10 Product Research Tools to Help Spot Viral Products Before Anyone Else
With over 28 million eCommerce sites active in 2025, guessing what to sell is risky. This article breaks down 10 top product research tools to help you spot trending products, validate demand, and understand competitor strategies before investing time or ad spend.
Did you know there are 28 million eCommerce sites active worldwide in 2025?
Now, imagine making the mistake of going in blind and starting an eCommerce store without knowing if a product has any market demand.
Not only will you be wasting your time, but you’ll be pouring money into a product that will not be successful.
On top of that, 43% of the top eCommerce sites invest over $5,000 per month in social advertising. This means that if you’re not researching products and spying on competitor ads, you're going to be outspent and outperformed.
However, if you make use of these product research tools, you can validate products, spot trends early, and build successful eCommerce advertising strategies.
Read on to discover 10 of the most reliable product research tools to have in your stack.
Product research tools side-by-side
| Tool | Pricing | Best for | Best feature |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ecomhunt | $29/month | Beginners or budget-conscious dropshippers | Daily feed of fresh trending products |
| PipiAds | $49/month | TikTok sellers | Massive TikTok ad library (50M+ ads) |
| Minea | $49/month | Multi-platform sellers (TikTok, FB, IG, Pinterest) | 200M+ ad creatives across multiple platforms |
| Sell The Trend | $29.97/month | Sellers that need research + store setup | NEXUS AI engine + Instant AI Store builder |
| Dropship Spy | $10/month | Dropshippers validating product profitability | Engagement/virality scores + ready-to-use ad creatives |
| Pexda | $14.95/month | Sellers who need thorough audience targeting insights | Targeting data with demographics, interests, and behaviors |
| Peeksta | $29/month | Sellers tracking competitor ads and store sales | Real-time competitor ad alerts + store tracker |
| Winning Hunter | €49/month (~$57.50) | Sellers focused on competitor revenue and ad spend | Competitor ad spend and estimated revenue tracking |
| Thieve.co | $15/month | Sellers who need eCommerce trend data | Curated expert product lists + Google search trend data |
| Jungle Scout | $49/month | Amazon sellers | Opportunity Finder + Supplier Database |
1. Ecomhunt
Ecomhunt promises to help you find the top-selling products from across the internet.
For every winning product, you’ll see details about suppliers, engagement, product costs, sale price, and profit margins.
The list of products is updated daily by a team of eCommerce experts, so you always have something fresh to test.
What makes Ecomhunt even more useful is the live dashboard, where they update product trends in real time.
You can also track sales from different stores to see how a product performs over time.
And if AliExpress is your main marketplace, you’ll find the built-in virtual assistant, Ecomhunt Adam, handy for digging through product data.
Ecomhunt is a reliable option for product research, although it doesn’t offer much when it comes to ad spying.
Key features
- Daily feed of new trending products
- AliExpress performance stats (from 7 days up to unlimited, depending on plan)
- One-click import into your eCommerce store
- Access to supplier and product details
- Built-in virtual assistant (Adam) for AliExpress research
- On-demand dropshipping training and consulting on higher-tier plans
- Save and store your favorite Winning Products.
- Saturation inspector, which gauges how many stores are selling a product you’re interested in.
Pricing
- Free limited plan available
- Paid plans start at $29/month
- Beginner-friendly with a daily updated product feed
- Affordable entry-level option
- Includes educational resources and 1-on-1 consulting for paid plans
- Product import is simple and fast
- A handy Chrome extension that will make product research easier
- Filtering options are fairly basic
- Insights aren’t as thorough as other product research tools in the market
- Users report occasional software glitches
Best for: Beginners or budget-conscious dropshippers who want a steady flow of fresh products to test without overcomplicating things.
2. PiPiAds
PipiAds is more of an ad spy tool, but you can still get plenty of product information through it.
It’s mostly useful for TikTok since the platform has one of the largest ad libraries available.
With PipiAds, you can browse more than 50 million TikTok ads and access a curated list of winning products.
For each ad, you’ll see impressions, engagement, and how long the ad has been running.
