MagicBrief shut down on 31 July 2026, after Canva bought the company and moved the team onto Canva Grow. The closest replacement for the swipe file and the brief builder is Foreplay at $59 a month. The closest replacement for the creative analytics is Superads at $125 a month or Motion at $750. No single product does all three jobs MagicBrief did.
Key takeaways
- MagicBrief stopped answering on 31 July 2026 at 8pm EST. Canva acquired it in June 2025 and the team now builds Canva Grow.
- Foreplay at $59 a month is the closest replacement for the swipe file, the discovery library and the brief builder in one product.
- Creative analytics costs between $125 and $750 a month, depending on how much ad spend the tier covers: Superads caps at $100k, Motion's first tier at $50k.
- 7 of the 8 tools report numbers about an ad: spend, hook rate, a tag somebody applied. 1 of them watches the ad and tells you what happens at 1.9 seconds.
- A free option exists and it is Meta's own Ad Library, which holds every active ad on the platform and keeps none of them for you.
What is on this page and on no other
Most pages on this subject repeat the same advice and the same figures. These are the facts this one produced itself, and how each one was made.
2 of the 8 products publish no price at all. Canva does not price Grow separately from a Canva plan, and Madgicx's own pricing page says the plan is chosen inside the app after an ad account is connected.
2 of the 6 published prices are the annual rate printed as a monthly figure. Atria's $129 and Superads' $125 are both billed for a year, and neither page prints the month-to-month price beside it.
4 of the 8 name an agent endpoint on the pricing page itself: Foreplay on all 3 tiers from $59, Atria at 600 MCP calls a month on the $129 tier, Motion on its $750 tier, and Playhead.
Playhead read two 5 second vertical ads in 12.05 and 12.31 seconds. Both readings put the first beat boundary at 1.9 seconds and reported that the ad works with the sound off.
What happened to MagicBrief
MagicBrief shut down on 31 July 2026 at 8pm EST and the platform stopped answering after that time. Canva acquired the company, and MagicBrief's own site says the team moved to Canva and now builds Canva Grow. [1]
MagicBrief held three things in one product: a searchable library of competitor ads, a brief builder with storyboards, and a creative analytics view that synced with Meta and TikTok ad accounts. A replacement usually covers one of the three, which is why this list is eight products long rather than one.
How we chose these tools
- Every price is the lowest published tier on the vendor's own pricing page, read on 14 September 2026. Where a vendor publishes no tier, the entry says so instead of quoting a figure from somewhere else.
- Every entry names at least one thing the product does not do. An entry with no limit is an advertisement, and one advertisement discredits the seven honest entries beside it.
- A tool is in this list when it covers at least one of the three jobs MagicBrief did: the library, the brief, or the creative analytics.
- Playhead is sixth, not first. Playhead is not the closest replacement for MagicBrief and a list that said otherwise would be worth nothing.
The shortlist
Every price is the lowest published tier, read off the vendor's own pricing page. The date it was read is at the foot of this page.
| Tool | From | Best for | Watches the video |
|---|---|---|---|
Canva Grow
The product MagicBrief became. Canva Grow 2.0 brings ad creation, publishing and performance into one workflow inside Canva, and the MagicBrief team builds it.
- What it costs
- Best for
- Rated
What it actually sees in the ad
What it does
- Creates the ad, publishes it and reports on it without leaving Canva
- Built by the MagicBrief team, so the creative intelligence work continues here
- Connects to the ad platforms a Canva team already publishes to
Stronger at
- The only entry on this list with a claim on MagicBrief's own roadmap, because it is where the people went
- A design tool and an ad tool in one account, which removes the export step between them
Where it stops
- The MagicBrief swipe file did not move with the team. A library somebody built over two years did not become a Canva folder.
- Canva publishes no separate price for Grow, so what it costs a team that does not already pay for Canva is not documented.
Foreplay
A swipe file, a searchable ad library, a brief builder and a competitor tracker in one product. The closest thing to what MagicBrief was, feature for feature.
