For media buyers, affiliates and dropshippers who study competitor ads on Facebook and Instagram
AdSpy vs Playhead: price, features, free option
AdSpy and Playhead do two different jobs with competitor ads. AdSpy is a search engine for Facebook and Instagram ads: its home page counts over 211 million ads from over 30 million advertisers, searchable by ad text, comments, landing page and affiliate offer, for one price of $149 a month. Playhead does not search. You paste the link of an ad you found, and Playhead watches it and tells you how it is built, with the second of every hook, beat and claim. Playhead is free for 50,000 credits a month, and the first paid plan is $19 a month with 3 seats.
Published 10 min read
The short version
- AdSpy publishes 1 price, $149 a month, and calls it an introductory offer. There is no cheaper plan and no pricing page.
- AdSpy's home page does not mention a free trial. Its refund policy gives a full refund within 24 hours of purchase.
- AdSpy searches 211,329,000 ads in 225 countries and 88 languages, by text, comments, URL, affiliate network and offer ID.
- Playhead is free for 50,000 credits a month. Its $19 plan holds 3 seats, which is $6.33 a seat against $149 for AdSpy.
- A year of AdSpy costs $1,788. A year of Playhead Creator costs $228, and a year of Playhead Studio with 5 seats costs $1,308.
What is on this page and on no other
Every page about these products carries the same prices and the same feature lists. These are the facts this one produced itself, and how each one was made.
AdSpy publishes 1 price on 1 page: $149 a month, on the home page. Its /pricing and /faq addresses answer 404, and none of its 4 public pages, the home page, the info page, the terms and the privacy policy, mentions a free trial.
Per seat, AdSpy at $149 costs 23.5 times Playhead Creator, which is $19 for 3 seats, or $6.33 a seat.
AdSpy's home page names 2 networks, Facebook and Instagram, and 225 countries. It describes search, filters, comments, demographics and landing pages, and 0 sentences about what happens inside the video of an ad.
What AdSpy is better at
First, because a comparison that opens with our own advantages is an advertisement rather than a comparison.
- A database of over 211 million ads. Playhead holds no database and cannot find an ad you have not found yet.
- Search inside the comments under an ad, so you can find the ads people praise or complain about.
- Affiliate search by network, affiliate ID and offer ID, and a landing page view that AdSpy says goes past cloakers.
- Demographics for each ad, location, gender and age range, which AdSpy says come from its network of contributors.
- One price and no credits to count. AdSpy calls its usage virtually unlimited.
How they compare
| What you want | AdSpy | Playhead |
|---|---|---|
Finding an ad and taking it apart are two jobs
AdSpy answers which ads exist. Playhead answers how one ad is built.
AdSpy is a search engine. You type a product, a URL or a word from the comments, and you get every Facebook and Instagram ad in its database that matches. The home page counts 211,329,000 ads from 30,185,000 advertisers. For an affiliate who searches by offer ID, that is the whole job.
The job that comes next is not search. You found an ad that has run for three months. Now you need to know what it does: what the first 3 seconds say, when the product appears, what the claim is, how long the proof runs, how it asks for the click. A search engine gives you the ad. It does not give you that list, so today a person plays the ad, pauses at each cut and writes it down.
Playhead does that part. Paste the ad's link and the answer is a teardown: the hook and how it reaches a viewer, each beat with its start and its length, every claim quoted at the second it is legible, the cuts, the first face, the first product, and whether the ad works with the sound off.
AdSpy pricing against Playhead pricing
One AdSpy plan at $149, and four Playhead plans from $0.
| Plan | A month | A year | Seats | Per seat, a month |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AdSpy | $149 | $1,788 | Not stated | $149 for one login |
| Playhead Free | $0 | $0 | 1 | $0 |
| Playhead Creator | $19 | $228 | 3 | $6.33 |
| Playhead Pro | $39 | $468 | 3 | $13 |
| Playhead Studio | $109 | $1,308 | 5, then $29 each | $21.80 |
AdSpy has no pricing page. The one price, $149 a month, is on the home page, under the words "Be quick though, this is an introductory offer and will not be the same for long". There is no annual plan and no cheaper tier on any of its public pages.
The two prices do not buy the same thing, so the table is not an argument that one replaces the other. It is the budget you need for each job. A team that already finds its ads in the Meta Ad Library, which is free, can take them apart for $19 a month and pay $1,560 a year less than a subscription to a search engine.
A free AdSpy alternative, in three steps
Meta's own Ad Library finds the ads. Playhead's free plan takes them apart.
Search the Meta Ad Library
Open facebook.com/ads/library, pick a country, and search a brand or a keyword. It is free, needs no account, and shows every active ad on Facebook and Instagram.
Copy the link of an ad
Open the ad's details and copy the link with its Library ID. The link is enough, so there is nothing to download.
Paste the link into Playhead
The teardown names the hook, each beat with its start and length, every claim with its second, and whether the ad works muted. The first analyses need no account.
What this setup does not give you is AdSpy's search: no comment search, no affiliate offer IDs, no ads that stopped running outside the EU. The Meta Ad Library shows the ads that run now. For most brands that study a competitor, the ads that run now are the ones that matter, because an ad that still runs after 90 days is an ad somebody keeps paying for.
When to choose AdSpy instead
Choose AdSpy when your job is to find ads: an affiliate who searches by offer ID, or a media buyer who wants to see every Facebook ad that mentions a product and read the comments under it. AdSpy finds the ad. Playhead does not search at all.
The verdict
Pay AdSpy's $149 a month when search is your job: an affiliate hunting offers by ID, or a buyer who reads the comments under a thousand ads. Nothing else here does that, and Playhead does not search at all. But most teams that type "adspy alternative" already know which competitor to watch, and the Meta Ad Library shows that competitor's live ads for free. The work they are really missing is the step after the search: what the ad does at each second, and why it wins. Playhead does that step for $0 on the free plan and $19 on Creator with 3 seats, which is $1,560 a year less than AdSpy.
Common questions
How much does AdSpy cost?
AdSpy costs $149 a month, which is its only plan, published on its home page on 26 September 2026 and described there as an introductory offer. A year at that price is $1,788. AdSpy has no pricing page, and its /pricing address answers 404.
Does AdSpy have a free trial?
AdSpy's home page does not mention a free trial. Its info page gives a full refund within 24 hours of purchase, if you contact support with your username and a reason, and says further refunds are at AdSpy's discretion.
What is a free alternative to AdSpy?
Meta's own Ad Library is free, needs no account and shows every active Facebook and Instagram ad. Pair it with Playhead's free plan, 50,000 credits a month, to take each ad apart second by second. You lose AdSpy's comment search and affiliate search.
Can AdSpy analyse the video of an ad?
AdSpy's home page describes search by text, URL, comments and affiliate data, demographics and landing pages. It does not describe a reading of the video itself. Playhead reads the video and names the second of every hook, beat and claim.
Does AdSpy cover TikTok?
AdSpy's home page names Facebook and Instagram and no other network. Playhead reads TikTok links as well as Instagram, YouTube and Meta Ad Library links, but Playhead does not search TikTok for ads.