You can also check trending ads for inspiration when creating your own campaigns.
Just like Ecomhunt, PipiAds also provides product information such as buying price and selling price.
Since it’s built for competitor tracking, it’s efficient at showing you your competitors’ advertising strategies. You can even view store traffic data, including monthly visitors, bounce rates, and customer countries.
For sellers who rely on TikTok, PipiAds is a good choice, though its support for Facebook is still limited.
For more affordable options, check out these Pipiads alternatives.
Key features
- Massive TikTok ad library (50M+ ads) with detailed filters
- Winning product finder with viral video data
- Audience insights by demographics, country, age, gender, and device
- TikTok Shop analytics for store traffic and conversions
- Store and advertiser tracking with monthly visitors, bounce rate, and audience breakdown
- Extra AI tools like image translator and text remover
Pricing
- Free trial with limited credits
- Paid plans start at $49/month
- One of the best tools for TikTok-focused research
- Granular filters make it easy to spot products with high engagement
- Combines ad insights with store traffic data
- A viral video database is useful for creative inspiration
- Only a good fit for TikTok (Facebook support is very limited)
- The free plan is extremely restrictive
- Customer support has been reported as slow
Best for: Sellers who rely heavily on TikTok and want in-depth data on ads and products there.
3. Minea
Minea is part ads spying platform and part product research tool.
On the platform, you can access more than 200 million ads while also getting product ideas based on what is trending.
Minea provides plenty of product information, including sales data from the last 90 days, the Meta ads a competitor store is running, engagement on those ads, supplier information, and details like buying price and shipping times.
With Minea, you’re not stuck with just Facebook or TikTok. You can research products across Pinterest and Instagram, too.
Finding similar products is also simple through their reverse image search.
If you decide to sell a particular product, Minea’s AI can generate visually engaging product images and product descriptions.
Overall, Minea is a reliable pick for sellers who want product research combined with broad ad insights across multiple platforms.
These 6 Minea alternatives are worth a look if you want more ads spying features.
Key features
- Multi-platform ad spy tool (TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest)
- Ads library with 200M+ creatives
- Advanced filters by country, engagement, and audience
- Competitor store tracking with sales data
- Influencer discovery tool with contact details
- One-click Shopify product imports
- AI product descriptions and image customization
- Supplier details included
Pricing
- Free plan with 200 credits
- Starter plan: $49/month for 1 user and 10,000 credits
- Covers multiple platforms, not just TikTok
- Combines product research with store integration
- Built-in influencer discovery
- Credit-based pricing means plans can get restrictive fast
- Some reviews mention occasional data inconsistencies
Best for: eCommerce sellers who want multi-platform insights plus store integration features like Shopify imports and influencer outreach.
4. Sell The Trend
Sell The Trend is a dropshipper’s dream. How so? Not only does it help you discover products, but it also helps you create your store from scratch in under a few minutes.
Like most product research tools, Sell The Trend has a winning products section, which is basically a list of all trending and rising products.
With each product, they include details like total sales, a number to show popularity, and profit margins.
They also have a TikTok Viral Ads Spy feature so you can see the hot products on TikTok, along with a niche finder if you are just starting out and don’t know which industry to begin with.
When you’ve found a product worth selling, Sell The Trend lets you transfer images, descriptions, and pricing in seconds.
If you don’t have a store yet, you can create an Instant AI Store right on the platform.
Sell The Trend takes it a step further by managing order fulfillment, inventory sync, and customer updates.
Key features
- NEXUS AI engine that spots hot products before they hit saturation
- Curated daily list of winning products with profit margin details
- Viral ads library for TikTok and Facebook
- AI-powered store builder + free hosting
- Verified supplier database with ratings for shipping speed and reliability
- One-click Shopify integration for product imports
- Order fulfillment and customer review syncing
- Built-in video ad and social content creator
- Tariff-Free USA Shipping built right into the platform
Pricing
- 14-day free trial
- Paid plans start at $29.97/month
- Covers the entire workflow: product research, suppliers, store setup, and AI-generated ads
- Saves time with automation for fulfillment and reviews
- NEXUS AI helps sellers catch trends early
- Easy Shopify integration and store builder
- Pretty overwhelming if you only need product research
- The store builder may duplicate what you already use elsewhere
Best for: Sellers who want an all-in-one platform that takes them from product discovery to a fully functional store without juggling multiple tools.
