering these major platforms:
- YouTube
- TikTok
- Google Ads
- Yahoo
- Amazon
- Shopify
- And more.
You can filter by ads by industry, site type, language, country, and qualities like size, duration, and resolution. It’s a solid all-in-one tool for marketers managing cross-channel campaigns.
Key Feature:
Tracks ads across Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Google, and more.
Best For:
Marketers researching across multiple ad platforms.
Pricing:
Freemium model; Paid plans from $9/month
Pros:
- Broad platform coverage
- Extensive keyword and creative type filters
- Identifies top-performing ads
- Competitive pricing
Cons:
- Occasional UI issues
- The interface is not as polished as other tools
- Less precise than premium tools
7. AdFlex
AdFlex focuses on analyzing high-converting ad creatives, giving users access to both the ad and its landing page or funnel.
It’s a useful tool for finding ad ideas and discover what audience your competitors are targeting with their ads (thanks to filters for region, interest, age and gender).
You can even use Adflex to identify your Facebook competitors and what ecommerce platforms they use. Adflex’s database spans 80+ countries and 9 platforms, including Facebook. With the free tier, it’s also easy to try out without committing to a paid plan right away.
Key Feature:
Precise search functionality and detailed ad summaries
Best For:
Performance marketers and direct-response advertisers.
Pricing:
Start from $99/month.
Cons:
- Smaller database than Panoramata or AdSpy
- Engagement metrics can be limited
How to Use Facebook Ad Spy Tools Strategically
Instead of copying ads, use these tools to:
- Identify repeat messaging themes
- Spot creative formats competitors keep scaling
- Understand positioning shifts over time
- Build better hypotheses before launching campaigns
Choose the Best Facebook Ad Spy Tool for You
That wraps up our list of excellent Facebook ad spy tools for refining your ad campaigns. While you can do all this tracking manually, these tools make you more efficient and pay dividends in the long run.
If you're just getting started, Facebook Ad Library and Adflex are great entry points. For deeper insights, Panoramata offers more advanced targeting and funnel analysis.
Take the guesswork out of your campaign planning and track your competitors’ ads with Panoramata today.
Turn Competitor Ads Into an Advantage Today
Your competitors are already testing ads every day. The difference is whether you’re learning from it.
With Panoramata, you don’t just see ads, you understand strategy, patterns, and opportunities.
FAQs
What is a Facebook ad spy tool?
A Facebook ad spy tool is a platform that allows users to search for and analyze advertisements running on Facebook, Instagram, and other Meta platforms.
Why should I use a Facebook ad spy tool?
These tools save time and resources by providing insights into what ads are performing well in your industry, helping you base your strategy on proven methods.
Are there any free Facebook ad spy tools available?
Yes, the Facebook Ad Library is a free tool provided directly by Meta that allows you to search for active ads. Panoramata also has a free version with great features if you are looking to take it out for a spin before purchasing.
Is it legal to use Facebook ad spy tools?
Yes. These tools use publicly available ad data.
Can I see ad performance metrics?
Not exact ROAS - but ad longevity and repetition are strong performance signals.
How often should I check competitor ads?
Weekly monitoring helps you catch trends early without noise.