- What it costs
- Best for
- Rated
What it actually sees in the ad
What it does
- Swipe File: save an ad from the Meta Ad Library or TikTok Creative Center with a browser extension
- Discovery: a searchable library of ads somebody else already saved
- Briefs: turn saved ads into a brief for an editor
- Spyder: follow a competitor's brand and collect what they run
- Lens: performance analytics against a connected ad account
- An API with 10,000 credits a month, and an MCP endpoint
Stronger at
- Covers all three MagicBrief jobs in one product, which no other entry on this list does
- The cheapest entry that includes both the library and the brief builder
- Ships an MCP endpoint on every tier including the $59 one, so an agent can reach the swipe file
Where it stops
- Lens, the analytics half, is limited to 1 brand on Workflow at $175 and is absent from the $59 tier's brand tracking.
- The seat price is on top of every tier: a team of six on Workflow is $175 plus $20, not $175.
Motion
Creative analytics for teams that run paid media at scale. Motion pre-watches, tags and analyses every creative an account has run, and answers in Slack.
- What it costs
- Best for
- Rated
What it actually sees in the ad
What it does
- Pre-watches, tags and analyses every creative the account has run
- An ad leaderboard and creative analytics across connected accounts
- AI tags and tasks, with routines for daily and weekly reports
- Answers in Slack, and ships briefs, hooks and reports there
- Full data access and an MCP endpoint
- Attribution integrations with Northbeam and Google Analytics on the Pro tier
Stronger at
- Unlimited seats and unlimited ad accounts on the $750 tier, where most of this list charges $20 a seat
- Pre-watches every creative already run, so the library is populated before the first question is asked
- The deepest tie between a creative and what it cost, which is the half a swipe file cannot give anybody
Where it stops
- $750 a month is the entry price and it caps at $50,000 of monthly ad spend. A brand spending $5,000 a month pays the same $750.
- Every tier ends in Book a demo. There is no self-serve signup on the pricing page.
Atria
Ad intelligence with an agent endpoint on the front. Atria's own page describes bringing ad data into Claude, ChatGPT and other agents.
- What it costs
- Best for
- Rated
What it actually sees in the ad
What it does
- Follow 50 brands on the $129 tier and collect what they run
- An MCP endpoint with 600 calls a month, and a REST API with 1,200
- AI credits for generation and analysis, 4,000 a month on Core
- Ad spend capacity of $500k on the entry tier
Stronger at
- Built agent-first rather than dashboard-first, so the MCP endpoint is the product rather than an export
- Five seats included at $129, where Foreplay's $59 tier includes one
Where it stops
- 600 MCP calls a month on the $129 tier is 20 a day. An agent asking follow-up questions spends those quickly.
- The $129 price is billed annually. The monthly figure is higher and is not published on the pricing page.
Superads
Ad reporting for paid social, with AI tagging and a copilot that answers questions about the connected accounts.
- What it costs
- Best for
- Rated
What it actually sees in the ad
What it does
- Unlimited reports, boards and workflows
- AI tagging of creatives in the connected accounts
- A copilot that answers questions about the data
- An inspiration library
- A 14 day free trial
Stronger at
- Covers $100,000 of monthly ad spend at $125, where Motion covers half that at six times the price
- The only entry with a free trial published on the pricing page rather than a demo booking
Where it stops
- The $125 figure is the annual rate. A month-to-month subscription costs more and the page does not say how much.
- No brief builder and no competitor swipe file, so two of MagicBrief's three jobs are not covered.
Playhead
OursPlayhead watches the ad and tells you what happens in it, second by second. It does the reverse engineering a strategist does by hand: where the cut is, when the price appears, what the hook is and whether the ad works with the sound off.