5. Dropship Spy
Dropship Spy helps you keep up with viral trends, spy on winning products, and automate much of your research.
The platform gives you detailed insights into trending products and ads so you can make informed decisions before adding anything to your store.
You can even save ads and products you like, and they’ll appear neatly in your own dashboard for easy tracking.
One thing you’ll notice quickly is the level of detail. Each product comes with engagement scores and virality ratings to help you gauge how well it is performing. You can also view the buying price, supplier details, and even user ratings to validate quality.
Dropship Spy also packs in a suite of helpful AI tools.
You’ll find tools like an AliExpress product finder, a product description generator, a TikTok script generator, and even a Facebook ad copy tool.
Most impressive of all is the AI template generator that creates product-filled eCommerce stores for Shopify, WooCommerce, Wix, or even plain HTML.
Key features
- Daily engagement, views, and interaction tracking
- Pre-filled eCommerce stores (Shopify, WooCommerce, Wix, HTML)
- Ready-to-use video ads (footage and slideshows)
- Historical sales, profit data, and weekly live sales graphs
- Pre-built Facebook ad audiences
- Unlimited AI Content Generation
- Ready-to-use video ads for any platform
Pricing
- 3-day free trial
- $10.00/month is the cheapest plan
- Tons of free tools like ROAS data and profit margin calculators
- Very detailed insights for products, ads, engagement, etc
- Wide range of built-in AI tools for content, ad copy, and scripts
- Ready-to-use video ads and store templates save setup time
- Users have reported the platform as slow and buggy
- Customer service is also not reliable, according to TrustPilot reviews
Best for: Dropshippers who want product ideas and want to confirm those products are already proven to sell and have marketing material they can deploy immediately.
6. Pexda
Like almost every other product research tool, Pexda provides a fresh feed of new winning products every day, along with Facebook ad examples so you can see how they’re being promoted in the market.
For each product, you get data on cost, selling price, estimated profit margin, and CPA.
There’s also segment data that helps you understand where a product fits, plus filters that let you sort ads by reactions, shares, comments, or dates.
Pexda’s Facebook audience targeting insights go beyond surface-level demographics. You also get interests and behaviors that help when creating Facebook campaigns.
To make sourcing easier, Pexda links directly to AliExpress suppliers with shipping details.
The platform also provides reports from Amazon and eBay to give more context around performance.
Key features
- Daily list of new winning products
- Facebook ad examples connected to each product
- Market segment data included with every listing
- Sort ads by reactions, shares, comments, or dates
- Product details: cost, selling price, profit margin, CPA
- Direct supplier links with shipping details
- Targeting insights covering demographics, interests, and behaviors
- Sales reports from AliExpress, Amazon, and eBay
Pricing
- No free plan, but rising product lists are visible without signing up
- Paid plans begin at $14.95 per month
- Chrome extension for quick Facebook ad spying
- Clean and easy-to-use interface
- Detailed targeting data down to interests and behaviors
- Real-time product and ad data
- More affordable than most alternatives
- No learning resources for beginners
- The product library is smaller than other spy tools
- Limited product import options
Best for: Dropshippers who want trending product ideas and detailed targeting data to launch campaigns quickly.
7. Peeksta
Peeksta is a spy tool for Facebook ads.
It zeros in on tracking competitors and finding their best-performing ads, and each time they change their strategy, Peeksta notifies you in real time.
Peeksta also curates the latest trends and ads in your niche to give you inspiration. While Facebook is their main domain, Peeksta also covers TikTok ads.
Aside from spying, Peeksta gives you access to store data so you can find the best-selling products in any store and the regions where those sales are coming from.
On the paid plan, you can generate up to 50 product pages using AI and connect at least one Shopify store.
Peeksta refreshes product recommendations daily.
