6 Top Minea Alternatives & Competitors (Free/Paid)

Minea is an ad spy and product discovery tool that tracks trending TikTok, Facebook, and Pinterest product ads.

Minea has an extensive ad library across multiple social media platforms. You can search the ads based on keywords and sort through the ad database using quick queries like:

• Weekly winners
• Best of the month
• Season cash machine

You can also use Minea to analyze product placements on social media, connect with influencers to promote products, and track competitor ecommerce sites.

The primary way to find products on Minea is through the ad spy feature.

But if you’re looking for a different approach to finding high-potential DTC products, we have six alternatives that could suit you better.

1. Exploding Topics

Exploding Topics is a trend-spotting and product research tool that provides insights into what people are searching for today.

We scan millions of data points across the internet to see which products are generating consumer interest. These signals allow us to spot under-the-radar products before they explode, allowing you to beat your competitors to the punch.

You can use Exploding Topics Pro to:

• Discover trending products 6-18 months before they take off
• Find topics in your niche that are growing in demand
• Locate competitors
• Get product data like price, revenue, review, etc.

If you decided to use Exploding Topics Pro to find products instead of Minea, you could have spotted Tranexamic Acid Serum in November 2020. We identified this skincare product about six months before it took off.

Because Minea analyzes social media ads, it’s limited to only identifying products that competitors are already selling. Exploding Topics does the opposite.

With Exploding Topics, you can find products before loads of competitors are running ads for them.

That means you can be one of the first sellers in the space, which can help keep your advertising costs down and profits up.

If you were just getting started as an Exploding Topics Pro user, here’s how to find your own potential products to sell.

First, you can start in the trends dashboard and filter through relevant product categories.

Specifically, keep an eye out for products that display steady upward growth. Here's an example:

As you find new product ideas, you can click the “Track Topic” button to store them all together in a project. Here’s an example of how I am tracking my pet topics with the project feature.

So if new product discovery is a top priority and you don’t want to rely solely on social media ads, Exploding Topics is, in many ways, an ideal Minea alternative.

Limitations

While Exploding Topics is great at finding emerging consumer and product trends, it does not have an ad spy or competitor research function. You also won’t be able to track ecommerce stores inside the platform directly.

Pricing

You can get started with Exploding Topics Pro for just $1 when signing up for the 7-day trial. There are also three pricing tiers:

• Entrepreneur: $39/mo billed annually
• Investor: $99/mo billed annually
• Business: $249/mo billed annually

2. Sell The Trend

Sell The Trend is an AI-powered dropshipping platform and product research tool.

The Sell The Trend product discovery feature stores data on 7 million products in 83 different niches. You can use this platform to choose a product, create product pages, and generate new product ads.

You can also use Sell The Trend to spy on competitors' ads. Like Minea, there is a TikTok ads discovery tool where you can locate high-performing ads and trending products.

The NEXUS Explorer is the most impressive Sell The Trend feature. With this tool, you can track a product and pull data like:

• Profit margin
• Product cost
• Resell price
• Number of stores selling it (AliExpress & Shopify)
• Total monthly orders
• Last added
• First added

Sell The Trend is perfect for less experienced sellers searching for a full suite of dropshipping tools to manage their new store.

What does Sell The Trend do?

• Adds a new product to your store with one click
• Provides an in-depth database of over 1,000 suppliers
• Automates the dropshipping order fulfillment
• Analyzes the performance of Shopify products
• Spies on competitor stores and ads
• Has a full suite of marketing and ad creation tools for social media

Limitations

The database has so many products to sort through, so it can take time to pick ones trending up. If product research is your primary goal, you can get some good ideas here. But it can be overwhelming if you don’t need the extensive AI features that help streamline your store management.

Pricing

You can sign up for a 7-day free trial to test the tool's viability. And you’ll save big if you purchase one of the annual plans instead of a monthly one. The two pricing tiers are:

• Essential: $39.97/mo billed monthly or $32.97/mo billed annually
• Pro: $99.97/mo billed monthly or $79.97/mo billed annually

3. Dropship.io

Dropship.io is another product research and competitor spy tool for e-commerce businesses. The platform’s database contains millions of products for sellers to choose from.

Dropship gets its data from social media platforms like Facebook and ecommerce platforms like Shopify. You find products on Dropship by:

• Using advanced smart filters in the product database
• Browsing the top-performing products database
• Performing competitor research to analyze existing product listings
• Digging through the top-performing stores (updated daily) to spot new trends

Once you find a product, you can use the database to get more details like:

• Monthly Revenue
• Sale price
• Profitability
• Total sales
• Product category

Dropship is extremely useful for spying on competitors running Facebook ads. Plus, you can use other free tools to calculate product and advert financials, like:

• CPA Calculator
• BEROAS Calculator
• Numbers Breakdown
• ROAS Calculator

What does Dropship.io do?

