Atria vs Foreplay: Grade Your Ads or Study Everyone Else's

The short answer: consider Atria if your Meta or TikTok account already spends and the open question is which of your own ads works and what to make next: it grades every ad, writes briefs through an AI assistant, starts on a free plan with no card, and Core costs $159 a month on monthly billing during its current promotion (Atria pricing). Consider Foreplay if the bottleneck is inspiration: a shared library of saved ads, a search across more than 200 million, and tracking of rivals' Meta ads, from $59 a month for one user or $175 for five with competitor tracking (Foreplay pricing). Both checked on 26 October 2026. Choose Atria if your job is learning from your own results; choose Foreplay if your job is learning from the market.

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These two are not usually searched against each other. They are on this page because each is the nearest documented alternative to the other: both sell ad research to performance creative teams, both connect to AI assistants, and each has added a little of the other's job. Atria has an inspiration library; Foreplay has analytics on your own ads.

Before you start either:

1. Price a year for your team. For example, a team of six on annual billing pays Atria Core 12 x $129 + 12 x $20 = $1,788, since Core includes five seats and each extra is $20 a month, and Foreplay Workflow 12 x $149 + 12 x $20 = $2,028, with five users included and $20 per extra (Atria pricing, Foreplay pricing).
2. Start from what you already hold. If you have an ad account with three months of spend, Atria has something to grade on day one. If you have a folder of competitor screenshots and a list of brands someone checks by hand, that list is Foreplay's starting point.
3. Count briefs, not saves. Over a month, count the creative briefs that cite a graded ad or a saved one, and how many became live tests.

What each one is built around

From Atria's pricing, MCP and free plan pages and Foreplay's pricing and MCP pages, read on 26 October 2026.

The differences that matter

Inside out, or outside in

Atria starts with your account. Its Radar feature grades each ad from the last 30 days on hook, retention, click-through and conversion against a goal you set, then writes new angles, hooks and, for a video, a brief, for the ads worth scaling (Radar). It works on Meta and TikTok accounts with conversion data. Foreplay starts with everyone else's ads. Swipe File holds what your team saves, Discovery searches the community library, and Spyder tracks and analyses competitors' advertising around the clock (Foreplay pricing). One tells you what to make next from your own data; the other shows what rivals already run.

What the plan meters

Atria meters ad spend analysed, ad accounts, followed brands and AI credits: Core covers $500K of monthly spend, five ad accounts and 4,000 credits, Plus $1M, ten accounts and 10,000 credits (pricing). Foreplay meters people and tracked brands, and says usage and ad spend are otherwise unlimited across its products (pricing). Heavy AI use costs more on Atria; a bigger team of researchers costs more on Foreplay.

Prices, checked on 26 October 2026

USD, from Atria pricing and Foreplay pricing. Atria's monthly prices carried a Black Friday Cyber Monday discount against the struck-through list price on 26 October 2026. Foreplay's annual plans get no refund on cancellation.

A competitor read through Foreplay's MCP, judged by a person

Foreplay's MCP server connects Claude, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Cursor and other assistants to its library at public.api.foreplay.co/mcp; for each ad it returns the creative, copy, CTA, landing page, transcript, status and how long it has run (Foreplay MCP). The job: before Thursday's creative meeting, ask the assistant to pull a rival's active ads, sort them by how long each has been running, and summarise the hooks, offers and landing pages of the ten oldest.

The human part is judgement. Running a long time suggests an ad is working for that rival, not that it will work for you, so the creative lead picks two angles worth testing, checks that any claim you borrow is one your product can make, and writes the brief. Atria's MCP does the same kind of search over its own library, and asks you to confirm before anything that would change data (Atria MCP).

Free first

Meta's own Ad Library shows any advertiser's active ads at no cost, which covers a one-off look at three rivals. Then open Atria's free plan on your own account; it needs no card (free plan article). Only if the manual Ad Library checks have become a weekly chore does Foreplay's tracking earn its fee.

Foreplay's trial takes a card at sign-up and becomes the trialled plan, charged, after seven days unless you cancel; its own FAQ offers a 14-day money-back guarantee after that first charge for people who forget (Foreplay pricing FAQ). The default is a paid Workflow seat on day eight, so cancel from Account Settings on day six unless the team is already using it.

Who should take which

Choose Atria if your job is finding out why some of your own Meta and TikTok ads win, and turning that into the next briefs with an AI assistant, starting on a free plan.

Choose Foreplay if your job is building a shared library of ads your team admires and watching what competitors run, with briefs built from those references.

The Atria entry and how to use Atria cover grading and tagging; the Foreplay entry and how to use Foreplay cover Spyder and briefs. Both feed the workflow in make and test AI ad variants.

FAQ

Can Foreplay analyse my own ads too?

Yes, through Lens, which reports on your own ad account: one brand on Workflow and ten on Agency, with extra brands at $50 each (Foreplay pricing).

Does Atria show competitors' ads?

Yes. Its Inspo library lets you follow other brands, 50 on Core and 100 on Plus, with AI insights on the followed brands from Plus up (Atria pricing).

Which one has a free plan?

Atria. Its free plan has no end date, connects one ad account and includes 30 MCP calls once; Foreplay offers a 7-day trial instead (Atria free plan, Foreplay pricing, checked on 26 October 2026).