The short answer
MagicBrief shut down on July 31, 2026 after Canva acquired it; its team now builds Canva Grow. Saved Inspire boards could not be bulk-exported, so most teams are rebuilding. For analytics, look at Canva Grow, Motion or Segwise; for the swipe file, Foreplay or Swipekit; for winning Meta ads with briefs, Ad Radar. The good news: 87% of the ads on our board were already live before the shutdown, so most winners you saved can be found again.
What happened to MagicBrief
MagicBrief closed on July 31, 2026 at 8 PM Eastern, according to the notice on magicbrief.com and its FAQ. Canva had acquired the company, and the team spent the past year building Canva Grow, a creative analytics and ad product inside Canva. Billing stopped at the announcement.
Three details from the FAQ matter if you were a customer:
- Insights reports (analytics from connected ad accounts) could be exported as CSV, but only from Overview reports.
- Inspire collections (saved public ads) could not be bulk-exported. The FAQ suggested writing down the brands and ads you liked.
- Your ad account data was never stored by MagicBrief. It is still in Meta Ads Manager and TikTok, ready to connect to another tool.
A 6-month Canva Business offer for MagicBrief customers required redeeming a code by September 30, 2026, so it has now expired.
MagicBrief did three jobs. Replace each one separately
Most MagicBrief users relied on one or two of its parts. Pick a replacement per part instead of looking for one tool that copies all of it.
| MagicBrief part | What it did | Alternatives (prices checked October 2026) |
|---|---|---|
| Inspire | Library and boards of saved public ads | Foreplay from $59/month; Swipekit from $26/month; Ad Radar boards from $49 every 4 weeks |
| Insights | Creative analytics on your ad accounts | Canva Grow (see Canva's plans); Motion from $750/month; Segwise from $499/month |
| Briefs | Breaking ads down and briefing creators and editors | Foreplay Briefs with storyboards; Ad Radar briefs from a winning ad; Atria AI concepts and scripts from $129/month billed annually |
For the Inspire library
Foreplay is the closest match for a team swipe file: Chrome extension, mobile app, boards, transcripts and a 200M+ community library, saving from Meta, TikTok, LinkedIn and YouTube Shorts. Swipekit does the capture job for less, with 5 seats on its $26 plan and API and MCP access included. Both keep a copy of every ad you save, which matters after losing a library once. More options in swipe file tools.
For Insights
Canva Grow is the official successor. MagicBrief's FAQ says it supports Meta and TikTok for both publishing and analytics, is available to all Canva users with usage tiers by plan, and is a new product rather than a port. Motion and Segwise are the established creative analytics tools; we compare them in Motion alternatives.
For briefs
Foreplay Briefs includes storyboards and AI script help. Atria generates concepts, scripts and copy from its research and your own data. Ad Radar turns any ad on its board into a written creative brief, in the app or through Claude with the MCP server. It is Meta only and doesn't connect to your ad account, so it covers the research-to-brief half, not analytics.
Which replacement fits your team
- Creative team that lived in Inspire and briefs: Foreplay. It has the widest capture tools and briefs with storyboards in one place, so the daily routine changes least.
- Small team on a budget: Swipekit for saving, plus a written brief template. Five seats for $26 a month covers most small brands.
- Performance team that used Insights: Canva Grow if you already work in Canva, Motion or Segwise if you want a dedicated analytics tool. Connect your ad accounts again; the data was never in MagicBrief.
- Agency or media buyer who wants proven ads, not a library: Ad Radar. Every ad on the board already has $50k or more in estimated spend, and the Agency plan adds 25 client workspaces and a client portal for $199 every 4 weeks. Meta only.
What none of them copies exactly
MagicBrief combined a saved-ad library, account analytics and storyboard briefs in one product. Atria comes closest to that mix, with research, analytics and AI generation, from $129 a month billed annually. Everyone else covers one or two of the three jobs. Our Atria alternatives page compares the all-in-one route with picking separate tools.
Rebuilding a lost swipe file
If your Inspire boards are gone, the useful question is whether the ads in them still exist. For proven winners, most do. Our board holds 2,443 active Meta ads with $50k or more in estimated spend, snapshot of October 9, 2026:
87%
of ads were already live before July 31, 2026
461
ads have been running since before January 1, 2026
120 days
median time live
Winners don't disappear quickly. If you saved an ad because it was scaling, there is a good chance it is still running and you can find it again in the Meta Ad Library or any of the tools above. Start with the brands you remember, search by landing domain as well as page name, and filter for ads live 90 days or more.
What a good brief pulls out of a winning ad
MagicBrief's strength was turning a saved ad into a brief. Whatever tool you move to, the brief should capture the same parts. Here are three top-tier ads from the board and what we would pull from each.
When did carry-on start doing all this?
- Est. spend
- $874K
- Days live
- 279
- Format
- Video, 65s
- Variants
- 3
Brief it as a gifted-product reaction: the husband discovering features one by one, each feature tied to a moment on a trip. The structure is the asset, not the luggage.
The product that I'm most proud of are the shampoo bars, specifically for hair growth, that have sold out nine times.
- Est. spend
- $603K
- Days live
- 391
- Format
- Video, 83s
The maker talking about the best seller, with a scarcity number in the first line. Over a year live. Brief the proof point ("sold out nine times") as the hook, then the founder story.
Here are the most recommended shoes for balance problems right now, and as a podiatrist, I have some thoughts.
- Est. spend
- $1.4M
- Days live
- 168
- Format
- Video, 161s
- Variants
- 4
An expert reviewing the well-known options before revealing the product. Brief the ranking format and the credential in the first line. Health claims inside are the advertiser's.
A brief template to replace what you lost
- Source ad and evidence. Brand, days live, variants, estimated spend if your tool has it.
- Hook, verbatim, plus its pattern. "Expert reviews the obvious options" is more useful to an editor than the exact words.
- Structure, beat by beat. Usually four to six beats for a 60-second ad.
- Proof used. Numbers, credentials, demos, reviews.
- Awareness level and landing page. Who it talks to and where it sends them. See funnel by awareness level.
- What to keep, what to change. Keep the structure, change the product, words and visuals.
Our full creative brief template expands each field, and reverse engineering a winning ad shows the breakdown step by step. Ad Radar can produce this brief from any ad on its board.
Figures marked as estimated spend come from Ad Radar's model of engagement on public Meta Ad Library ads. They are estimates, labeled as such, and are best used to rank ads against each other.