TikTok Ad Library: How to Find Competitor Ads (2026)

TikTok's ad library is the Commercial Content Library at library.tiktok.com/ads: a free, no-login archive of ads shown in Europe that you search by advertiser name. It won't show US-only ads or spend, but it's the most reliable public record of what a competitor is running on TikTok right now.

(Proxy publishes this blog and sells a tool that reads this library. Facts about TikTok's tools were checked October 2026, with sources linked inline.)

What is the TikTok ad library?

The TikTok ad library is TikTok's Commercial Content Library, a public archive of paid ads delivered in Europe that anyone can browse without an account. TikTok launched it on July 20, 2023, according to TechCrunch's launch report, to meet the EU's Digital Services Act (DSA), which requires large platforms to keep a searchable ad repository.

Two facts shape every search you'll run:

• It's European data only. TikTok's own launch post reported that while anyone can access the library, only data from Europe is available. The scope is, according to AdMapix's 2026 guide, the EEA plus the UK and Switzerland, about 32 countries; some third-party tools list more, so treat the exact list as fuzzy.
• Ads stay up for a year after they stop. An ad stays accessible, according to TikTok's Commercial Content API page, while it runs and until one year after it was last shown to any user.

The library also holds branded content that creators disclose as paid, which is why TikTok calls it "commercial content" rather than just ads (according to Lindsey Gamble's launch write-up).

What does the TikTok ad library show for each ad?

Each ad in the TikTok ad library shows the creative, the advertiser, who paid for it, when it ran, and a bracketed estimate of how many people it reached. That's roughly what Meta shows for ads it delivers in the EU, and less than a spy tool's engagement dashboard.

Field	What you get	Why it matters
Creative	The video, plus the caption	See the hook and format
Advertiser and "paid for by"	Registered company name and the payer, sometimes an agency	Find the real legal entity
First and last shown dates	Date the ad started and was last seen	Spot long-runners and fresh tests
Reach	A range of unique users, not an exact count	Rough sense of scale
Targeting summary	Age bracket, gender, location, and interests where used	See who the ad is aimed at
Country breakdown	Where in Europe it was shown	Spot market launches

The reach and targeting detail come from the DSA rules. Data from AdMapix's field-by-field guide showed that reach is bracketed (for example 100K to 200K) rather than exact. What you won't find: spend or conversion data. No public ad library shows spend for commercial ads, TikTok's included.

How do you search the TikTok ad library for a competitor's ads?

You search the TikTok ad library by picking a country, typing the competitor's registered advertiser name, and setting a date range. The whole pass takes about five minutes once you know the right name.

Step 1: open the library and pick a region

Go to library.tiktok.com/ads. Set the country first. Leaving it on all regions, according to AdMapix's guide, blends delivery across countries and inflates the reach ranges, so pick the one market you actually compete in.

Step 2: search by advertiser name

Switch the search to advertiser and type the competitor's name. Here's the part that trips people up: TikTok indexes the registered legal name, not the consumer brand. Cursor's ads run under "Anysphere", the company that makes it. Duolingo's run under "Duolingo, Inc." If the brand name returns nothing, look up the parent company on its website footer or terms page and try that.

Step 3: set a date range

Pick a window, say the last 90 days.

Shorter windows are faster to read, and they keep a busy advertiser's newest tests from burying the older, proven ads. If a big advertiser returns a wall of ads, split the period into smaller windows so you don't miss the older ones.

Step 4: open the ads that matter

Click into an ad to see its reach range and targeting.

Then sort by last shown date. An ad last shown yesterday is almost certainly still live, and an ad that started months ago and is still showing is the one to study first.

Step 5: read the pattern, not the single ad

One ad tells you little. Fifty ads tell you what a brand is testing. Note which captions repeat and which ads have been running for 30 days or more. Long-running ads are the best free signal of a winner, because advertisers stop paying for ads that don't work.

We ran this on Duolingo on October 24, 2026. The first page returned 60 ads registered to Duolingo, Inc., every one first shown between October 1 and October 23, 2026, and all of them still showing on October 23. Those 60 ads used just 7 distinct captions, and the most common one, in Turkish, translates as "learn a language for free with the world's number one language app". That pattern likely means Duolingo is testing many video creatives against a small set of proven lines. Every caption on that page was in Turkish, which suggests a push aimed at Turkish-speaking audiences.

Why does my TikTok ad library search return nothing?

Usually because the name doesn't match what the advertiser registered. Searches match the registered name, and some tools treat it as case-sensitive, so "anysphere" and "Cursor" can miss where "Anysphere" hits. The other common reason is simpler: the brand isn't running ads in Europe right now. On October 24, 2026, a search for "Anysphere" returned zero ads, so a correct name is no guarantee of results.

Does the TikTok ad library show US ads?

No. The library only holds ads delivered in Europe, because it exists to satisfy EU law. A US-only campaign never appears, and there's no official US equivalent. Global brands that also advertise in Europe do show up, which is often enough to read their creative direction. Would TikTok ever build a US version without a law forcing it? Nothing so far suggests it.

How does the library compare to reading it through Proxy?

Both read the same European archive. The difference is where you work and how fast you get from search to answer.

Tool	Find a specific competitor?	Coverage	Engagement data	Cost
Commercial Content Library	Yes, by advertiser name	Europe only	No, reach range only	Free
Proxy (inside your AI assistant)	Yes, by exact advertiser name	Europe only	No, run dates and audience estimate where given	Free, 20 credits a day

How do you pull competitor TikTok ads into ChatGPT or Claude?

Connect an ad library MCP server such as Proxy and ask for the advertiser by its registered name. Proxy reads TikTok's European ad library, so the answer comes back inside the chat with run dates and captions, plus landing page and country targeting on request. Setup takes about two minutes on the install page, and the full walkthrough is in how to see competitor ads in ChatGPT and Claude.

A prompt that works:

• "Pull Duolingo, Inc.'s TikTok ads and tell me which captions they're testing."
• "Find Anysphere's TikTok ads, then transcribe the three longest-running videos."

The win over the browser is speed across platforms. You can ask for the same brand's Meta and Google ads in the same message, and the assistant reads them side by side. Between February and October 2026, Proxy returned about 179,000 live ads to marketers' AI assistants, and data from Proxy's own usage logs showed TikTok was 1.6% of them, because it launched last and covers Europe only.

Proxy's limits on TikTok are real, and you should know them before you rely on it:

• Exact, case-sensitive names only. Proxy searches TikTok by the registered advertiser name ("Anysphere", not "Cursor"). There's no keyword search on TikTok.
• No US-only ads. Same as the source library: if it didn't run in Europe, Proxy can't see it.
• A TikTok search can cost up to 5 credits when it pages through results, against 1 for most lookups. The free plan has 20 credits a day; Pro is $50/mo for 100 a day (pricing).

Where should you start?

Start in the free library. Look up two competitors by their legal names and sort by last shown date in your main European market. If you find yourself doing that every week, or wanting the same brands on Meta and Google too, that's when an assistant-based workflow pays off. For the other platforms, see how to use the Facebook Ad Library and how to see competitors' LinkedIn ads. The wider playbook lives in how to spy on competitors' ads.

One open question we can't settle for you: is Europe-only data good enough for a US-focused brand? For global advertisers, it usually shows the same creative direction. For a brand that only sells in the US, it shows nothing at all.