How to see your competitors' ads on every platform (free)
Every official ad library in one workflow: Meta, TikTok, Google, and LinkedIn. How to find competitor ads free, spot their winners, and track them over time.
Every major ad platform now publishes the ads running on it, for free, because transparency laws made them. Which means you can see any competitor's Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Google, YouTube, and LinkedIn ads today, legally, without tools or logins. This guide walks the full circuit: where each library lives, what each one shows and hides, and how to turn a pile of screenshots into competitive intelligence you actually use.
Full disclosure: we make Eden, which does the tracking part of this automatically. The circuit below is entirely free tools.
The four official ad libraries
Meta Ad Library (facebook.com/ads/library) covers Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and Threads. Search any advertiser, see every active ad. No performance data, but two honest proxies: how long an ad has run, and how many variations use the same creative. Old plus duplicated equals winner. Full walkthrough in our Facebook Ad Library guide.
Google Ads Transparency Center (adstransparency.google.com) covers Search, Display, Shopping, and YouTube. Search by advertiser to see their creatives, formats, and the regions they run in. No metrics and no keyword-level data, but it is the only official window into a competitor's YouTube ads.
TikTok is split in two. The Commercial Content Library (library.tiktok.com) is searchable by advertiser but only covers ads shown in the EEA, UK, and Switzerland. Creative Center Top Ads shows winning ads with real CTR and retention data, but cannot be searched by brand. Details in our TikTok Creative Center guide.
LinkedIn Ad Library (linkedin.com/ad-library) covers all LinkedIn ads, searchable by company. B2B marketers consistently forget it exists, which makes it the least picked-over library on this list. EU-targeted ads show impression ranges.
The one-hour competitor ad audit
Pick one competitor and run the circuit:
- Meta first. Pull their active ads. Sort mentally by "started running" date and screenshot the three oldest. Note the offer (discount, trial, quiz, demo), the format mix, and any whitelisted creator pages running ads for them.
- Google second. Search them in the Transparency Center. Are they running search-heavy, display-heavy, or YouTube-heavy? A brand with months-old YouTube creatives has cracked video economics; steal their structure, not their script.
- TikTok third. If they advertise in the EU, pull them in the Commercial Content Library. Either way, spend ten minutes in Top Ads on their category to see what the winning creative grammar looks like where they compete.
- LinkedIn last (skip for pure B2C). B2B brands often say the quiet part in LinkedIn ads: pricing angles, competitor comparisons, and objection-handling copy they would never put on Meta.
- Synthesize. One page: their core offer, their proven creatives (the old ones), what they are currently testing (the new ones), which platforms carry them, and the gap nobody in your niche is filling.
Repeat monthly. The snapshot is useful once; the movie is what changes your media plan, because you will watch their tests appear, die, or graduate into evergreen winners. For a tighter per-brand version with a one-page output, use our 30-minute competitor ad audit.
What the free libraries will not do
Three structural gaps, and they are the same on every platform:
- No memory. Ads vanish from the libraries when campaigns end, media links rot, and there is no save button anywhere. If you did not capture it, it is gone.
- No alerts. Nothing tells you a competitor launched a new angle. You find out when you remember to check.
- No cross-platform view. Every brand is four separate searches in four separate tabs, and nothing lines the results up next to each other.
The workflow fix for the first gap is a disciplined swipe file: save winners the day you find them, with context, in something you control.
The tracked-brands shortcut
The tool fix is to have something else run the circuit for you. Eden's ad research does this: it tracks hundreds of advertisers' Meta ads and TikTok's top ads in one feed, refreshed daily, ranked by the winner signals covered above (longevity, variation count, and TikTok's real metrics). Brand pages replace the per-platform searches, variation groups un-roll so you can compare a competitor's iterations side by side, and any ad saves to a board with a permanent copy of the media and numbers. Pasting a Meta Ad Library link into Eden turns it into a saved card too. Browsing the feed is free: create an account and open Discover.
Frequently asked questions
Is it legal to look at competitors' ads?
Yes. The libraries exist because regulators required them; using them is the intended purpose. Copying a competitor's ad outright is a different matter (and bad strategy anyway). Study patterns, write your own.
Can competitors tell I viewed their ads?
No. None of the libraries notify advertisers or expose viewer data.
How do I see how much a competitor spends?
You mostly cannot. Spend is shown only for political ads (Meta, Google) and impression ranges only for EU-targeted ads. The reliable free proxy is longevity: nobody pays to run a losing ad for six months.
What about X, Snapchat, and Pinterest?
X's ad transparency tool covers EU-shown ads only and is thin. Snapchat publishes a political ads library and, for the EU, a commercial one. Pinterest likewise covers EU ads. For most niches, Meta, Google, TikTok, and LinkedIn cover the budget that matters.
How often should I check competitors' ads?
Monthly per competitor is the floor; weekly if you are in an aggressive paid niche. The check gets fast once you know their baseline, because you are only looking for what changed.