Comparison
AdLibSpy alternative: an honest comparison
AdLibSpy is the closest direct competitor we have — same job, same data source, same place in the browser. The differences come down to pricing transparency, what each extension collects about you, and how much you get without paying.
Updated August 2026
AdLibSpy at a glance
- Pricing
- Not published — a free version with a paid upgrade is mentioned, no figures given
- Installs
- 2,000 users on the Chrome Web Store
- Rating
- 3.7 out of 5 from 9 ratings
- Site
- adlibspy.com
Verified August 2026 from AdLibSpy's own site and Chrome Web Store listing. Pricing in this category changes often — check before buying.
Of everything in this category, AdLibSpy is the product most similar to ours. It surfaces spend and reach directly inside the Meta Ad Library, it targets marketers and dropshippers, and it reads the same EU transparency data. If you are comparing the two, you are not choosing between different approaches — you are choosing between two implementations of the same idea.
That makes the comparison unusually concrete. There is no feature-set argument to have about what each tool is for. Instead the differences are commercial and technical: what you pay, what you have to hand over, and how much of the product is available before a paywall appears.
Both extensions are worth a minute of your time to install and try, and we would say that even though it means recommending you try a competitor. What follows is what we found looking at their listing and site in August 2026.
What AdLibSpy does well
Worth saying plainly, because most comparison pages are written to make the other product look bad. AdLibSpy is a real tool with real users, and it is better than us at several things:
- Does the core job properly — spend and reach shown directly on ads inside the Meta Ad Library
- A free tier exists, so you can evaluate before paying
- Clear, honest positioning for dropshippers hunting winning products and niches
- Established with a couple of thousand users and a real website behind it
- Covers reach as well as spend, which is the more raw and arguably more trustworthy number
Best for: Dropshippers who want spend data and are comfortable with a freemium upgrade path.
Where we differ
- AdLibSpy gates features behind a premium plan; everything we do is free with no tiers
- Their Chrome Web Store listing declares collection of personally identifiable information; ours declares authentication information only
- Our Ad Library flow makes no requests to our own servers at all — the spend badge is computed without contacting us
- They do not publish pricing, so you learn the cost after installing and creating an account
Permissions and what each extension collects
This is the difference we would look at first if we were choosing, and it is easy to check for yourself. Every Chrome Web Store listing carries a data disclosure the developer is required to complete, and it is visible before you install.
AdLibSpy's listing declares that it handles personally identifiable information and website content. Ours declares authentication information and nothing else. That difference is not academic: an extension running on a page you visit can see what is on it, and the disclosure is your only signal about what leaves your browser.
We also removed the last reason for our extension to contact us at all. Earlier in 2026 our own extension computed a browser fingerprint and registered it with our backend on install — a leftover from a licensing check. Since nothing is gated any more, that call is gone. The Ad Library flow now makes zero requests to our servers, which is a claim you can verify by opening your browser's network tab while you scroll.
Unpublished pricing is a real cost
AdLibSpy offers a free version with limited features and a premium plan for the rest. What the premium plan costs is not published on their site, and their FAQ mentions the upgrade without a figure.
This is common in the extension category and it is worth naming as a downside rather than a neutral fact. Unpublished pricing means you cannot evaluate the tool against your budget until you have installed it, created an account and hit whatever limit triggers the upsell. For a product that takes two minutes to try, that is a small cost — but it is a cost, and it makes an honest comparison harder for everyone.
Our position is simpler because there is nothing to disclose: the spend badge is free, there are no tiers, and there is no account. When we do build a paid layer — spend history, alerts, exports — the price will be on the site before anyone installs anything.
Where the numbers come from, for both of us
AdLibSpy describes uncovering spend and reach for all EU ads, which is the correct description of what this data is. The Digital Services Act requires Meta to publish an ad repository covering advertising delivered to European users, including how many people each ad reached.
Neither tool has privileged access. Both read that public figure and apply a model to convert reach into money. If the two extensions show different numbers for the same ad, the difference is in the CPM assumption, not in the underlying data. Anyone claiming a proprietary data advantage here is describing a model, not a source.
The practical consequence is that you should not pick between these tools on claimed accuracy. Pick on price, on permissions, and on which presentation you find easier to read while scrolling a page of fifty ads.
Ratings and what they tell you
AdLibSpy sits at 3.7 out of 5 from 9 ratings on the Chrome Web Store. That is a small sample and worth reading rather than counting — in this category the recurring complaint across every product is the same, that an extension stopped rendering after Meta changed its page structure.