Key features
- Facebook and TikTok ads library updated daily
- Real-time competitor ad alerts
- Store tracker with estimated daily sales and revenue
- AI-generated product pages and landing pages
- Video ad generator
- Shopify integration for direct product imports
Pricing
- Free 1-day trial
- Paid plans start at $29/month
- Affordable entry price
- Helps with both product discovery and store setup
- Real-time revenue and ad spend insights
- Unlimited ad tracking in the Pro plan
- Limited mainly to TikTok and Facebook
- Some users find the interface too basic compared to other product research tools
Best for: eCommerce sellers that want to track competitors' Facebook ads and store sales
8. Winning Hunter
What we love most about Winning Hunter is the real-time data on ad spend.
Not only can you see how much competitors are spending, but you also get a view of how well those ads performed and the estimated revenue they generated.
This visibility gives you a clearer picture of which campaigns are profitable, rather than just popular.
The platform also comes with detailed filters for searching through the Facebook ads library, so you can dig into campaigns by spend, engagement, or date.
Beyond ads, Winning Hunter lets you see a store’s top-performing products alongside estimated sales revenue.
When you’re ready to test products yourself, you can import them into your store with no limits.
If you’re after eCommerce marketing tools, these Winning Hunter alternatives cover product research and marketing.
Key features
- TikTok and Facebook ad database with spend and revenue metrics
- Competitor sales tracker with estimated revenue and ROI
- Filtering by ad spend, publishing date, and engagement
- Unlimited product imports
- AI-powered competitor search so you can see if a product is saturated or not
- Store tracking for campaign scaling and ad activity
Pricing
- 3-day free trial
- €49/ Month (approx. $57.50) for the pro version
- Lets you see the money behind the ads (spend and revenue)
- Unlimited product imports
- Real-time tracking helps spot competitor moves quickly
- Only works with TikTok and Facebook
- Data accuracy isn’t always perfect
- Lacks creative automation tools and cross-platform coverage
Best for: Dropshippers and sellers who care less about creative libraries and more about competitor revenue and Facebook ad spend.
9. Thieve.co
Thieve.co is exactly what the name suggests.
It curates a daily updated list of viral and rising products, all handpicked by eCommerce experts.
You can also search across more than 200,000 dropshipping stores and rank them by sales or traffic to find top performers in any niche.
On top of that, Thieve.co pulls in Google Search data for hundreds of thousands of eCommerce-related terms.
They also publish curated lists of trending and evergreen niches, complete with in-depth analysis from their team.
When you find a product worth adding to your store, Thieve.co provides high-quality supplier images ready for use.
Thieve.co is more of a one-stop shop, since supplier information is built into the platform.
Key features
- Supplier finder with access to millions of AliExpress suppliers
- AI product content generator (currently in beta)
- Reverse image search to locate related products
- Curated list of winning products from eCommerce experts
- Store data, including sales performance
- Product discovery organized by niche
- Swipe tool for quick product validation
- Audience insights for different niches
Pricing
- Free 14-day trial
- Basic plan starts at $15 a month
- Products curated by eCommerce experts
- Access to trending keywords across search engines
- Chrome extension available for faster research
- Product information is more limited compared to other product research tools
- Most useful when sourcing from AliExpress, less so elsewhere
Best for: Dropshippers and eCommerce sellers that want in-depth data on suppliers on top of product data
10. Jungle Scout
If your domain is Amazon, Jungle Scout is the tool to reach for.
It provides granular data such as the percentage change in share of voice and shows whether that came through organic growth or sponsored campaigns.
You can benchmark sales volume, units ordered, and conversions against competitors. It also tracks competitor pricing at both category and product levels.
Other helpful features let you see rising trends and track when competitors make changes.
