11 Best PPC Competitor Analysis Tools [Free & Paid]

PPC competitor analysis is is one of the most important steps in creating a winning PPC strategy.

It's by far the fastest way to figure out exactly what your competitors are doing, and then improve upon what they've tried & tested already.

Doing competitor PPC analysis manually is a tedious task, but thankfully there are a ton of excellent tools available to help you do this on autopilot and take your competitor intelligence to the next level. 

The 11 Best PPC Competitor Analysis Tools

We've put together what we believe to be the ultimate list of PPC competitor analysis tools. Each piece of software has its own merits, and we'll include some key information around pricing and usage to help better guide you to finding the right tool for you.

1. SEMRush - Best Overall ⭐️
2. Wask - Best Free Tool ⭐️
3. Adthena - Best Enterprise Tool ⭐️
4. Google Ads Auction Insights - Best for Accurate Data ⭐️
5. SpyFu - Best Budget Option ⭐️
6. iSpionage
7. Optmyzr
8. Ahrefs
9. SimilarWeb
10. MagicBrief - Best For Social PPC ⭐️
11. Meta’s Facebook Ad Library

👉 Keep reading for more information on each tool.

1) SEMRush - Best Overall

We're reluctantly placing SEMrush at the top spot in our list, purely because it's the most popular PPC competitor analysis tool in the World right now and it's hard to argue with their user experience.

The company IPO'd on the NYSE in 2021, and has continued improving dramatically eversince. 

Their key competitor analysis features include:

👉 Advertising Research 

• See exactly what ad-copy and landing pages your competitors are sending traffic to.
• See how much competitor's are budgeting for their PPC marketing efforts.
• Historical analysis to see how competitor's strategy has evolved over time

🔎 Keyword Research

• Instantly see what keywords your competitors are bidding on. 
• Get great ideas for new keywords that are uncompetitive. 

2) Wask.co - Best Free Tool

I'm putting Wask on the list because their PPC competitor tool is 100% free to use!

It gives you the following information on any competitor:

• Estimated ad spend last 12 months
• Paid traffic vs Organic traffic 
• Top spend PPC keywords

On their fully paid product, you can unlock more competitor analysis features like your competitor's target audiences as well.

3) Adthena - Best For Enterprise

Adthena is a lesser-known brand in the paid marketing space, but their product is 100% dedicated to competitor analysis & intellignece. 

I should preface this by saying that the solution can be very expensive. Marketers I spoke with reported that they're paying in excess of $3,000 for the tool, which makes it only viable for Enterprise brands.

Here are some of the advanced features they offer:

• PPC Brand monitoring - They'll show you exactly who is bidding on your branded keywords and give you the tools to take action. They're also show you situations where you don't need to waste budget on certain branded keywords.
• Smart Monitor - They use AI technology to detect when competitor's make major changes in their advertising or marketing strategies, including any price changes.
• Performance Max - Google notoriously gives you bad intelligence on what Performance Max is doing, whereas Adthena helps provide a more clear picture. That's a huge win for serious PPC professionals.
• Strategic insights - They'll give you some incredible data & feedback on exactly how others in your industry are using paid search and actually tie that back to your business objectives.

If money is no object, then this is still best tool on the market in our opinion.

4) Google Ads Auction Insights - Best For Accurate Data

Another 100% free tool one on the list - Google ads very own 'auction insight' tool.

🧠 You know the data is 100% accurate as well, because it's coming straight from Google ads! 

It lets you compare your performance with other advertisers who are participating in the same PPC auctions that you are.

They provide the following statistics:

• Impression share
• Overlap rate
• Outranking share
• Position above rate (Search campaigns only)
• Top of page rate (Search campaigns only)
• Absolute top of the page rate (Search campaigns only)

5) SpyFu - Best Budget Tool

SpyFu is 100% dedicated to only competitor research, primarily for Google Ads.

You can search for any domain and see every single keyword they've paid for via Google Ads, along with every historical ad they've served as well.

Additionally, you can figure out what PPC tests your competitors have run, which may save you some valuable budget.

It's very much all about spying on your competitors ads - hence the name! 