This is a genuine category-wide risk and not a criticism of any one tool. Every extension here works by reading Meta's markup, and Meta changes it without notice. When that happens, tools break until each developer ships a fix. Several listings in the category carry notes telling users to restart their browser after an update, which is the polite version of the same problem.
When choosing, update recency is a more useful signal than either rating or install count. An extension updated in the last month is being maintained; one untouched for a year will eventually stop working, whatever its rating says.
A worked example: reading one advertiser properly
Take a competitor you already know — a brand in your category running paid social in Europe. Open their page in the Meta Ad Library and you will typically see somewhere between twenty and two hundred live creatives, presented in no meaningful order.
Without spend data your options are poor. You can read start dates, which tells you what has survived, or you can judge the creatives on how they look, which tells you about the designer rather than the campaign. Most competitive analysis in this category stops here, which is why so much of it is guesswork dressed up as insight.
With a spend badge on each card the structure appears immediately. Usually two or three creatives carry the overwhelming majority of the budget and everything else is a long tail of tests. Those two or three are the campaign — the hooks, the offers and the formats the brand has actually validated with money. That is the set worth studying in detail, and it is a fraction of what is on the page.
Both AdLibSpy and our extension get you to that view, which is why we keep saying they are the same product in the ways that matter. Choose on price and permissions rather than on capability, because on capability there is very little in it.
AdLibSpy vs CompetitionAds
| AdLibSpy | CompetitionAds | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free tier + paid upgrade (unpublished) | Free, no tiers |
| Account required | Yes for full features | No |
| EU ad spend estimate | Yes | Yes |
| Reach shown | Yes | Yes |
| Data collected (per CWS disclosure) | PII + website content | Authentication info only |
| Requests to vendor servers while browsing | Not disclosed | None |
| Chrome Web Store rating | 3.7 (9 ratings) | New listing |
When you should not use us
If AdLibSpy's premium tier turns out to include sorting, exports or saved research and you need those, take it — we have none of that yet. Our advantage is price and data handling, not feature depth.
Trying both
There is nothing to migrate. Install ours alongside theirs, compare the figures on the same advertiser, and keep whichever presentation you prefer. Running both at once can produce overlapping badges on the same ad card, so disable one while you evaluate the other.
The honest verdict
Two extensions doing the same job from the same data. The practical differences are that we do not gate anything behind a plan, we publish what we collect, and our Ad Library flow does not talk to our servers. Try both — it costs you two minutes.
One thing that applies to every tool in this category, ours included: estimated ad spend only exists for ads Meta delivers to the European Union, because that is the only place it publishes reach data. Any product implying it knows what a US-only advertiser spends is modelling, not measuring.
See estimated ad spend on every ad in the Meta Ad Library
Our free Chrome extension reads the EU transparency data Meta already publishes and puts a budget figure on each ad card. No account, no card, no trial clock.
Add to Chrome — free↗Frequently asked questions
Is AdLibSpy free?
There is a free version with limited features and a premium plan for the rest. Their site does not publish what the premium plan costs, so you find out after installing and creating an account.
What is the difference between AdLibSpy and CompetitionAds?
Both put an EU ad spend estimate on ads in the Meta Ad Library, reading the same public transparency data. The differences are commercial and technical: we are free with no tiers and no account, and our Ad Library flow makes no requests to our own servers. Their Chrome Web Store listing discloses collection of personally identifiable information; ours discloses authentication information only.
Which one is more accurate?
Neither has better data, because there is only one source — the reach figure Meta publishes. Differences in the displayed number come down to the CPM assumptions each tool applies. Both should be treated as directional rather than exact.
Why does an extension need personally identifiable information?
We cannot answer for another developer's implementation, and the disclosure does not explain the purpose. What we can say is that showing a spend badge on a public page does not require it — ours does the same job while declaring authentication information only, and contacting our servers not at all during normal use.
Do either of them work on US ads?
No. Meta publishes reach data only for ads delivered to European Union audiences, because that is what the Digital Services Act requires. A campaign running solely in the US carries no such record, so neither tool can estimate its spend.
What happens when Meta changes the Ad Library?
Every extension in this category breaks until its developer ships a fix, because they all read Meta's page structure. This is worth factoring into your choice: check when each extension was last updated on its Chrome Web Store listing, since a maintained tool recovers quickly and an abandoned one never does.