The 7 Best Tools to Search Meta Ads Library Third Party
“The Meta Ads Library” is an incredible free starting point, but anyone who has tried to do serious competitive research in it knows the pain: limited organization, lots of manual clicking, and not much help turning raw examples into repeatable creative patterns. That’s exactly why third-party tools exist: to help you search smarter, save faster, and build a usable swipe file you can actually work from.
If you’re searching for the best tools to search Meta Ads Library third party BigSpy AdSpy 2025 2026, the list below compares seven popular options that marketers use to find winning angles, monitor competitors, and move from “inspiration” to “execution” with less friction.
1) GetHookd
GetHookd is the most obvious pick if your goal is to go beyond “just viewing ads” and instead build a repeatable system for researching, saving, and producing new creatives. It combines a large multi-platform ad library with practical workflows that are built for speed, so you spend less time collecting examples and more time shipping better iterations.
Where it really stands out is how it connects research to production. You can explore a library of 23M+ high-performing ads and filter by niche, style, and even ROAS benchmarks, then save ads into a personal swipe file and keep them even if they go offline. From there, features like transcription help you quickly pull out hooks and copy ideas without rewatching videos a dozen times.
The result is a smooth end-to-end setup: research what works, organize it cleanly, understand patterns, and generate variants when you’re ready to create. For most teams, that “single platform” approach is what makes GetHookd the clear best choice.
2) BigSpy
BigSpy is a well-known ad intelligence tool with a big emphasis on breadth. It positions itself as a multi-platform ad library covering major channels, including Facebook and Instagram, which makes it handy if your research routinely spans more than just Meta placements.
A big advantage is volume and accessibility. BigSpy highlights a very large creative database and offers a free plan, which can be useful when you want to sanity-check an idea, grab quick inspiration, or do lightweight competitor monitoring without committing to a higher-end workflow tool.
It’s also set up to be marketer-friendly with common filters and “tracking” style functionality, so it can fit teams that want a broad research database at a relatively approachable price point.
3) AdSpy
AdSpy has long been a staple in the ad research category, and its core strength is deep filtering. It emphasizes exhaustive search options that go beyond basic keyword lookups, which can be valuable when you’re trying to isolate a specific angle, affiliate offer style, or competitor pattern.
One especially distinctive feature is the ability to search through comments. In practice, that can help you find ads where the audience is essentially telling you what’s resonating or what objections keep coming up, which is gold for refining hooks and writing cleaner copy.
AdSpy also leans into scale, citing a very large ads database and broad geographic coverage, making it a solid option for teams doing global research or trying to map trends across multiple markets.
4) Foreplay
Foreplay is less “a giant database first” and more “a creative workflow first,” which is a meaningful distinction. If your biggest pain is not finding ads but rather saving them, organizing them, and collaborating with a team, Foreplay’s approach can feel very natural.
It offers a swipe-file system that’s designed to act like a living creative library, plus automated transcription and easy sharing. It also includes competitor tracking via its “Spyder” concept and a discovery layer with filters, so you’re not limited to manual collecting.
Foreplay is particularly appealing when you need to keep creative and performance teams aligned, because it’s built around turning ad examples into shared references, briefs, and reports.
5) Minea
Minea is an all-in-one suite that blends ad research with e-commerce and product discovery. It’s built with dropshippers and e-commerce marketers in mind, and it explicitly connects Meta ad inspiration to product trends and decision-making.
On the Meta side, it provides access to Facebook/Instagram ad discovery and positions its database as very large, with frequent updates. It also layers in AI-driven features such as “Magic Search” and creative finding tools, which are designed to speed up the process of spotting patterns and angles.
If your workflow starts with “what product should we sell or promote?” and then moves into “what ads are already working for it?”, Minea’s combined toolset can be a strong match.
6) Dropispy
Dropispy is purpose-built for dropshipping and online retail, and it frames ad searching as a way to consistently find winning products and the ad angles selling them. That focus shows up in how it organizes data around e-commerce ads and store-level research.
It supports keyword search and a range of filters like country, ad type, creation date, and interaction levels, which helps you narrow down the noise when you’re looking for a specific product category or ad format that’s performing.
Dropispy also highlights shop spying, which can be helpful when you want to see not only a single ad, but the broader direction an e-commerce competitor is taking across their catalog.
7) SocialPeta
SocialPeta sits more on the “enterprise-grade intelligence” end of the spectrum. It positions itself around very large-scale creative coverage across countries and channels, with competitive analysis for advertisers and publishers, not just solo media buyers.
A key appeal is its focus on market-wide visibility, with broad ad creative coverage and multi-dimensional competitor strategy analysis. If you’re trying to understand categories, benchmark activity, or get a wider view beyond just a few direct competitors, that can be useful.
It’s the kind of platform that can fit teams who want higher-level insights and a large research surface area, especially when operating across multiple regions and ad ecosystems.
Choosing the right fit for your workflow
The “best” tool comes down to what we’re optimizing for: speed from research to execution, deep filtering, collaboration, or e-commerce product discovery. If you want the cleanest path from finding winning Meta ads to organizing them and turning them into new creatives efficiently, GetHookd is the standout choice, with the others offering strong alternatives depending on your exact workflow and team setup.