• Handpicks 40 top-performing products each week
• Provides targetable Facebook interests for niche discovery
• Spies on competitor stores, products, and sales data
• Finds successful competitors already selling your product

Limitations

Dropship is excellent for tracking other stores, finding products, and monitoring competitor Facebook ads. However, the tool does not track other social media platforms like TikTok, and some of the features are overkill if you just need a basic product discovery tool.

Pricing

• Basic: $19/mo billed monthly or $29/mo billed annually
• Standard: $29/mo billed monthly or $49/mo billed annually
• Premium: $49/mo billed monthly or $79/mo billed annually

4. Peeksta

Peeksta is a product research, ad spy, and competitor research tool.

All Peeksta users get access to the Winners tool. This is where the Peeksta team curates a list of winning products daily. You can sort through the winners by price, keyword, and niche to find a relevant option for your store.

Peeksta also has multiple content creation tools for ads, landing pages, and product listings. This includes:

• AI content generator to create product descriptions
• AI ad thumbnail generator
• Video ad generator
• Facebook audience builder

The product explorer tool is confusing and doesn't provide much help when researching new products. But if you want to use social media platforms like TikTok, Pinterest, and Facebook to spy on ads and get product ideas, Peeksta is a suitable solution.

What does Peeksta do?

• Provides comprehensive ecommerce store research and analysis
• Gives in-depth PPC insights to improve ad campaigns
• Tracks competitor stores and sales
• Finds and tracks trending TikTok and Facebook products

Limitations

Peeksta is narrowly used as an ad spy and competitor tracking tool. It doesn't have a reliable product database tool where you can sort through trending products and pick a winner.

Pricing

• Starter: $19.99/mo
• Advanced: $49.99/mo
• Premium: $99.99/mo

5. Dropship Spy

Dropship Spy is another dropshipping product research tool. This tool is best for beginners looking to find the hottest products.

Shopify and Amazon sellers can connect their stores and automatically import products they find. The platform gives you direct access to suppliers on AliExpress and lets you perform research on Facebook Audiences. You can also find influencers to partner with in your niche.

When using the product research feature, you can find and sort products by:

• Product category
• Niche
• Profit margin
• Average likes per day
• Average comments per day

This is a more complete dropshipping and ecommerce tool. If you’re looking for a way to import products into your store and set up social media ads quickly, Dropship Spy’s suite of features is an attractive option.

What does Dropship Spy do?

• Tracks a product’s AliExpress sales volumes
• Connects product sellers with Instagram influencers in their niche
• Performs product research with advanced filtering
• Find Amazon product ranking and sales data
• Spy on competitor traffic

Limitations

Dropship Spy, while powerful, is more geared toward dropshipping. If you're looking for broader market trends or want to make or stock your own products, you’ll need a more comprehensive tool to do so.

Pricing

• Monthly Plan: $39/mo
• Yearly Plan: $119 for the year

6. Thieve

Thieve is another useful ecommerce product research tool. After signing up, you'll have thousands of curated products with in-depth insights at your disposal.

The best way to find product ideas with Thieve is to use the Swipes tool. It’s “Tinder for product discovery.” Swipe right or left on trending products, and they get stored for you to review later.

These trending products are hand-picked by the Thieve team. After you see a product you like, you can click on the product info page and see more information like:

• Product price
• AliExpress ratings
• Product description
• Supplier assets
• Suggested product tags
• Related products

You can also use Thieve to find trending niches on AliExpress. Thieve creates detailed reports on these niches that include data points like:

• Product category
• Facebook audience size
• Niche influencers
• Audience challenges
• Keywords
• Competition

If sourcing products directly from AliExpress is your goal, then Thieve is the best tool to do it. You can start browsing the product selection for free and get started with a 14-day free trial.

What does Thieve do?

• Displays trending products and niches
• Provides a database with millions of AliExpress sellers
• Generates product descriptions and images
• Reverse searches images and product pages to find products on AliExpress

Limitations

Thieve can only recommend products available on AliExpress. So if you have ambitions to create and source products on your own, Thieve won’t be much help. But the Chrome Extension is useful for locating products you’ll see during the research phase.

Pricing

• Dropship: $15/mo
• Pro: $49/mo

Conclusion

Most ad spy and product research tools like Minea are great for finding existing products that are already trending or being sold at a high rate by competitors. This can work, but it’s much more difficult to find winning product ideas consistently.

If you’re looking to get in early, find products before they become saturated, and avoid competing with competitors on price and ad spend, then you’ll want to find a tool that analyzes trends a little differently.

And this is exactly what Exploding Topics does. Pro users can find trending product ideas, discover new niches, and spot winners up to 18 months before they become mainstream.