Free Ad Libraries Compared: Meta, Google, LinkedIn, TikTok

Every major ad platform now publishes a free library of the ads running on it. They are genuinely useful, and they are also four different tools with four different search boxes, four different rules for what stays visible, and four different gaps. This guide puts them side by side so you know which to open for which question.

(Proxy publishes this blog and sells a tool that reads these libraries. Library facts below were checked against our own guides and each platform's help pages in October 2026, and are linked from the guides.)

Which free ad libraries are there?

Four matter for competitor research.

• Meta Ad Library (Facebook, Instagram and Meta's other surfaces): facebook.com/ads/library
• Google Ads Transparency Center (Search, YouTube and Display): adstransparency.google.com
• LinkedIn Ad Library: linkedin.com/ad-library
• TikTok Commercial Content Library (ads delivered in Europe): library.tiktok.com/ads

All four are free, and none needs an account or login to browse.

How do the four compare?

	Meta	Google	LinkedIn	TikTok
Search by	Advertiser name, Page or keyword	Advertiser name or domain	Company name or keyword	Registered advertiser name
What stays visible	Active ads for ordinary advertisers	Verified advertisers' live ads with first and last shown dates	Ads since June 2023, kept one year after the last impression	Ads while they run and for one year after last shown
You see	Creative, copy, start date, platforms, landing page link	Creative, format, regions, run dates, verification	Creative, copy, format, advertiser and payer	Creative, advertiser and payer, dates, reach range, targeting summary
Region limits	Global library, with extra data for EU-delivered ads	Global	Targeting and impression data mainly for EU-served ads	Europe only
Spend and performance	Not shown for ordinary commercial ads	Not shown	Not shown	Not shown

Details on each are in our guides to the Facebook Ad Library, the Google Ads Transparency Center, LinkedIn ads and the TikTok ad library. The sections below are the short version.

Meta Ad Library: the deepest search

Meta's library is the one with a keyword search across every advertiser, which makes it the best place to ask "who is selling this kind of thing and what angle are they using." You see the creative, the copy, the start date, the platforms an ad runs on and the link out to the landing page. Meta shows spend and impression ranges only for political and social-issue ads, and for ordinary advertisers an ad mostly drops out once it stops running. Political ads stay for years. Ads delivered in the EU carry extra transparency data under the Digital Services Act.

Watch for imposter and regional Pages with the same name as the brand you want. Our Facebook Ad Library walkthrough covers the filters, and Instagram ads run through the same library.

Google Ads Transparency Center: search by advertiser, not by keyword

Google's center spans Search, YouTube and Display, and you look up an advertiser by name or domain. You cannot search for a phrase inside the ad copy the way you can on Meta. What you get is the creative, the format, the regions and the first and last shown dates. The run dates are the most useful field: a creative live for months is a decent hint that it is working. There is no spend, impressions or keyword targeting. See how to check competitors' Google ads.

LinkedIn Ad Library: thinner, but almost nobody looks

LinkedIn's library covers ads that ran after June 1, 2023 and keeps each ad for a year after its last impression. You can search by company or keyword. The impression ranges and targeting parameters (job function, seniority, industry) appear mainly for ads served in the EU. For everything else you mostly get the creative and the advertiser. It is still the only free view of a competitor's B2B messaging on LinkedIn. See how to see competitors' LinkedIn ads.

TikTok Commercial Content Library: Europe only, and the name has to match

TikTok built this library to meet EU transparency rules, so it holds ads shown in Europe and not US-only ads. You search by the advertiser's registered legal name, which is often not the consumer brand. A search for the brand can return nothing while the parent company's name works. In return you get reach ranges and a targeting summary for each ad, and ads stay available for a year after they last ran. See the TikTok ad library guide.

What none of the libraries give you

• Spend, CPM or conversion data for ordinary commercial ads. No library publishes it. Third-party tools that quote spend are estimating.
• One place to look. Each library has its own interface and its own way of finding an advertiser, and most show one ad at a time.
• History. Most libraries keep ads only while they run, plus a window of up to a year in some cases. If you want to see change over time, you have to look regularly and save what you find.

When an MCP server helps

For one competitor on one platform, open the library and look. It is free and it is enough.

The manual route stops scaling when you want several competitors across several platforms, or the same check every week. That is where an MCP server earns its place: you ask your AI assistant for a brand's ads and it reads the libraries for you. Proxy connects Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor or any MCP client to all four, with no API keys, and the free plan is 20 credits a day. Each call costs 1 credit.

Know the limits: Proxy returns the same public data the libraries show, so it has the same gaps (no spend), and TikTok coverage is the EU library searched by exact advertiser name. What it saves is the clicking, the tab juggling and the copying into a doc.

To set it up, pick your client: Claude, ChatGPT or Cursor. For the wider landscape see best ad library MCP servers and the pillar guide, how to spy on competitors' ads.

Related reading: Proxy vs AdLibrary.com, an ad app against an MCP in your chat.