SpyFu is built for digging into competitors' paid keywords and ad history. Should I Bid doesn't replace it there. It works before you set a keyword bid: it reads today's Google results page for each keyword, weighs it against your offer and returns Bid, Test or Skip. Its Competitors module shows the advertisers actually seen on the keywords you've analyzed.
| Should I Bid | SpyFu | |
|---|---|---|
| Multi-year ad history | ✗ No multi-year archive. Every observation is dated and the competitive gap covers the last 90 days, on a database that is still young. | ✓ Competitor ad history going back 10+ years. This is its strongest point. |
| Competitor keywords and ads across the market | ✗ Only shows ads seen on the Google pages read for analyzed keywords. It is not a market-wide index. | ✓ Lists your competitors' PPC keywords and ads. That is the core of the product. |
| Should you bid on this keyword, for your offer? | ✓ Reads today's SERP (ads and organic results), weighs it against your business and returns Bid, Test or Skip, with a score out of 100. | ~ Its Google Ads Advisor suggests keywords based on competitors' bids, with no verdict based on today's SERP and your offer. |
| From keyword to campaign | ✓ Vision suggests ideas from a product or a URL. Then come exclusion lists and a Google Ads-ready CSV export in exact match. | ✓ Google Ads Advisor, negative keyword recommendations and pre-built Google Ads campaigns (higher plans). |
| Rank tracking and SEO | ✗ No organic rank tracking, no backlinks, no technical SEO audit. | ✓ Rank tracking and reports, as part of research that covers SEO as well as PPC. |
| Pricing model | Credit-based: 1 credit = 1 keyword analyzed. Free analyses to try, no credit card. Browsing the Competitors module uses no credits. | Monthly or annual subscription, several plans, 30-day guarantee. |
Should I Bid answers a question you ask before spending: is this keyword worth a paid click, for what you sell? It reads today's Google results page, AI reads the pages that rank on it, then it returns a verdict per keyword. Its Competitors module adds the advertisers seen on your analyzed keywords and on your brand.
SpyFu is an SEO and PPC competitive intelligence tool. You use it to look up competitors' keywords and ads, go back through 10+ years of their ad history, track rankings and build reports. Its Google Ads Advisor suggests keywords based on competitors' bids, and it recommends negative keywords. Higher plans add pre-built Google Ads campaigns.
If your question is 'what are my competitors buying on Google Ads, and since when?', SpyFu is built for it. It lists a competitor's PPC keywords and ads and keeps an ad history of 10+ years. You can see how an advertiser's ads have changed over time, which helps when you write your own. It adds a Google Ads Advisor, which suggests keywords based on competitors' bids, and negative keyword recommendations.
Should I Bid doesn't have that depth. Its Competitors module runs on a shared database fed by its users' analyses, which is much younger and narrower. If multi-year history is what you need most, keep SpyFu. That's the honest answer.
Seeing a competitor bid on a keyword doesn't mean you should. They may sell something else, with different margins. They may be paying for clicks that never convert. SpyFu's Google Ads Advisor starts from competitors' bids: a good lead, but it tells you what others do, not what the click is worth for your offer. And today's results page isn't necessarily the one from two years ago.
As an illustration, take a Denver company that sells point-of-sale software for restaurants. A competitor buys 'restaurant pos system' and 'how to open a restaurant'. If the first search shows vendor ads, comparison pages and pricing pages, the searcher wants a product. If the second shows guides, checklists and courses, the searcher is still reading up, not buying. Copying the competitor on both would then mean paying for clicks with no buying intent.
That's the sorting Should I Bid's intent analysis does. For each keyword, it reads today's SERP, AI reads the pages that rank, and it weighs it all against what you sell and computes a score out of 100: intent fit (40%), buying stage (30%), competitive signal (15%) and the commercial signal of the page (15%), plus an alignment bonus of up to 15 points. At 70 or above, Bid. From 50 to 69, Test. Below 50, Skip. The AI does the reading, you make the call.
Every time Should I Bid reads a results page, it records the ads at the top and bottom: advertiser, position, copy, landing page, country and device. These records feed a shared, anonymous database that is refreshed each time a keyword is analyzed again. They are real ads seen on Google, not estimates. They aren't real-time either: every observation is dated. The module turns them into five views:
The module is included in every plan, browsing it uses no credits and it needs no connection to your Google Ads account. Its limit is clear: it only sees keywords already analyzed in the database. To learn everything a given competitor buys, a research tool like SpyFu goes further. Each view is detailed on the Competitors module page.
The two tools don't step on each other. Here is a workflow that holds up for a team building or reviewing a campaign. If you don't have a list yet, Vision, the keyword idea generator starts from a product or your website, sorts ideas (brand, generic, questions) and drops the ones already analyzed.
