How to Download Facebook Ads From Another Country
You download Facebook ads from another country by setting the Ad Library's country filter to that market and saving the ads you find, and no VPN, proxy, or local account is required. The Meta Ad Library is global by design and serves the same worldwide data to everyone.
The interesting part is not the mechanics, which take a minute. It is that the same brand often runs completely different creative in different markets, and that gap is one of the more underused sources of tested angles.
How does the country filter work?
It filters by where ads are being served, not where you are.
Open facebook.com/ads/library, set the country selector to the market you want, choose "All ads" as the category, and search by advertiser or keyword. Results are the ads currently running in that country.
A few behaviours worth knowing:
- One country at a time. The filter is single-select, so a multi-market study means repeating the search per country and keeping the results separate.
- An ad can appear in several countries. A campaign targeting ten markets shows in all ten, which is useful for telling global creative apart from local creative.
- Your own location is irrelevant. The library does not localise results to your IP.
Why are results different by country?
Because disclosure rules differ, and so does the advertiser's strategy.
Disclosure. In the EU, the Digital Services Act requires more: inactive ads stay viewable for a period, and limited targeting and reach information appears. Everywhere else you get active ads only. The full comparison is in the Ad Library EU versus US.
Strategy. Brands localise. The offer changes, the price framing changes, the compliance language changes, and often the whole angle changes because what sells in one market does not in another.
| Market | What you typically get |
|---|---|
| EU countries | Active plus recently inactive ads, some targeting and reach data |
| US | Active ads; spend ranges for political and social-issue ads only |
| UK | Active ads, with strong advertiser coverage |
| Smaller markets | Active ads, thinner coverage of local businesses |
What is the actual barrier?
Language, not geography.
The Ad Library's keyword search is close to exact-match. Searching English terms in a German or Japanese market returns very little, because the ads are not written in English.
Two reliable ways round it:
- Search by advertiser. Page-level results are complete and language-independent. If you know who you are researching, this is always the better route.
- Search the local term. Translate the product noun, not the marketing phrase, and try two or three variants.
More on getting search to cooperate is in Facebook Ad Library search and Ad Library language settings.
How do you download what you find?
The library has no download button, so this is the part that needs a tool.
Right-clicking does not give you the original file. Video in particular is delivered in a way that produces either nothing or a low-quality capture, and screen recording loses quality and takes as long as the ad runs. The comparison is in screen recording versus downloading ads.
Our free Meta Ad Library downloader adds a download button to every ad inside the library, including ads in any country's view. It saves video in original HD without a watermark, images, and full carousels rather than only the first card. It is free, needs no account, and runs in your own browser, so nothing passes through our servers.
For a whole market, the bulk mode matters more than the single download. "Find all ads" scrolls an entire search, collects every running ad, and packs it into one ZIP, with duplicates collapsed. Every export includes a searchable swipe board and a CSV, with files named by advertiser and date. The method is described in bulk downloading from the Meta Ad Library.
What is worth studying in another market?
Four things, in rough order of value.
The angle that travelled. If a brand runs the same argument in six countries, that angle survived six separate tests. That is stronger evidence than one ad running a long time in one place.
The local adaptation. Where the creative diverges, something about the market demanded it. Price sensitivity, regulation, seasonality, or a different competitor set.
The market that is ahead. Some categories mature at different speeds in different countries. A format that is standard in one market and absent in yours is a tested idea you can be early on.
The compliance language. Health, finance, and supplements are policed differently by region. How a brand phrases a claim in a strict market is often a safer template than how they phrase it in a loose one.
Is this allowed?
Viewing and saving public ads for research is standard practice.
The Meta Ad Library is a public transparency product, and everything in it is published deliberately. Downloading ads to study them is ordinary competitive research, done by every agency in the category.
The line is what you do afterwards. Copy the angle, the structure, and the offer logic. Do not reuse someone else's footage, images, or copy in your own commercial advertising. That is a rights question rather than a platform question, and this is not legal advice.
FAQ
Do I need a VPN to see Facebook ads from another country?
No. The Meta Ad Library serves global data regardless of where you are. Set the country filter to the market you want and the results are the ads running there.
Can I download ads from any country's Ad Library?
Yes. The library works the same way in every market, and a downloader extension adds the same download button whichever country filter is selected.
Why do I get no results when searching a foreign market?
Almost always language. Keyword search is close to exact-match, so English terms return little in non-English markets. Search by the advertiser's Page name instead, which works across languages.
Why does a brand run different ads in different countries?
Localisation. Offers, prices, seasonality, regulation, and competitor sets all differ, so the angle that works in one market is often not the one that works in another.
Does the EU Ad Library show more than other countries?
Yes. Under the Digital Services Act, EU ads include recently inactive ads plus limited targeting and reach information, which no other region provides.
How do I keep foreign-market ads before they disappear?
Download them the day you find them. Outside the EU, an ad leaves the library permanently once it is paused, and regional campaigns are often short seasonal flights.
The Klipio extension adds a download button to every ad in the Meta Ad Library: one click per ad, or bulk-save a whole search as a ZIP with a searchable swipe file inside. Free, no sign-up.
Get the free extensionKlipio reads a competitor's live Meta ads, ranks them by how long they have been running — the honest signal that an ad is profitable — and turns the winning angle into on-brand creative for your own brand. 3-day free trial.
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