If you research competitor ads for a living, two tools come up in every conversation: Foreplay and Dibbin. From the outside they look alike. Both let you find ads, save them, and build a swipe file. Spend a week in each and the difference gets obvious fast.
Foreplay was built for media buyers who need a creative library. Its strength is volume. The discovery search pulls from a huge bank of ads across brands and niches, and the saving workflow is smooth. If your day is briefing designers and you want a deep well of references grouped by format, that is what Foreplay does best.
Dibbin was built around the question Foreplay does not really answer: how long has this ad been running, and is the brand putting more money behind it. A creative that has been live for 40 days and is scaling tells you something a screenshot never will. Dibbin sorts every competitor's ads by longevity and spend trend, so the proven winners rise to the top instead of getting buried under tests.
On price, Foreplay sits higher once you want the tracking tier, usually in the $49 to $99 a month range depending on the plan. Dibbin Pro is $39 a month for unlimited tracked brands with live spend and duration data, and there is a free tier for five brands so you can decide if the workflow fits before paying.
The honest take: if you are an agency briefing creative all day and want the biggest possible reference bank, Foreplay is a strong pick. If you want to know which competitor ads are actually working and catch the moment a rival starts scaling, that is the gap Dibbin fills. Plenty of teams run a basic Foreplay seat for inspiration and Dibbin for the signal.