If it's the research tool itself you want to replace, Should I Bid isn't the right substitute. Here are the options worth a look, based on the vendors' own pages.
Semrush is the closest option. It's a suite that combines keyword research and volumes, a search intent label per keyword, SEO and Ads competitor analysis, backlinks, site audits and rank tracking. Its Advertising toolkit shows competitors' paid keywords and ads, and its Ads History report shows their ad history. Our Semrush alternative for Google Ads page covers the head-to-head.
Ahrefs is the reference for backlinks. It adds keyword research, site audits, rank tracking and 'Paid keywords' and 'Ads' reports on competitors. SE Ranking is an SEO suite that also covers PPC competitor research (paid keywords and ads), along with rank tracking, keyword research, site audits, backlinks and optional white-label reporting.
Finally, Google's Ads Transparency Center lets you search for an advertiser and see its ads served on Google Search and YouTube. It doesn't replace a research tool, but it quickly answers 'what ads is this competitor running?'.
Should I Bid doesn't do backlinks, organic rank tracking or technical SEO audits. It keeps no multi-year ad history and doesn't collect ads continuously: a keyword is only refreshed when it is analyzed again. It doesn't estimate your competitors' budgets or clicks either: in the Competitors module, the percentages count the keywords an advertiser was seen on, not its impressions.
What it does is keep you from paying for clicks with no buying intent, by reading the results page for you. To see where SpyFu stands among other tools, our Google Ads competitor analysis tools comparison scores seven of them, and Semrush and SpyFu come out on top, neck and neck. Plans are described on the pricing page, with free analyses to try, no credit card and no commitment.
Choose Should I Bid if you need to decide which keywords to buy before you spend, for your offer and on today's SERP, and want to see who already bids on your keywords and your brand.
Stick with SpyFu if your main need is research: competitors' keywords and ads, years of ad history, rank tracking and reports.
| Tool | Starting price | Details | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Should I Bid | Per credit (see Pricing page) | Per credit (1 credit = 1 keyword analyzed), free analyses to try, no credit card. Plans described on the Pricing page. | Source |
| SpyFu | from $39/mo ($29/mo billed annually) | “Basic” plan: $39 per month billed monthly, $29 per month billed annually. “Pro + AI”: $59 the first month, then $119 per month ($89 annually). 30-day guarantee. | Source |
| Semrush | from $139/mo ($117.33/mo billed annually) | Entry “SEO” plan: $139 per month billed monthly, $117.33 per month billed annually. 7-day trial, limited free plan. Separate “Advertising” toolkit: Base plan at $99 per month. | Source |
| Ahrefs | from $29/mo | Limited “Starter” plan at $29 per month, “Lite” plan at $129 per month. “Search intents” filter from the “Standard” plan ($249 per month). Free tier (Ahrefs Free) for your own site. | Source |
| SE Ranking | from $129/mo ($103.20/mo billed annually) | “Core” plan: $129 per month billed monthly, $103.20 per month billed annually. 14-day trial, no card. | Source |
Prices verified on . Public prices observed on the vendors’ websites on the date shown. They may have changed since: the source prevails.
It depends on what you're replacing. For researching competitors' keywords and ads, Semrush is the closest option: it combines SEO and Ads competitor analysis with ad history. For deciding which keywords to buy before you spend, Should I Bid answers a different question: it reads today's SERP and returns Bid, Test or Skip based on your offer. The two can work together.
They're built differently. SpyFu focuses on competitive intelligence and leads with 10+ years of ad history. Semrush is a broader suite: keywords and volumes, SEO and Ads competitor analysis, ad history, plus backlinks, site audits and rank tracking. If you only run paid search, SpyFu's focus is an advantage. Neither one gives you a bid verdict based on your offer.
Not with the same depth. Google offers two official sources: the Ads Transparency Center, where you search for an advertiser to see its ads, and the auction insights report in your Google Ads account, which compares your performance with the advertisers in the same auctions. At Should I Bid, free analyses let you try it with no credit card, and browsing the Competitors module uses no credits.
Not as a verdict for your business. SpyFu shows what your competitors do: their keywords, their ads, their history. Its Google Ads Advisor suggests keywords based on their bids, but it gives no verdict based on today's SERP and your offer. Should I Bid does that job keyword by keyword, with a score out of 100: Bid at 70 or above, Test from 50 to 69, Skip below 50.
No. Should I Bid records ads when it reads a results page to analyze a keyword. That keyword is refreshed each time it's analyzed again, by you or by another user, and every observation is dated. These are real ads seen on Google, not estimates, but the database is younger and narrower than SpyFu's history.