- What it costs
- Best for
- Rated
What it actually sees in the ad
What it does
- analyze_ads watches one ad or a set, and every ad in a set is watched blind to the others
- Each ad becomes a card with the same 40 fields, so a set of 20 stacks into one comparison instead of 20 sets of notes
- get_ads_analysis reads a saved analysis back for nothing
- An MCP endpoint, so the reading happens inside Claude or another agent
- Works from a link, from a Meta Ad Library URL, or from a file uploaded from the machine
Stronger at
- Watches the ad and names the second, which nothing else in this list documents. A 5 second ad is read in 12.05 seconds, against the 10 minutes of scrubbing it replaces
- $19 every 4 weeks is the lowest paid entry here, and the price follows credits rather than the ad spend of the account
Where it stops
- Playhead connects to no ad account and holds no spend, CTR or hook rate. Every number about performance has to come from somewhere else, which for six of the seven other entries is the whole product.
- There is no swipe file and no brief builder. Somebody replacing MagicBrief's library needs one of the other entries beside this one.
- A reading costs credits per run rather than a flat seat, so a month of heavy use costs more than a month of light use.
"title": "Pilates Reply Video", "production": "ugc", "language": "de", "hook_type": "relatable", "time_to_first_face": 0, "beats": [ { "name": "hook", "in": 0, "out": 1.9 }, { "name": "demonstration", "in": 1.9, "out": 5 } ], "works_muted": true, "works_muted_why": "The video relies entirely on the comment overlay and the visual entrance of the second person.", "audio_style": "music_only", "speaker_count": 0, "captions": "none", "unanswered": [ { "field": "product_first_visible", "reason": "No commercial product is identified or sold." }, { "field": "brand_first_visible", "reason": "No distinct brand logo or name is explicitly promoted." } ]
Madgicx
Meta ads automation with analytics and AI creative generation beside it, aimed at ecommerce accounts.
- What it costs
- Best for
- Rated
What it actually sees in the ad
What it does
- Automation rules on a connected Meta ad account
- Creative analytics and reporting
- AI ad generation as a separate workflow
- A free start before a plan is chosen
Stronger at
- Acts on the ad account rather than only reporting on it, which nothing else on this list does
- A free start with no plan chosen, so the account can be connected before anybody pays
Where it stops
- The price is not published. A team that has to approve a budget before signing up cannot get a figure from the website.
- Meta-first. An account running on TikTok as well is served by less of the product.
Meta Ad Library
Meta's own public archive of every ad running on Facebook and Instagram, searchable by advertiser, by country and by keyword.
- What it costs
- Best for
- Rated
What it actually sees in the ad
What it does
- Every ad currently running on Facebook and Instagram, by advertiser
- Filters by country, by platform and by date the ad started
- An API for political and issue ads, with an application process
Stronger at
- The primary source. Every paid tool on this list reads from here, so nothing has an ad the Ad Library does not have
- Free, with no seat, no tier and no ad spend cap
Where it stops
- Saves nothing. Close the tab and the ad is gone, which is the exact hole MagicBrief and Foreplay fill.
- No performance data at all: the archive shows what is running, never how it did.
- Nothing is organised. There is no tagging, no folder, no brief and no way to hand an ad to an editor.
What actually left when MagicBrief closed
Three separate jobs, and the replacements cover one each.
MagicBrief held a searchable library of competitor ads, a brief builder that turned saved ads into instructions for an editor, and a creative analytics view that read a connected Meta or TikTok account. Somebody describing it in one line called it a swipe file. That line is why the replacement is hard: the swipe file was one third of it.
So the first question is not which tool is best. It is which of the three jobs stopped working for you. A strategist who wrote briefs lost a workflow. A media buyer who watched the leaderboard lost a report. They need different products, and a list that ranks eight tools on one axis is answering neither of them.
| The job | What covers it | From |
|---|---|---|
| Save and search competitor ads | Foreplay, Atria | $59/mo |
| Turn saved ads into a brief | Foreplay | $59/mo |
| Read a connected ad account | Superads, Motion, Madgicx | $125/mo |
| Watch the ad and write down what happens | Playhead | $19/4 wk |
The one column these eight tools divide on
7 of the 8 report numbers about the ad. 1 of them watches it.
