vs. paid ad spy tools

You probably don't need to pay $50+/month for this

BigSpy, AdSpy, Minea and the rest of that category are built for media buyers who need spend estimates, targeting inference, and creative-production tooling on top of the ad database — and for that, the subscription is a reasonable trade. But if what you actually want is to search real, running ad creative and copy across platforms, that's the part we give away for free, with no daily search cap and nothing held behind a paywall.