Key features
- Benchmark sales volume, units sold, and conversions against competitors
- Monitor competitor pricing at both product and category levels
- Identify emerging trends and changes in competitor strategies
- Opportunity Finder to reveal profitable niches with strong demand but low competition
- Product Tracker monitors real-time sales performance to validate product ideas
- Supplier Database connects you with vetted manufacturers for sourcing
Pricing
- Limited 7-day trial
- $49 per month to track up to 50 products
- Tracks competitor pricing, sales, and conversions at both product and category levels
- Product Tracker helps validate sales performance in real time
- Supplier Database makes it easier to connect with vetted manufacturers
- Covers multiple parts of the selling process, not just product research
- Well-rated across most user reviews
- Some users have reported issues with data accuracy
- Quite expensive compared to other product research alternatives
- The enterprise-level features may not be the best fit for a beginner eCommerce seller
Best for: Amazon sellers who want in-depth product, keyword, and supplier research to validate profitable opportunities
Tips to choose the best product research tools
- Define where you want to sell. Some of the tools on this list focus on Facebook, TikTok, or Amazon, while others cover a mix of platforms. Go with the one that gives you data for the platform where you’ll be selling or running ads the most.
- Decide if you care about building a store. If you do, pick a tool that supports store building. This can be something simple like a landing page on Peeksta, or a full store setup with Sell The Trend.
- Set your budget wisely. Entry-level plans can be as low as $15, but most tools start around $25 and go up to $50 or more, depending on the features. Don’t just look at the price tag, think about how fast you’ll use the data. A cheaper tool is fine if you’re only testing ideas, but if you’re scaling, it’s worth paying extra for more accurate data and advanced features.
- Know which feature counts most to you. Do you want product data, audience targeting insights, supplier information, competitor data, or ad data? From there, choose the tool that delivers best on the feature you value most.
Summary and recommendation
If you’re a beginner, Ecomhunt is a safe starting point because of its steady feed of trending products.
For TikTok sellers, PipiAds offers one of the most powerful ad libraries, while Minea gives you multi-platform insights across Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and more.
Sellers who want everything in one place, from product discovery to store setup, will find Sell The Trend hard to beat.
If you care more about ad spend and competitor revenue, Winning Hunter delivers the hard numbers. Jungle Scout is the best choice for Amazon sellers because of its granular market data and supplier insights.
However, choose Dropship Spy if you want engagement and virality scores, along with ready-to-use creatives and store templates.
We also found Thieve.co to be ideal for finding trending products, niche analysis, and supplier data in one place.
Pexda, on the other hand, should be the most natural choice if you are after a detailed audience targeting analysis. If you’d rather have more features for competitor tracking for Facebook ads, definitely go for Peeksta.
When you finally have a product worth selling, don’t think that simply listing it on your site will be enough. Remember, 43% of top stores spend about $5000 in social advertising. You also need to be running ads on at least one social platform.
However, if you’re working with more than one product, having on-brand, fresh creatives all the time will be quite challenging. In that case, we recommend checking out Cropink.
This catalog ads tool can help you create 100s of catalog ads at once and even push them directly to Facebook. Learn more by visiting cropink.com.
FAQs
For beginners, Ecomhunt offers a constant feed of trending products, while TikTok sellers may prefer PipiAds for its TikTok ad insights. Multi-platform sellers will have better luck with Minea, while Jungle Scout is the best research tool for Amazon sellers.
Start by looking at market demand and competition. To make it easier and faster, use product research tools to spot trends early, check sales history, and see how products are performing across platforms. Then, validate supplier details and profit margins before adding anything to your store.
We recommend going for tools that have product trends, sales history, supplier info, competitor insights, and ad performance data. Bonus features like store setup or AI-generated creatives can be pretty helpful as well.
Yes, because product research tools help you validate product ideas and understand competition way better than if you were operating blindly.
Sources
- Link My Books. How Many E-commerce Businesses Are There?
- Cropink. 99+ eCommerce Statistics to Help Boost Your Sales
Damaris is a Digital Marketing Specialist who writes about digital marketing and performance marketing. At Cropink, she creates data-driven content to help businesses run better ad campaigns for better performance and ROI.
Leszek is the Digital Growth Manager at Feedink & Cropink, specializing in organic growth for eCommerce and SaaS companies. His background includes roles at Poland's largest accommodation portal and FT1000 companies, with his work featured in Forbes, Inc., Business Insider, Fast Company, Entrepreneur, BBC, and TechRepublic.
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