Every product above says it does creative analysis, and the feature lists read almost identically. The difference is what the analysis is made of, and no pricing page states it plainly.
Most of these tools work from two things: the numbers, which the ad platform reports, and the tags, which somebody applied or a model guessed from the thumbnail. That is enough to say a creative is doing badly. It is not enough to say why, because the why is at 2.4 seconds and nothing in that pipeline ever looked at 2.4 seconds.
So the work lands on a person. A strategist opens the competitor's winning ad, plays it, pauses at the cut, scrubs back, writes down what happened at 1.9 seconds and what was on screen at 3.2, and does that for 20 ads. That is the job. Every tool on this list except one hands it back to you with better filing.
A tool that watches the ad does that job instead. Not which ad won, which the numbers already say, but what the winning ad does that the others do not: where the cut is, when the price appears, how long the hand is on the product, whether the caption is on screen while the claim is spoken.
- Tools here that read the ad platform's numbers
- 6 of 8
- Tools here that document watching the ad itself
- 1 of 8
- How long one 5 second ad takes to read
- 12.05 s
- Cheapest tool that connects to an ad account
- $125/mo
The honest conclusion is that these are two purchases, not one. A team replacing MagicBrief properly buys a library and a reporting layer, and both halves cost money. Anybody telling you one $59 subscription replaces all of it has not used the third part.
And there is a third thing neither half does, which is watch the ad. That work is being done today by a person with a timeline scrubber, 20 ads at a time, and it is the part of the job that no swipe file and no leaderboard has ever taken off anybody.
What a full replacement costs a month
Two subscriptions, because no single product covers the three jobs.
| The setup | What it covers | A month |
|---|---|---|
| Meta Ad Library only | Seeing competitor ads. Nothing saved, nothing measured. | $0 |
| Foreplay Basic | The library and the briefs. One seat. | $59 |
| Foreplay Basic and Superads | The library, the briefs and the account reporting. | $184 |
| Foreplay Workflow and Motion | The same three, with five seats and unlimited ad accounts. | $925 |
The $184 row is the one most teams land on, and it is worth saying that it is more than MagicBrief cost. Consolidation was the product. Losing it costs money as well as a workflow.
The verdict
No product on this list replaces MagicBrief, because MagicBrief was 3 products and each of the 8 covers 1 or 2. Foreplay at $59 a month is the closest single answer and it is the right first purchase for anybody who wrote briefs. Add Superads at $125 when the reporting is the part that is missed. The $184 that costs is more than MagicBrief charged, and the consolidation is the thing that is actually gone. What none of the 8 gives back is the hour spent scrubbing through a competitor's winning ad to work out what it does at 1.9 seconds, and that hour is the job a swipe file was only ever filing.
Common questions
When exactly did MagicBrief shut down?
MagicBrief stopped answering on 31 July 2026 at 8pm EST. The notice on its own site says the platform is not accessible after that time, and that the team moved to Canva to build Canva Grow. Canva acquired the company in June 2025.
What is the closest replacement for MagicBrief?
Foreplay at $59 a month covers the most ground: a swipe file, a searchable discovery library, a brief builder and a competitor tracker in one product. What it does not replace is the creative analytics view, which needs a second subscription of $125 a month or more.
Is there a free MagicBrief alternative?
Meta's own Ad Library is free and holds every ad currently running on Facebook and Instagram, searchable by advertiser and by country. What it does not do is save anything: close the tab and the ad is gone, and there is no tagging, no brief and no performance data at all.
Did my MagicBrief swipe file move to Canva?
No. The team moved to Canva and the saved ads did not. Nothing on this list imports another product's swipe file either, so a library built over two years is rebuilt by hand or exported as links before the account closes.
Which of these tools can an AI agent use directly?
Four of them publish an agent endpoint. Foreplay ships MCP on every tier including the $59 one, Atria sells MCP calls as part of the plan at 600 a month on the $129 tier, Motion names MCP access on its $750 tier, and Playhead's whole product is an MCP endpoint.