We're a big fan of the price point as well at only $39/mo.

6) iSpionage

iSpionage has been around for years now, and again the entire tool suite is built 100% around PPC competitor analysis and intelligence. 

We recently tested the platform and found the user-interface a little out of date, but for the lower pricing tiers it still offers good value for money.

Here are the key highlights:

• Automated monitoring - You can get automated updates as soon as your competitor launches new ads or starts bidding on new keywords. We love this feature!
• Competitor intelligence - Get comprehensive data on exactly what your competition is doing with their PPC budget, keywords, landing pages and ad copy as well.

7) Optmyzr

Optmyzr is really a fully comprehensive PPC tool that doesn't just focus on competitor analysis (although that is one of their features)

We would recommend this primarily to agencies or very serious PPC teams who want some additional tools beyond simply competitor keyword research in order to get a deep dive into their PPC campaigns.

8) Ahrefs

Ahrefs started out primarily as an SEO tool, and has long been known as a backlink checker.

However, in recent years they have moved into paid ads and PPC analysis as well, given their awesome competitor intelligence platform.

Some key benefits of Ahrefs platform for PPC competitor analysis include:

• Easily find what keywords competitors are bidding on.
• See which active ads your competitors are running.
• Discover new keyword opportunities as well.

I must however mention that based on personal experience and testing, I found their paid ads data to be lacking compared to some of the other tools on the market.

For this reason, I would only advise using Ahrefs for PPC competitor analysis IF you're on a budget and perhaps sharing a tool internally with an SEO team as well.

9) SimilarWeb

Similarweb is a huge company that is 100% dedicated only to competitor analysis.

However, they also launched a product specifically for PPC analysis as well (which is included in the overall software suite)

Here are the key benefits:

• Similarweb has a beautiful user experience, so we have to give it plus points for that! 
• Nice charts & graphs to compare your ad spend vs. key competitors and trends over time.
• Revealing specific landing pages that your competitors are using on PPC campaigns and also revealing what % of spend is being allocated to each of them.
• Identifies the specific high performing ads from your competitors.

10) MagicBrief - Best For Social PPC

MagicBrief is my absolute favorite tool for competitor PPC analysis for social media ads.

I use it almost every single day for advert inspiration and to generate briefs for our creative team.

Here are the key use cases and benefits:

• Reveals all of your competitor's ads being used on Facebook & Instagram.
• You can use this data to discover exactly which ads are performing well for your competitors!
• You can even use this to help inspire PPC on other platforms, because it will show you what types of offers & call outs your competitors are using.
• Very visual platform, which is a welcomed change from other PPC tools (which are stuffed full of text and charts).

❤️ At $29/mo I honestly don't think you can go wrong with this platform. And even if you're only focused on using search platforms like Bing ads and Google ads, I truly believe this can give you benefits in terms of seeing exactly what types of creative ads that hugely successful brands are putting out there, not necessarily just your direct competitors.

As marketers we're always looking for an extra edge - And this is a tool that really can help with that!

11) Facebook Ad Library

I love the Meta (Facebook) lets you gain full visibility to every single advertiser's creative database!

This is 100% free to use, and because this is coming straight from Meta, the data is 100% accurate and has more data that any independent tool.

We use this literally all the time to spy on our competitors - Because the vast majority of competitors are running Facebook ads alongside standard Google PPC ads. 

We can see what remarketing campaigns they're using, and the type of ad copy they're using as well.

It's an essential competitor analysis tool for any PPC marketer, regardless of what platform you focus on.

Summary

Regularly conducting competitor analysis is one of the most critical elements of any PPC marketing strategy.

After all, your competitors are likely spending thousands of dollars per month on adverts - Wouldn't you want to know exactly where that money is going and what PPC strategies are proving successful for them?

Of course, all of this is still time consuming data to analyze and act upon no matter how much you pay for an external tool...

If you're looking for a fully managed PPC service, we're here to help you! So drop us a line and let's discuss your strategy and competitive landscape.

Here’re some other PPC tools you may want to consider:

• PPC Brand Monitoring Tools
• Best PPC Software
• PPC Reporting Tools
• Marketing Mix Modeling Tools