Comparison
Every Facebook ad spy tool answers the same question — what are my competitors running? — and they answer it well. But there's a second question none of them can touch, and it's the one that actually matters: which of those ads is any good?
These are all real, useful databases of live ads. Pick by budget and platform coverage:
| Tool | Best for | Price |
|---|---|---|
| AdSpy | The biggest FB/IG ad database; search by advertiser, text, or engagement | Paid |
| BigSpy | Budget multi-platform library (FB, IG, TikTok, YouTube) | Freemium |
| Dropispy | Affordable Facebook database for dropshipping/ecom | Freemium |
| PowerAdSpy | Multi-platform ad intelligence with niche/keyword search | Paid |
| Minea | Ecom product + ad discovery across FB, TikTok, Pinterest | Freemium |
| Foreplay | Creative swipe files + briefing for media buyers and agencies | Paid |
All of them sit on top of the free Meta Ad Library — they add search, filters, and saved swipe files.
A spy tool is a card catalog: every ad ever run, indexed and searchable, with zero opinion about which ones are worth reading. You still have to open each one and guess. That was the whole game for a decade — until an AI could actually judge the creative. Point an AI agent with the PreTestAds MCP at any advertiser and it scores every live ad for attention, then tells you what to do with each one:
The verdict a database can't give you
HIDDEN GEM
Great creative nobody's backing — steal it early
MODEL IT
Proven winner — copy the structure
SKIP
Nothing to learn or beat
OUT-HOOK IT
They're committed to weak creative — beat it
Creative attention score →
Every spy tool nudges you toward the same bad proxy: "it's been running for months, so it must convert." Often it's just an ad on autopilot budget nobody killed. Without a read on the creative, you copy the wrong ads and burn budget proving it (more on that in how to tell if a competitor ad is working).
This isn't spy-tool-or-nothing. Keep the database you like for discovery, then run the ads worth studying through the scoring layer. See it in practice on 7 real competitor ads we pulled and scored, and the honest head-to-heads: vs AdSpy, vs BigSpy, vs Dropispy, vs PowerAdSpy, vs Minea, vs Foreplay.
Score any competitor ad for attention before you model it. First analysis free.
Score an AdIt depends on the job. For the largest searchable database, AdSpy; for budget multi-platform coverage, BigSpy; for dropshipping, Dropispy or Minea; for organizing creative and briefing, Foreplay. The free Meta Ad Library underlies them all. But every one of these tells you what's running — none tells you whether the creative actually holds attention, which is the thing that decides whether an ad is worth copying.
No. Spy tools are databases — they show that an ad exists and, sometimes, how long it has run. They can't see spend, sales, or whether the creative holds a viewer's attention. Judging the creative itself requires scoring it, which is a different layer entirely.
PreTestAds adds the missing judgment layer: point an AI agent at any advertiser in the Meta Ad Library and it scores each live ad for predicted attention, then verdicts them as model / out-hook / hidden gem / skip. You keep using a spy tool to find ads; PreTestAds tells you which ones are actually good.